Detours to nowhere, bicyclist close calls: reports from a tough summer for commuters

Mike Brown runs Total Technology Rental and spends lots of time on the road delivering computers and audiovisual equipment to courtrooms, hotels and trade shows in the Twin Cities.

This summer has been particularly rough. In nearly 40 years of driving in the metro, he said, this year has been the worst he’s ever experienced.

“There is road construction all over,” said Brown, 59, of Burnsville. “It seems like they just piled on all the main roads this year.”

The Minnesota Star Tribune asked readers to share stories of their worst commutes. Here is a sampling of what they said:

Brown said he easily spent an extra 1½ hours in traffic each day, beginning the moment he starts his vehicle and sets out for St. Paul. There are cones and backups on Interstate 35W in Burnsville, construction on I-494 in Bloomington and the big bottleneck on I-94 over the Mississippi River.

His biggest gripe, however, has been the detour signs in Minneapolis that led to nowhere.

“I think somebody had to have come and moved the detour signs on the side streets,” he said. “Every time you followed a detour sign, they led you to a ramp and the ramp was closed. I drove and drove. It was a disaster.”

Brown said he’s tried other routes to bypass downtown gridlock and has had to adopt a new mindset for when detours lead him astray

“You gotta have a sense of humor or you’ll get frustrated, and it’s not going to be good,” he said. “Just chuckle and figure it out.”

Myriad cone zones have affected bicyclists, too, and not in a good way. Christy Marsden, 39, of Minneapolis said she has had her share of hair-raising moments, including recently when a motorist trying to make a traffic light cut her off and came within inches of striking her as she pedaled on Otis Avenue.

“There is aggression. They are angry,” she said of drivers.

Marsden said she enjoys biking to her job on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus and smiles as she watches stopped traffic on the freeway and on West River Parkway.

Claire Thefaine agreed about feeling unsafe on a bike amid road construction.

“I have not had a single day without an incident that has left me shaken up,” she said in an email. “It can be grating to hear the people around me discussing standstill traffic on their commute when I fear for my safety and life every day on mine.”

Many who wrote in to the Star Tribune said they enjoy their stress-free trips on the bus or train. But those who drive seem to just grin and bear it, though admittedly they look forward to the end of construction season.

“Construction hasn’t been very nightmarish in my experience,” said Sam Pingree, 31, of St. Paul.

He said he mostly walks to public transit but noted that speeding drivers on the I-94 exit to Snelling Avenue put pedestrians like him in peril.

Construction and tie-ups on Snelling Avenue seem to go hand-in-hand when the State Fair is session. Brown made a delivery to the fairgrounds last Tuesday and said he was pleasantly surprised to find an absence of road work in the area.