MnDOT has five options if crash-prone Hwy. 252 is rebuilt into freeway. One will get the nod.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation has yet to decide whether to convert Hwy. 252 into a four- or six-lane freeway or leave the dangerous road as it currently is.

That decision isn’t likely to come until late this year or early in 2026.

But should MnDOT opt to transform the highway through Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center into a freeway, the agency has come up with five options for where and how motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists would get on, off and cross over the highway.

The proposed interchanges, called “Access Combinations,” also account for transit use along the troubled corridor, which is rife with crashes and plagued with congestion.

“We need to figure out what the footprint is,” said Major Project Manager Amber Blanchard of the crossings, a key detail needed to determine how many lanes a new Hwy. 252 might have and which lanes would be designated for vehicles and which for transit.

“The goal is to reduce property impacts,” Blanchard said.

All five options call for Hwy. 252 to go over local roads at 66th, 70th, 73rd, 81st and 85th avenues and at Brookdale Drive. And all the designs would result in MnDOT acquiring property.

A committee made up of representatives from MnDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, Hennepin County and both cities has recommended that the so-called Combination 1 be adopted.

That scenario calls for full access interchanges at 66th and 85th avenues and Brookdale Drive. Current vehicle access at 70th and 81st avenues would be eliminated and replaced with a bicycle and pedestrian bridge. The intersection at 73rd Avenue also would go away and be replaced with a multi-modal underpass.

Brookdale Drive to the west of Hwy. 252 would be redesigned with one lane in each direction with a center turn lane in the middle, or with a median down the middle and roundabouts at Humboldt and Colfax avenues to deal with anticipated increases in traffic.

Combination 1’s benefits include faster travel times for Hwy. 252 drivers, reducing time for drivers on side streets trying to get on or cross the highway by one to two minutes, and a nearly 60% drop in crashes on Hwy. 252 resulting in serious injuries or deaths over a 20-year period, according to MnDOT.

There are about 400 crashes and one fatality a year on the 4-mile segment of highway, according to MnDOT.

Combination 1 “performed the best” of the five options, Blanchard said, and shows the “most compatibility with existing local roads and land use.”

Three of the other combinations would remove an interchange at 66th Avenue, which is less than a half-mile north of Interstate 694 and is one of the most dangerous in the state. One of those combinations would include partial interchanges at 73rd and Brookdale connected by new frontage roads.

Combination 5 would have full interchanges only at 73rd and 85th avenues and would be the least costly ($256 to $377 million). But the option was deemed “the least compatible” due to the possibility of increasing traffic on 73rd, which is not built for high traffic volumes.

Combinations 2, 3, 4 and 5 “do not work together” to enhance the project’s goals to improve the experience of motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists who use Hwy. 252 daily, Blanchard said.