Ignore what you might have read or seen elsewhere. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is assuring drivers that Interstate 94 will not be closing in both directions this weekend between downtown St. Paul and Woodbury, as some media outlets had reported earlier this week.
News of the closure was carried Wednesday due to outdated information that had been entered into MnDOT’s 511 travel website.
“There’s a lot of people involved in putting those 511 alerts out to the public,” said Kent Barnard, a spokesman for MnDOT. “Mistakes do happen. Sometimes weather changes things, or crews find old utilities they didn’t realize were underground, and that can really throw a monkey wrench in the whole mess. It’s very rare, but it happens.”
Barnard, a 36-year MnDOT employee and former radio news director, spent Wednesday at a seminar in Roseville, only to pick up his smartphone that evening to a flurry of panicky text messages from reporters. Barnard reached out to the city of St. Paul and then directly to Lunda Construction, which had once sought permission to schedule an interstate closure this weekend to remove the Kellogg/Third Street bridge on the city’s behalf.
The span closed this week and will be replaced over the next three years, but demolition is not going to happen until October or so.
Barnard checked with the Metropolitan Council, which is building the Gold Line bus rapid transit corridor mostly parallel to I-94 from downtown St. Paul to Woodbury, to see if they had planned bridge work over the highway that might require an interstate closure. Nope, that wasn’t happening this weekend, either.
Barnard sent out clarification on Thursday and a more formal announcement Friday: I-94 will indeed remain open in both directions.
“Information was erroneously entered into the 511 website earlier this week about a full closure in both directions of Interstate 94 between I-35E in St. Paul and I-494 in Woodbury,” reads the statement. “This closure was originally planned for removal of the 3rd Street/Kellogg Blvd bridge in St. Paul, which has been cancelled and delayed until sometime this fall. MnDOT and the city of St. Paul are sorry for any confusion this may have caused.”
Here’s an actual highway closure for drivers to be aware of.
The eastbound lanes of Minnesota 36 will close this weekend between I-35E and U.S. 61 in Little Canada from Friday night through 5 a.m. Monday for a road resurfacing project. Access from northbound and southbound I-35E to eastbound Minnesota 36 will close. The ramp from eastbound Minnesota 36 to U.S. 61 will also close.
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