Drivers will be free of another big St. Louis Park traffic snarl by the end of 2010, as long-awaited construction begins this fall on a new interchange bridging Wooddale Avenue over busy Hwy. 7.

It took the city seven years to line up the money for the $19 million project. "For a community of our size to pull something like this off, it really does take time," said city manager Tom Harmening.

In the end, St. Louis Park won close to $10 million in federal funding for the project, including about $3.5 million from the stimulus program. To clinch the deal, officials pointed out that the stoplight crossing was a choke point for regional traffic on the state highway and a safety problem for pedestrians and cyclists on Wooddale, Harmening said.

The situation is reminiscent of one in St. Louis Park 20 years ago, when the city came to the rescue of Hwy. 100 drivers by spearheading the removal of the highway's at-grade intersection with 36th St.

Roughly 36,000 vehicles a day use the stretch of Hwy. 7, while Wooddale carries about 10,000 vehicles (along with cyclists and pedestrians) to the nearby Southwest Regional LRT Trail or to St. Louis Park's community center and high school.

Adding to the already busy traffic scene is the possibility in the next 10 years that the proposed Southwest light-rail line will stop at a station just south of Hwy. 7 on Wooddale, said Public Works Director Mike Rardin.

With Hwy. 7 already running at capacity, extra traffic going to the rail station would only worsen congestion, Rardin said. The intersection, he said, "just can't stay the way it is."

The new interchange will separate the highway from the street and provide bike and walking trails along Wooddale.

To make it happen, St. Louis Park will spend $6.75 million to $8.75 million of its own funds. It started buying the needed right-of-way for the new interchange in 2003, just as the city in 1982 spent $2.3 million to purchase the right-of-way needed to jump-start the new interchange at 36th and Hwy. 100.

Contractors are to submit bids for the Hwy. 7 interchange next week. If that goes as expected, construction would start in September or early October, Rardin said.

St. Louis Park officials also are urging the state to widen a 2-mile stretch of Hwy. 100 just east of the Hwy. 7 and Wooddale interchange.

In 2005, the Minnesota Department of Transportation added temporary third lanes to that segment using the existing shoulder, but since then, Hwy. 100 has again become badly congested at rush hour.

MnDOT has the permanent widening scheduled for bid competition in 2014, Harmening said.

By then, the city hopes to have rebuilt another local intersection: Hwy. 7 at Louisiana Avenue. Just down the road from Wooddale, it poses similar traffic problems and delays. The city has applied for federal funds for that project in hopes of rebuilding it in 2011 or 2012, Rardin said.

The goal is to upgrade both Hwy. 7 intersections before the work begins on Hwy. 100, Harmening said.

Laurie Blake • 612-673-1711