Twin Cities scaling back on new road capacity

New priorities

Jon Boyd, Oct 01, 10.

The Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), the Metropolitan Council, is easing off roadway expansion plans that would keep pace with suburban development in the region, according to an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The Metropolitan Council is also embarking on a managed lanes strategy for adding capacity inside the Twin Cities’ loop freeway, says the article.

The fiscal problem facing the Twin Cities region might seem familiar to those who follow news from the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC). The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:

MnDOT and Met Council officials say the money just isn’t there for major freeway expansions - not when existing roads need maintenance and not since the I- 35W bridge collapse attracted intense attention to decrepit river crossings.

The $40 billion in identified transportation needs towers over the $900 million to pay for them, they argue.

“Clearly, the level of funding that we have today could never cover these projects,” said Amy Vennewitz, deputy director of Met Council’s transportation planning staff.

Some suburban residents and elected officials are not happy with the plan, according to the article:

Commuters and suburban elected officials are fuming over the decision by planners to back away from the age-old compact in which the state tries to keep pace with suburban expansion.

Planners are instead embracing the idea of blanketing the inner metro area with a network of so-called “managed lanes” - what critics have long dubbed “Lexus lanes” - for buses and drivers who are willing to pay extra to skirt stalled traffic. Officials outside the Interstate 694-494 beltway say they see their hopes for new roads vanishing as a result, despite forecasts for major population growth.

The plan has drawn a blistering joint response from commissioners of six mostly suburban counties ringing the metro area. “Twin Cities metropolitan area mobility needs are funded at about 2 percent of the identified need,” they charge.

Two transportation advocates in the region are questioning the need for the previous slate of added capacity road projects, according to the article:

The other side of that coin, said Jim Erkel, who follows these issues for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, is that suburban growth has slowed dramatically, as has growth in the number of miles driven.

“There’s this sacred incantation about ‘the million more people by 2030,’” he said, referring to past population projections for the metro area. “But the way things are going now, it could be a lot less - by hundreds of thousands of people.” Met Council officials say that Census 2010 results will be key to a new set of forecasts.

[snip]

Dave van Hattum, policy and advocacy program manager for Transit for Livable Communities, sees the new plan as a positive step toward more choices, buses and trains included, as long as transit systems get funding. “We know that in our region we have a larger-than-average highway system and a smaller-than-average transit system,” he said. “It’s just embracing a new approach.”

The Metropolitan Council is served by sixteen members representing districts within the region and one at large member who serves as chair, all of whom are appointed by the Governor of Minnesota.

(Photo credit: Yatesh)