Thursday's morning rush was violent one with several multi-vehicle crashes punctuated by a fatal in Hastings and another in Eden Prairie in which a vehicle jumped a concrete median wall and hit another car.
According to MnDOT, a vehicle on Hwy. 169 jumped the median wall at Bren Road at 6:50 a.m.and collided with another vehicle in the left lane of the southbound lanes. There were injuries with this one, but no word on their nature.
The ramp to southbound 169 from Bren Road was closed as traffic jammed back to Hwy. 7 to the north. On the southbound side, traffic came to a halt near Valley View Road. The mishap was cleared about 45 minutes later.
A four-vehicle crash on northbound 169 just south of the Bloomington Ferry Bridge knotted up traffic in Shakopee shortly after the Bren Road incident.
In Hastings, the State Patrol closed Hwy. 61 at 190th Street when vehicle rolled over killing one person. The accident around 7 a.m. is under investigation. Authorities have not released the name of the victim.
Just to the north in Newport, a pre-dawn crash on Hwy. 61 at Glen Road involved up to six vehicles, and that tangled traffic back to 70th Street for about an hour between 6:15 and 7:15 a.m.
Another tough spot was on northbound Hwy. 100. A mishap in the left lane at 50th Street brought northbound drivers to their knees as traffic crept past the crash.
In St. Paul, the first half of the rush was rough for commuters on southbound I-35E drivers. A wreck just before 6 a.m. on the Cayuga Bridge took out the left lane. With all the construction in the area, traffic stacked up quickly and the line stretched back to north of Roselawn Avenue. That congestion never really loosened until well after 8 a.m. At present, it's 15 minutes from 694 to downtown St. Paul.
