Riverview Corridor - Alignment

Alignment

There are several different variations of the corridor but all of them have the Mall of America as one terminus and the Airport and Downtown Saint Paul as destinations. There were four possible routes along this section of the corridor; West Seventh Street, Interstate 35E, Shepard Road and along Canadian Pacific Railway tracks. West Seventh Street would be the most direct route but the right of way would need to be expanded. Interstate 35E already had an available right of way but created a longer route and bypassed many stretches of the West Seventh Neighborhood. Shepard Road is a direct route to Downtown but is out of the way of many ride generating places. The Canadian Pacific Railway right of way follows roughly along West Seventh but would be difficult to acquire the right of way rights.

Every route requires crossing the Mississippi River from Saint Paul to Fort Snelling. The current Fort Road Bridge was built in 1960 by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and was designed by Sverdrup & Parcel Engineering Company. It is the third bridge on the site, the first bridge, a deck girder bridge was built in 1880. The second bridge, a metal arch bridge was built by 1912. While almost all of the proposed routes would use the Fort Road Bridge, one suggested using a rail spur north and using the Ford Parkway Bridge upstream. Both routes would have had potential problems with the adaptation of the current bridge. When using the Fort Road Bridge, it was unknown if it could handle light rail or if a tunnel on the Fort Snelling side of the bridge could be widened. If the Ford Parkway bridge was used there were additional concern with the alignment of the route to the bridge. The second bridge at the Fort Road site and the Ford Parkway Bridge had held streetcar traffic.