At this point, the “Rethinking 94,” engagement plan for reconstructing a 10-mile urban core stretch of Interstate 94 has been going on for so long, it’s hard to remember when it began.
I heard about it early on, after the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) opened up an office on University Avenue in St. Paul and commissioned a pair of documentaries about the highway from local public television.
It’s been a decade of surface-level public engagement since then. There were many meetings, tables set up to ask people what they thought of the freeway, where and when they drove. I recall large decals with QR codes placed on the sidewalks next to a pedestrian bridge that have since fallen apart, entropically disintegrating over the years to become adhesive abstract graffiti. During all this time, the procedural clockwork of MnDOT process ticked on, winnowing an initially wide range of options down to three almost-final choices, soon to be finalized by the agency…