Minneapolis is moving to reconstruct the 18th Avenue South bridge over the Midtown Greenway, the 5.5-mile below-grade bicycle and pedestrian corridor that cuts east-west across south Minneapolis and now carries more than a million trips a year.
The bridge sits in the Phillips neighborhood, one of the city's most racially diverse communities, just north of the Lake Street corridor that has been a focus of reinvestment since the 2020 unrest. Like most of the small vehicle bridges spanning the Greenway, it dates to the early 20th century, when the trench was still an active Milwaukee Road rail line. Many of those structures are now at or past their 100-year design life.
Minneapolis has been working through a rolling replacement program for these bridges for more than a decade, driven in part by federal inspection standards that have flagged several of them as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The urgency sharpened after the 2007 collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, which killed 13 people and prompted a statewide surge of bridge investment. More recently, the 2021 federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act created a dedicated Bridge Formula Program that is sending Minnesota roughly $225 million over five years for bridge repair and replacement.
Source: NationGraph.
Previous reconstructions over the Greenway at Nicollet Avenue, 5th Avenue South and other crossings have drawn close scrutiny from the Midtown Greenway Coalition and cyclists who depend on the corridor year-round. Any closure of the Greenway during construction is politically sensitive: the route is central to the city's Climate Action Plan and its 2040 Comprehensive Plan goal of expanding non-motorized transportation. The city has also committed to Complete Streets policies, meaning a rebuilt 18th Avenue bridge would likely include wider sidewalks and improved pedestrian and bike facilities rather than simply matching the old footprint. Minneapolis is also upgrading Hennepin Avenue signals and bike lanes and rehabilitating a tunnel beneath nearby 38th Street South as part of the same broader push to modernize aging infrastructure in south Minneapolis.
The city has listed the project among upcoming Public Works bidding opportunities, though specific budget figures, a construction timeline and design details have not yet been released. Those details, including how long the Greenway might be closed or detoured, will likely determine how much opposition the project draws from the cycling community as it moves forward.
