A little fog and a little rain was not enough to muck up the Monday drive to work as traffic flowed fairly well across the system for most of the rush.
Naturally we did have our tough spots, which included southbound Hwy. 169 through New Hope. A crash at 6:50 a.m. at Medicine Lake Road created a backup that stretched to 63rd Avenue for more than an hour. As traffic began to recover, a stall and crash at Hwy. 55 jammed up traffic again. At present, the left-lane wreck at Hwy. 55 has traffic at a near standstill at 36th Avenue in New Hope.
Westbound I-94 had its issues heading into downtown St. Paul with a pair of crashes at Mounds Blvd. Both cleared out quickly preventing a massive backup.
Commuters on southbound 35E dodged two separate crashes at Maryland Avenue. The good news is that the delays were brief as neither caused extensive backups.
On northbound 35W, the usual congestion formed between Burnsville Pkwy. and the Minnesota River bridge, but drive times to Minneapolis remained in the 20 to 24 minute range all morning. Two late rush hour incidents, a stall at 98th Street and crash at 92nd Street is creating minor setbacks at this hour.
The final Northstar run departed Big Lake 20 minutes late, The other runs into downtown Minneapolis ran on schedule.
In case you missed the news, the ramp from eastbound 694 to southbound 35E is closed for the next four to six weeks. The detour is to follow 694 east to Hwy. 61, then circle back on westbound 694 to southbound 35E.
