Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Two blocks of Cedar will close overnight from Friday to Saturday for sewer work.
Cedar Avenue is scheduled to be closed from 10 p.m. Friday until 7 a.m. Saturday between 145th and 147th streets for water and sewer work, according to Dakota County. Recommended detours are to use 140th and 150th (County Road 42) streets to route around the closure. Construction on Cedar began in April 2011. The county project involves creating shoulders specifically for buses and widening Cedar Avenue to accommodate a bus rapid transit system, a station-to-station line that would have buses running from Lakeville to a park-and-ride near the Mall of America and back every 15 minutes during the week. The goal of bus rapid transit, which also is recommended or planned for other corridors besides Cedar, is to better and more quickly connect …
Friday, March 2, 2012
Construction on Cedar to accommodate a new bus rapid transit system continues.
Expect new lane closures next week on Cedar Avenue, as road construction for a new bus rapid transit system ramps up after a winter hiatus: Lane closures will continue on southbound Cedar between 147th Street and Whitney Drive, and northbound between 155th and 150th streets. Sidewalks on the east side of Cedar between 147th and 157th streets already are closed. Plans could change based on weather conditions, according to the county. Construction on the road began in April. The project involves creating shoulders specifically for buses and widening Cedar Avenue to accommodate a bus rapid transit system, a station-to-station line that would have buses running from Lakeville to a park-and-ride near the Mall of America and back every 15 …
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Dakota County and Met Council officials disagree, not on design of bus itself, but over how the buses should look.
There's another hangup in the Cedar Avenue transit corridor saga. What should the buses look like? No, not the physical design of the buses. What color should they be? With construction more than half way done, it's time to get buses on the new transit way, but the Star Tribune is reporting that discussions and bus approval between the Metropolitan Council and Dakota County have stalled over the design of the buses. "They want to do something that basically is like LRT and like some of the transit buses that they have in the inner cities, and we feel it should look different and more futuristic," Lakeville's Dakota County Commissioner Paul Krause told the Star Tribune. For some Dakota County officials, the most recent spat with the Met …
Friday, September 2, 2011
Cedar Avenue in Lakeville and Apple Valley is undergoing a $112 million face lift to make it a bus rapid transit corridor, but now the county fears it may not be able to pay for the bus service once it's all done.
Dakota County is suddenly concerned that it won't have money to pay for bus service along Cedar Avenue once its $112 million face-lift is completed next year. According to a report in the Star Tribune, the Metropolitan Council—the state agency that doles out funding for transit across the state—recently told county officials that funding to operate the buses along Cedar Avenue was a casualty of the state budget deal. "It really knocked the wind out of my sails," Dakota County Commissioner Nancy Schouweiler said in the report. "We've got all this money put into it. We've got all this (road) work done, all these businesses are impacted and now we're not going to get buses?" Two months ago Dakota County officials told Lakeville Patch that …
Friday, December 17, 2010
Utility work along Cedar Avenue to prepare for major roadway construction will continue through December. Lane widening and other major improvement projects are set to begin when snow melts.
Once Cedar Avenue's face-lift is finished in 2012, the highway will be a jewel—an example for the rest of the nation on how Bus Rapid Transit should look and operate, Dakota County officials say. But until then, traffic through Apple Valley and Lakeville along Cedar Avenue, the county's busiest road, will be a headache as construction crews widen the highway to accommodate new bus lanes. "Once the project is complete, the (Cedar Avenue) corridor will be one of the first Bus Rapid Transit corridors in the Midwest," said Sam O'Connell, the county's transit specialist. But construction isn't going to be done until 2012, and in the meantime, officials have acknowledged that during construction, navigating Cedar Avenue will be a challenge, …
Charlie Gerk
10:31 am on Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The taxpayers dollars hard at work here. more ›