I-35E

It’s been called the “Practice Freeway” because it is so slow. Many people wonder why it has a speed limit of 45 and trucks are not allowed, both of which are very strange for Interstate Highways. I-35E still generates almost as much controversy today as it did 40 years ago when it was first proposed. The gently winding route it takes is a contrast to the twists and turns that have made it more interesting as a story than as a road.

The first issue with Interstate 35E is its name. There is only one Interstate in the entire system that does not follow the standard 2 and 3 letter naming convention, and it is I-35. It should have been built as I-35 into Minneapolis and I-135 as a spur to Saint Paul, the smaller city. Local politics demanded that the two highways appear equal, hence the unusual designation of I-35W and I-35E. This particular highway also splits the same way for Fort Worth and Dallas.

That’s the way it was proposed in the late 1960s, in an effort to stave off the worst of the controversy.  But there was much more to come.

The path of I-35E was chosen to go right through the West End of Saint Paul, taking out about one third of the housing stock. Local residents were outraged, and in 1971 formed a group called “RIP 35E” to stop this. They were not able to stop the construction through the West End, but when I-35 got to the point where it wound around Crocus Hill opposition became more serious. When these neighbors joined the effort, planning and construction stopped.

By the mid 1980s, there had been action in the Federal Courts and the State Legislature to either get the project moving or kill it once and for all. Then, a compromise was reached to try to minimize the worst of the effect on the neighborhoods: the road would be built, but noise would be kept down by keeping trucks off of it and the speed reduced to 45. The concrete road base was poured thinner than a typical interstate to prevent MnDOT from ever trying to put trucks on I-35E.

Today, many people wonder if this compromise achieved anything. The loss of so much housing stock in the West End was directly related to a lot decline in the commercial strip, which suddenly had one third fewer customers to service. Monroe High School was no longer needed for the same reason, taking an important center from the community. All of this, taken together, was simply devastating to the community, and it is only now recovering. Meanwhile, traffic moves on I-35E at speeds greater than the limit all the time, and occasionally there are trucks as well.

Other controversies continue to live on, especially in the Ayd Mill road connector. This was originally proposed to connect I-35E to I-94 at Snelling Avenue, and one proposal to do this is in the works right now. It is being bitterly opposed by the people at the I-94 connection. At one time, this road was even thought of as MN-280, which would provide a connection from I-35E to I-94 and up into the Midway, ultimately connecting to I-35W. That plan appears to have been completely abandoned.

It is impossible to carve a major highway through an existing neighborhood without a lot of collateral damage. In this case, the West End has taken the brunt of it, but other neighborhoods don’t want to fall to the same fate. Keeping the “Practice Freeway” unusually restricted has a tremendous symbolic value to many people in Saint Paul. While others think the arrangement is bizarre, they should look no further than the name of the road to realize that everyone had an opinion about this one from the start, and somehow they were all going to be heard. That happens a lot in Saint Paul.