The Drive gets many questions about traffic and road construction projects, and one of the most frequently asked over the years has been about the project on the east side of Interstate 35W just south of downtown Minneapolis.
MnDOT did a four-year, $240 million reconstruction of the freeway between I-94 and Crosstown Hwy. 62, replacing bridges, putting down new concrete pavement and adding carpool lanes and a bus station at Lake Street.
The agency declared the project officially complete in September 2021, but there is one lingering component that has workers still on the job and one northbound lane closed near 42nd Street.
"What's been going on on 35W northbound, between 46th and Lake Street, along the side?" asked Drive reader Phil. "I can't figure out what it is."
That portion of the freeway is prone to flooding, so in a first-of-its-kind project, MnDOT built six underground concrete tanks to collect runoff. The tanks, large enough to hold 4.5 million gallons of water — enough to fill about seven Olympic-sized swimming pools — will hold the water until it is pumped through a pipe into a tunnel that leads to the Mississippi River.
Work on the tanks, which began in 2019, is expected to be done in April when MnDOT puts roofs on the structures, said agency spokesman Jesse Johnson. But motorists will have to wait until the end of the summer before the far right lane reopens.
MnDOT will need to finish building a retaining wall, completing the road work on I-35W, and restoring the area before barricades blocking the lane come down, Johnson said.
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