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<br />. <br /> <br />Highway Option Evaluation <br /> <br />The highway options were reviewed based on a number of evaluation parameters, these included: <br /> <br />. Safety and mobility benefits <br />. Environmental impacts <br />. Cost <br />· Impacts to surrounding land uses (urban, suburban, and rural land uses) <br /> <br />The parameters used to analyze the highway options placed the options under the same level of <br />scrutiny so as to have an unbiased evaluation. Based on the screening analysis, the following <br />highway alternatives were dropped from further study: <br /> <br />. HOV lanes from Minneapolis to Saint Cloud <br />. TH 10/47 upgrade to freeway <br />. TH 10 selected city bypasses <br /> <br />The following highway alternatives were recommended to be carried forward into the <br />transportation strategies for the Phase II MIS study: <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />· Additional Mississippi River crossings <br />· TH 10 minor upgrades including the following: <br />Addition of turn lanes <br />ITS technologies for traffic management <br />Access consolidation <br />Frontage road development <br />Signal improvements and coordination <br />Construction of interchanges at selected locations <br />Lane additions at selected locations <br /> <br />The recommendation was made to drop the modal elements of Commuter Rail with Anoka County <br />LRT and Commuter Rail with Anoka County HOV as discrete options. This was due to a number <br />of complementary major transit investments that have previously been proposed and/or are <br />currently being proposed that would be integrated with the proposed Northstar commuter rail <br />system. These transit investments include: <br /> <br />· Hiawatha LRT service between downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America <br />· Northeast Corridor LRT service between downtown Minneapolis and the Northtown Shopping <br />Center <br />· Northeast Corridor busway facility on exclusive right-of-way between downtown Minneapolis <br />and the Northtown Transit Hub. <br /> <br />It was further recommended that the following transit systems and services be included as potential <br />. intermodal connections with the Northstar commuter rail system: Hiawatha LRT service, Northeast <br /> <br />Northstar Corridor Major Investment Study <br />Conceptual Definition of Alternatives <br />February 1999 <br /> <br />1-7 <br />