A key route into Anoka will be closed for two weeks starting Monday as the BNSF Railway repairs a busy crossing on the north end of the city.
As many as 18,000 drivers use Hwy. 47 — also known as Ferry Street — each day, according to 2018 traffic counts, and they will be detoured through Sept. 5.
With the railroad crossing shut down, the Minnesota Department of Transportation will use the time to repave approaches and put in American Disability Act improvements to make it easier for pedestrians to cross the tracks.
It's all adding to the spate of other state and county road work that for the past few weeks has turned Anoka into "a big cone zone," MnDOT spokesman Kent Barnard said.
Since late July, traffic has stacked up on Ferry Street as MnDOT carries out a repaving project from the south end of the Mississippi River bridge to Clay Street and from Pleasant Street to near Bunker Lake Boulevard. MnDOT also will resurface Hwy. 47 from the railroad crossing to Bunker Lake Boulevard starting in September.
There Anoka County is adding additional travel and turn lanes at the intersection of Hwy. 47 and Bunker Lake to improve traffic flow and improve pedestrian crossing.
Drivers also are seeing orange as MnDOT builds a temporary right turn lane at Ferry and McKinley streets, just north of Hwy. 10. The agency has started work to widen the ramp from westbound Hwy. 10 to 7th Avenue and build a temporary loop to carry traffic from southbound 7th Avenue to eastbound Hwy. 10.
The new ramps, which won't open until the spring of 2022, are "traffic mitigation strategies" ahead of next year's rebuild of the Rum River bridge on Hwy. 10 and a major redo of the intersections on Hwy. 10 at Main Street, Thurston Avenue and Fairoak Avenue, Barnard said.
