Twin Cities - Transportation for the next 20 years

An article in the Star Tribune makes some really good points about the coming years for commuting in the Twin Cities metro area.

http://www.startribune.com/local/118341244.html

The expectation is that in the next 19 years, the population in the Twin Cities will grow by 700,000. While that seems a little high to me, if it's anywhere near true, the current traffic congestion will turn into more gridlock.

Additionally, in this time I expect gas prices to increase well over $5/gallon. I don't necessarily think that there will be gas shortages, though I don't doubt there will be some.

When the interstate highway system was built, people were probably curious whether it was necessary. The government had to obtain land and finance this massive project. I imagine people were opposed to it, opposed to the costs, skeptical whether these massive roads would be used. Others probably welcomed it as necessary to enabling commerce and moving people around. Today, we can't imagine living without it.

In the Twin Cities the light rail was recently built between downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America. I initially opposed it because I thought such mass transit should be focused on the most congested highways such as 394. Plenty of people argued against it. Other people welcomed it. While the light rail is primarily used for pub crawls and getting to Twins and Vikings games, I can't see its ridership decreasing, especially with increasing gas prices. Another rail project, the Northstar line was recently opened. It ended up costing more than it had to because of typical Republican/Democrat fighting and refusal to finance. Again, I don't see ridership decreasing with the increasing cost of gas, and the deteriorating roads and bridges. Last, the Central Corridor is being built down University. When this project was envisioned years ago, I argued it should use the Soo Line that goes from around the Lake/Hiawatha intersection to the riverfront in St. Paul. That would have been too obvious, but thankfully the project panned out.

The common theme is that the MN state government moves very slowly on transportation projects. Now I don't want to suggest that outside of the Twin Cities doesn't need improvements. My viewpoint extends to those communities as well.  But, it seems like the argument is that we can't raise taxes to finance these projects because it will kill jobs.

So we have a couple options. We can let our bridges fall down and our roads get busier. Commute times can increase while gas prices go up, and road rage can get worse. Or we can formulate a long term strategy for transportation and accept that paying the taxes now will save us money, and time in the long term.

I have no idea what the strategy should be, but it seems like it should focus on the congested corridors, such as highways 35, 94 and 394. Whether this strategy is more light rail, or bus innovations such as the one on 35W in Minneapolis, I'll leave that to the transportation experts.

So every time the price of gas jumps 20 cents in a day, I wonder why 10 or 15 cents more per gallon to finance transportation projects is such a damning concept to business.

I really like living the in Twin Cities, and think it would do itself a great service by striving for advances in transportation. As the article that I linked above says:

Delays cost average commuters in the Twin Cites $970 a year in lost time and wasted fuel, $244 more than the average for similar large cities, said the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, a transportation research agency.

The reality of a strong economy with dwindling resources is that we are doing a disservice to ourselves by having a large chunk of our personal budgets be dedicated to transportation. If we continue to lag in transportation, the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota will be less attractive to businesses. If we focus on automobiles as the primary form of transportation, we will pay more for gas, and have the associated environmental problems.

In many of my posts I rant about the federal deficit. That is a real issue facing us today. Transportation in the Twin Cities is something we have time to fix. A long term vision and dedicated policy and financing can turn this around. Hopefully our state and local government can realize this, and come to an agreement to improve our metro area.