Deadliest highways and corridors in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro

Minnesota's traffic deaths fell to 370 in 2025, the lowest count since 2019 and a 20% drop from the 475 people killed in 2024, according to the state's Advisory Council on Traffic Safety.¹ Statewide, four factors, impaired driving, distraction, speed, and unbelted occupants, show up in the large majority of fatal crashes.² But that top-line number hides where the risk actually sits. In Minneapolis, 9 to 10% of city streets have carried 64% to 66% of all severe and fatal crashes since 2020, according to the city's own Vision Zero crash data.³ St. Paul reached a similar conclusion after adopting Vision Zero under City Council Resolution 23-875 in June 2023, which directed staff to map a "High Injury Network" and a separate "High Crash Network" for pedestrians and cyclists using crash records from 2015 through 2019.⁴

The corridors below are the ones state and local safety data keep flagging, along with the interstates and county roads where fatal crashes have actually happened in the last year.

Interstate 94 and Interstate 35W through the urban core

I-94 and I-35W carry the bulk of the metro's commuter and freight traffic, and both cut directly through the densest parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Two recent fatal crashes show what that looks like. On November 12, 2025, a Tesla exiting eastbound I-94 at Dale Street in St. Paul at a "high rate of speed" struck a Toyota RAV4 crossing the intersection, killing 31-year-old Benjamin Villano of St. Paul.⁵ On July 1, 2026, a fatal crash on westbound I-94 at the I-35W/Highway 65 interchange in Minneapolis shut the roadway down during the early morning commute.⁶

I-35W has already been reengineered once in the name of safety. Under the 2009 Urban Partnership Agreement, MnDOT added a priced dynamic shoulder lane to parts of the freeway. Rear-end crashes rose in some of those stretches afterward, but a University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies review traced the increase to changed traffic patterns after a Highway 62 bottleneck was removed, not to the shoulder lane design itself.⁷

Highway 252, one of the state's most-flagged corridors

Highway 252 runs through Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center, and Brooklyn Park, and MnDOT's own project files put it among the top 10 highways in Minnesota for crash frequency.⁸ Between 2016 and 2019, the corridor logged 654 reported crashes at intersections and another 790 away from them, two-thirds of them rear-end collisions that point to chronic congestion rather than one-off driver error. Fourteen fatal crashes have occurred on Highway 252 since 2003, five of them between 2019 and 2023 alone, and nine pedestrian or bicycle crashes were reported from 2011 to 2019, including two deaths.⁸ MnDOT says converting the road to a freeway would cut crashes by 31% to 49%, depending on the design chosen, but Brooklyn Center's mayor and city council have pushed back on the current proposal.⁹

The busiest interchange in Minnesota

Where I-35W meets I-494 in Bloomington is the busiest interchange in the state, carrying roughly 500,000 vehicles a day and about 21% of the metro's commuters, with three to five hours of congestion on a typical weekday.¹⁰ A City of Bloomington report calls it "the busiest and one of the most congested and unsafe intersections in Minnesota."¹⁰ MnDOT studied the corridor from 2018 to 2022 and won $204 million toward reconstruction, including $70 million for the first phase of a new turbine interchange ramp.¹⁰ That work sits inside a larger project rebuilding I-494 between Edina and Richfield in two phases, each budgeted at $377 million, running from 2023 through 2030.¹¹ Fatal crashes still happen nearby: on June 13, 2026, a crash involving two SUVs and a semi truck on westbound I-494 near Highway 100 in Bloomington was classified as fatal by the State Patrol.¹²

The Highway 12 "Corridor of Death"

West of the metro core, the 38-mile stretch of Highway 12 between Wayzata and western Wright County earned its nickname the hard way. A 2015 MnDOT safety audit covering 2010 through 2014 found the corridor's fatal crash rate at 1.51%, more than 70% higher than the 0.87% statewide average for similar roads, with head-on collisions accounting for 61% of the fatal and incapacitating crashes.¹³ Nearly 40% of those serious and fatal crashes clustered around Independence, Maple Plain, Orono, and Long Lake, and state records tied 24 deaths to the corridor over a six-year span.¹³ MnDOT is now spending $50.9 million on safety work between Shoreline Drive in Wayzata and I-494 in Minnetonka through 2026, on top of earlier fixes like a concrete median barrier and a roundabout at Highways 12 and 92.¹⁴

Minneapolis and St. Paul's most dangerous streets

Inside the two core cities, the risk concentrates on a short list of arterial streets rather than the freeways. Minneapolis has run Vision Zero safety projects on Lyndale Avenue North, Plymouth Avenue North, Nicollet Avenue, Bloomington Avenue, Dowling Avenue, Monroe Street Northeast, and Fremont Avenue North, all pulled from its High Injury Network map.¹⁵ Speed is doing more of the damage than it used to: speeding was a contributing factor in 80% of Minneapolis fatal crashes in 2024, up from 43% in 2017.³ Pedestrians make up 17% of trips in the city but 30% of severe injuries and deaths; cyclists are 3% of trips and 10% of severe injuries and deaths.³

St. Paul has its own version of this problem on Rice Street. Ramsey County and the city are rebuilding the corridor between Pennsylvania Avenue and Wheelock Parkway in phases through 2027, cutting it from four lanes to three with a center turn lane and a shared-use path, after finding one of the highest crash rates of any comparable road in Minnesota on a street that carries 14,000 to 15,000 vehicles a day.¹⁶ A stretch of I-694 in the north metro has produced its own fatal crashes, including one at Snelling Avenue in Arden Hills that shut down the westbound lanes for hours.¹⁷

After a crash on one of these corridors

If you're hurt in a crash on one of these roads, the location matters for your claim, not just your injuries. State highways like 94, 35W, 494, 694, and 252 are MnDOT's jurisdiction, county roads like Rice Street belong to the county, and city streets belong to Minneapolis or St. Paul, each with its own maintenance records, design standards, and crash history. A Minnesota personal injury attorney can help you figure out which agency's records are relevant and how a road's known crash pattern might factor into your case.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Minnesota Department of Public Safety, "New report: Traffic safety programs saving lives, driving down traffic deaths," https://dps.mn.gov/news/ots/new-report-traffic-safety-programs-saving-lives-driving-down-traffic-deaths

2. MPR News, "Minnesota traffic deaths decreased in 2025, state safety officials say," https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/10/minnesota-traffic-deaths-decreased-in-2025

3. City of Minneapolis, Vision Zero Safety Data, https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/visionzero/vz-data-stats/

4. City of Saint Paul, Vision Zero Safe Streets for All crash analysis, https://www.stpaul.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/Appendix%20A_CrashAnalysis.pdf

5. CBS News Minnesota, "Motorist traveling at 'high rate of speed' in St. Paul crashes into SUV, killing driver," https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/st-paul-dale-street-fatal-crash/

6. FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul, "State Patrol investigating fatal crash on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis," https://www.fox9.com/news/fatal-crash-interstate-94-minneapolis-july-1-2026

7. University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, "Untangling the safety impacts of Minnesota's I-35W improvements," https://www.cts.umn.edu/publications/catalyst/2017/september/safety

8. Minnesota Department of Transportation, Highway 252/I-94 Study, Project Need, https://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/hwy252study/projectneed.html

9. Star Tribune, "MnDOT has five options for interchanges if crash-prone Hwy. 252 is rebuilt into freeway," https://www.startribune.com/mndot-has-five-options-if-crash-prone-hwy-252-is-rebuilt-into-freeway-one-will-get-the-nod/601367155

10. KARE 11, "MnDOT shares construction update on 494 and 35W," https://www.kare11.com/article/news/what-to-do-about-minnesotas-busiest-interchange/89-92a675e1-7e6f-4d2b-adf6-1f7c5fcf7ee1

11. Minnesota Department of Transportation, I-494 Edina to Richfield Construction Project, https://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/i494edina-richfield/index.html

12. CBS News Minnesota, "Early morning crash on I-494 in Bloomington was fatal, state patrol says," https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/494-and-100-bloomington-fatal-crash/

13. Hometownsource.com (Laker Pioneer), "Crashes leave 3 dead in 5 days on Hwy. 12: MnDOT safety audit finds 12 more dangerous than similar roads in state," https://www.hometownsource.com/laker_pioneer/news/publicsafety/crashes-leave-3-dead-in-5-days-on-hwy-12---mndot-safety-audit/article_551579e7-919e-5f8b-881a-007fe324e359.html

14. Wayzata.com, "MnDOT Advances Highway 12 Improvements Between Wayzata and Minnetonka," https://wayzata.com/2026/01/15/mndot-advances-highway-12-improvements-between-wayzata-and-wayzata/

15. City of Minneapolis, Vision Zero Projects, https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/visionzero/actions-taken/vz-projects/

16. Star Tribune, "Ramsey County to reconfigure Rice Street in St. Paul," https://www.startribune.com/ramsey-county-to-reconfigure-rice-street-in-st-paul/600125127/

17. Patch, "Fatal crash shuts down I-694 west, north Twin Cities metro," https://new.patch.com/minnesota/saintpaul/fatal-crash-shuts-down-i-694-west-north-twin-cities-metro