Ride Boldly!

Bikes, bicycling, and road safety.

New I35W Bridge Design

The new I35W bridge design is now online. It’s boring. Really… boring. And I’m ok with that, as I don’t know that the Mississippi crossing there is suitable for something wild like Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge:
Erasmus Bridge

However, I note something in the Star-Tribune article on the new I35W design:

The bridge is also designed to accommodate a pedestrian bridge, which could be suspended from the underside of the deck.

Let me get this straight: It’s the most expensive bid, and the design ‘can accomodate’ a pedestrian bridge? It’s not integrated? It’s not going to be built in the first place?

THAT makes me cranky. While there are additional nearby options for cyclists, the more crossings for cyclists and pedestrians, the better.

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Author: julie

Julie Kosbab is an online marketing consultant and active transportation advocate living in Anoka County, Minnesota. She was one of Minnesota's only League of American Bicyclists Certified Instructors when certified in 2005. She is a past member of the National Bicycle Tour Directors Association. She has 2 children and 4 bicycles. Find her on Twitter as @betweenstations.

3 Comments

  1. I wouldn’t be cranky about this one. What would this crossing serve that’s not served by the 10th Ave bridge about 50 yards downstream or the Stone Arch bridge 1/4 mile upstream? Interstate crossings are useful but not fun, particularly, even the nice 35E one is noisy with the traffic zooming right past. I’d be cranky about the 494 bridge in Saint Paul–eventually we’ll get a bike crossing there but at the moment there isn’t a way across the river between downtown and Hastings.

  2. The single column suspension bridge is being used by the state on the Midtown Greenway crossing ove Hiawatha Ave.

  3. I thought they were going to route a pedestrian tunnel through one of the box girders (inside which the construction workers did a lot of work).Why not?