A viaduct is a series of spans or arches used to carry a road or railroad over a wide valley or over other roads or railroads. and my neighborhood, the north loop, has a couple that I'd like to see torn down.

In both the Multi-Modal Station Area Master Plan and Chapter 5 of the Downtown East/North Loop Master Plan, recommendations are made to study the removal of the I-94 viaduct, and return traffic to surface streets. The surface streets 3rd St N. and 4th St N. would both provide connection to I-94 in both directions - but remove the 'warp tunnel' effect the viaducts provide. Essentially the viaduct is a 1/2 mile on and off ramp to I-94 that allows autos to bypass the North Loop neighborhood entirely and at highway speeds.

Historically, the North Loop neighborhood has not been a good one. My sister lived in the Twin Cities about 25 years ago and told me she once caught a glimpse of a dead body on the street, not far from where my new digs are. At the time, I'm sure it seemed like a really good idea to build a viaduct to I-94 to bypass the area. It is my understanding that bridges over the railroad trench that would have connected 3rd & 4th Streets never existed and therefore were not demolished to make way for the viaduct. The past ten years has seen a lot of gentrification in the North Loop, with a lot more to follow if the former owners of the land the ballpark is being built on are able to follow thru with their plans for North Loop Village. Their plans do not call for removal of the viaduct, which can be seen quite clearly on page 7. However, I have to believe that their plans would be much better off with surface streets than the viaduct.

Having lived in the North Loop for a month, my observations of the viaduct (and the wait for the elevator in my building unfortunately affords me a lot of time to observe) are that they only serve a significant amount of traffic for an hour in the morning and the evening. The other 22 hours see a handful of cars every minute. While this would probably increase rush-hour traffic for autos by a couple of minutes, I have to believe that the benefits to the neighborhood would far outweigh that inconvenience. With the Northstar Line coming in 2009 to serve some of that same traffic and the proximity to the ballpark, I hope the city is studying the issue and that it becomes a project that can go forward quickly (not that anything occurs quickly in this state anymore). The amount of development that could occur along both 3rd and 4th streets could be amazing. The creation of new surface level bridges for 3rd and 4th streets would also provide continuity of the neighborhood and help form additional connections between Downtown West and the North Loop.

One large stumbling block to the whole plan is what happens to the federal dollars that were used to build the viaduct in the first place. The stated useful life of the viaduct is 60 years, and I have no idea how old the viaduct is, but it is probably not even to the halfway point yet. How much of those dollars would have to be paid back to do an early tear-down will have to be part of the study as well.