Rain that arrived just in time for Monday's morning rush hour, along with the end of spring break and more traffic on the roads, made it for an active commute.
A number of crashes added to the time drivers spent on the roads. For more than an hour, a left-lane blocking crash on southbound Hwy. 169 at I-94 had traffic jammed in Brooklyn Park from Hwy. 610 to 63rd Avenue. That occurred around 6:35 a.m. and didn't clear until after 8. By that time, the drive along 169 was a frustrating affair as congestion plugged things down to the Crosstown.
Speaking of the Crosstown, eastbound drivers had it pretty good, but westbound drivers suffered with drives up to 20 minutes between Hiawatha Avenue and Hwy. 100. A new crash at France Avenue is not helping things out. Traffic knots up at Lyndale Avenue.
Westbound 94 from Woodbury over to Hwy. 280 never got into full gear. Congestion kept things at a crawl, and added a lot of time to the drive. Ironically, no crashes were reported on I-94 today.
Westbound 494 didn't flow so well either from Hwy. 5 over to Hwy. 100. It's still tight at this hour.
In Lakeville, a wreck that blocked the left lane of northbound I-35 at Kenwood Trail bogged down traffic between 210th Street and the crash scene. Ahead, trip times to Minneapolis hit 37 minutes at the worst, between 7:30 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. Now, that is just 18 minutes from the 35E/W split.
Commuters hit construction delays on southbound Hwy. 100 from Duluth Street to Hwy. 7 and eastbound 94 from west of the Crow River over to Rogers. New temporary lanes were in effect for I-94 drivers in St. Michael as MnDOT continues bridge widening and adding a third lane between Hwy. 241 and Hwy. 101.
Last Thursday, MnDOT announced its construction plans for the summer. Today, we'll learn what Hennepin County has on the docket.
