Heaven help drivers through Brooklyn Park devil's triangle

Every day, the drivers come by the tens of thousands, from six directions, to a place they don't really want to be: the triple intersection known as the devil's triangle.

If you're sitting in gridlock on Hwy. 169 near the Fleet Farm just outside Osseo, you'll find there's plenty of time to fluff your hair, rearrange whatever's on the seat of your car, or stare ahead as the traffic signal mocks you. Green doesn't mean go if the car in front of you can't move.

Alleviating your suffering is one of the state's top transportation priorities, but it might not seem like it. That's because even though transportation will be job one when the Legislature reconvenes today, the congested, crash-prone triangle is going to stay just the way it is this year.

Work that would lift Hwy. 169 above two county roads was supposed to begin last year, but the money got switched to pay for the Crosstown project.

The Legislature and governor didn't come up with replacement funds for the 169 project during the 2007 session. Now the work is set to start in the second half of 2009, with completion late in 2011.

The delay has riled up not only commuters but also mayors and legislators who wonder when they'll see more cement trucks and smell fresh asphalt.

"The only way we're going to get any of these projects moved up is to get more money into the system," said Rep. Michael Nelson, a DFLer who is assistant majority leader and whose district includes most of the triangle. Nelson said even the 2009 start date could be at risk if, say, bridge repairs are deemed more important.

So the waiting continues.

The triangle was created in the 1980s in, of all things, an effort to reduce congestion. Before the bypass, Hwy. 169 used to go right through Osseo, a compact town of 2,500 people.

Since then, Anoka County, just up the road, has added about 100,000 residents, and the half-finished Hwy. 610 freeway ends at 169, dumping all of its westbound traffic. In 1986, about 26,000 cars a day were using 169 through the triangle; by 2006, the number had risen to 53,000, and people were calling it by its satanic nickname.

Traffic glut in Osseo

Nelson said that Osseo is overwhelmed by drivers cutting through, with a recently redone street wearing out from all the cars.

But not everyone is cutting through on purpose. "Sometimes I have to go straight into Osseo because I can't get over," said Amy Peterson, who would prefer to turn toward her home in Champlin.

Drivers in the lane she'd like to be in understand her predicament. "We know we're going to have to keep to the right lane, so we're glued to the car in front of us," said Kate Gorecki, who regularly drives through on her way to visit her parents in central Minnesota.

"Mornings I don't even come to work this way," Peterson said. Her son takes the same route, and "every day we drive it, we complain."

While it might feel like purgatory, the triangle does not judge. The UPS truck, the BMW and the Taurus with the bumper sticker containing the word "hemorrhoid" all suffer equally.

It might not be a coincidence that there are collision-repair shops at two corners of the triangle. On its list of the 200 intersections with the highest crash-related costs, the Minnesota Department of Transportation puts two of the triangle's three intersections in the top 10.

That's because there's "lots of confusion," said Jennifer McAtee, who commutes from Mound to Brooklyn Park and stopped last week at Fleet Farm to buy new floor mats for her car. She's seen plenty of accidents, and the jam-ups grow exponentially whenever one of the signals goes out.

"The people that know that area tend to go faster and don't allow for the ones that don't have a clue what they're doing," Gorecki said.

One problem, Gorecki says, is that drivers heading toward the triangle on southbound 169 see an overhead sign indicating that the right lane is for continuing on 169, when in fact both the left and right lanes handle through traffic. New drivers "all squish into one lane," only to find out they don't have to, she said.

And then there's the trains

Just off the triangle, on 85th Avenue N., there's a separate signal that lets people get to and from the road in front of Fleet Farm. "Do not block intersection" signs encourage drivers to keep that open, but no such instructions exist at the triangle's three corners.

As if there isn't enough going on, traffic on 85th and 169 has to stop about twice each day to let freight trains go through.

The revamp of the triangle will carry Hwy. 169 over the track. Chris Roy, MnDOT's engineer for the north metro, says that the removal of stoplights will nearly double the highway's capacity.

The overall project was estimated to cost $50 million in 2007, and that number is expected to rise because of inflation.

Roy says MnDOT hopes to keep two lanes open in both directions on 169 nearly all the time, but the specter of orange barrels worries the triangle's already scarred drivers.

"Oh my," said Gorecki when told about the construction plan. "That'll be interesting."

Jim Foti • 612-673-4491