Plan to turn Hwy. 169 to freeway gains favor

Getting rid of the traffic lights on Hwy. 169 in Bloomington, Edina and Eden Prairie has been on commuters' wish lists for years.

Now that legislators have raised the state gas tax to bring in more money for roads, the three communities say it's time to turn Hwy. 169 into a freeway by rebuilding the interchange at Interstate Hwy. 494.

The project, with a pricetag of $120 million, has been on and off again in recent years because of a lack of funds. But during a meeting with suburban city officials on Monday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said it is willing to consider accelerating the 169/494 project if the cities can agree to a less costly design.

"Everybody is committed to working toward a solution and getting going on it," said Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead. "We were all hoping this thing would have been in the ground right now."

The next step is for city engineers from each community to think about "what perhaps we could live without," said Scott Neal, Eden Prairie's city manager. Most likely to be cut would be expensive "fly-over" bridges which streamline the traffic flow but significantly drive up the construction costs. The alternative is to use a standard cloverleaf interchange where streams of traffic cross and weave at entrance and exit ramps.

It will be later this summer "before we have a direction firmed up on what we would build and when we would build it," said MnDOT's west area manager, Tom O'Keefe. Federal, state and city officials approved the expansive design at a cost of $120 million a few years ago, and MnDOT had the project scheduled for 2016.

The tradeoff for a less-ideal design would be getting the work done a lot sooner, Edina Mayor Jim Hovland said.

With a wide, flat design and wooden noise walls, the four-lane Hwy. 169 looks like a freeway and drives like a freeway, but it opened in 1997 with stoplights instead of freeway overpasses at three major intersections to save money.

The stoplights caused safety problems and delays from Day One, and drivers cheered when construction of overpasses removed stop lights at Pioneer Trail and Bloomington Ferry Road in 2006.

Now it's the remaining lights at Highwood Drive and on either side of I-494 that cause delays.

Southbound traffic can back up through Edina as far north at Crosstown Hwy. 62, and Edina is eager for a safer, less-congested highway, Hovland said.

Eden Prairie is counting on the project to make it easier to get in and out of the Golden Triangle business park so the city can allow business expansion, Neal said.

The cities renewed their push for the project because of the increase in the gas tax, Neal said. "We wanted to know how the prospects for the project had changed given the new funding dynamics at MnDOT."

Legislators raised the state's 20-cent gas tax in a landmark $6.8 billion transportation bill passed in February.

The bill calls for an extra 8.5 cents a gallon by 2012 -- an increase that started with a 2 cent per gallon rise on April 1. Another half-cent will be collected beginning Aug. 1, and an additional 3 cents starting Oct. 1, with the remaining 3 cents phased in gradually over the next few years.

Every penny added to the gas tax brings in an extra $32 million a year. After giving cities and counties their share, the state highway share is about 60 percent, or $19 million, said MnDOT fiscal analyst Bruce Briese.

MnDOT is still studying the legislation to determine how the money should be spent, Briese said.

Expansion projects which include getting rid of traffic lights on Hwy. 169 would come after bridge and pavement repair, O'Keefe said.