The Sad Truth Behind Twin Cities Traffic Congestion.... (Minneapolis, St. Paul: insurance, homes)

[Glenfield]

Originally Posted by Thedosius

https://www.brookings.edu/about-the-...hor-resources/

"Manuscripts accepted for consideration are subject to the peer review procedures Brookings has maintained over the years."

That relates to manuscripts submitted by authors "not affiliated with Brookings."

[MPLSMINN]

I have spent hours in 16 lanes of traffic in Atlanta pondering this question, "Do more lanes reduce congestion over the long term?"

Yeah no. They don't.

Almost everyone I know that takes this position has never spent any meaningful time in any of the other American cities.

[mr roboto]

We are 17th worst for congestion. And we are 14th largest CSA and 16th largest MSA.

So why is it 'so bad'? Seems about right to me.

[Doctor Z]

I can personally attest that Light Rail, and poor stop light timing has made traffic congestion a lot worse in Minneapolis, city wide. Ever since Minneapolis was declared a "Bike Friendly City" things have gotten horrible for motorists in cars. I have also read other articles in other publications that talk about the removal of traffic lanes for bike lanes and transit-ways. It is the horrible GREEN Lobby that seeks to take away our personal freedoms in the name of Environmentalism.

Another problem was the poor design of the Freeway system in the first place. If you're freeway is six or eight lanes, you keep it six to eight lanes all the way out of the metropolitan area. That means I-94 should stay eight lanes all the way to St. Cloud and all the way to Eau Claire, WI. Merge lanes should be at least 1/2 mile long with a strictly enforced law the requires motorist to be doing the speed limit before ever merging into traffic!

I guarantee this would eliminate most of the traffic congestion in our metro area.

Finally, the root cause of this legislation is the United Nations Agenda 21, which seeks to remove all personal freedoms and turn our Country into Socialist slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

[Min-Chi-Cbus]

Originally Posted by Doctor Z

I can personally attest that Light Rail, and poor stop light timing has made traffic congestion a lot worse in Minneapolis, city wide. Ever since Minneapolis was declared a "Bike Friendly City" things have gotten horrible for motorists in cars. I have also read other articles in other publications that talk about the removal of traffic lanes for bike lanes and transit-ways. It is the horrible GREEN Lobby that seeks to take away our personal freedoms in the name of Environmentalism.

Another problem was the poor design of the Freeway system in the first place. If you're freeway is six or eight lanes, you keep it six to eight lanes all the way out of the metropolitan area. That means I-94 should stay eight lanes all the way to St. Cloud and all the way to Eau Claire, WI. Merge lanes should be at least 1/2 mile long with a strictly enforced law the requires motorist to be doing the speed limit before ever merging into traffic!

I guarantee this would eliminate most of the traffic congestion in our metro area.

Finally, the root cause of this legislation is the United Nations Agenda 21, which seeks to remove all personal freedoms and turn our Country into Socialist slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

I'm sorry, but your correlations are not tied to causation. For example, if ice cream sales skyrocket during summer, and so do homicides, it's not prudent to assume ice cream sales cause murder. In this case, the addition of rail and bike paths MAY cause some slight disruption on some of the city's side streets and primary corridors, but their presence more than likely REDUCES the amount of traffic on the roadways, despite their hinderance to motor vehicles. If a car has to sit at a stop light for a few extra minutes a day because of the existence/addition of bikeways or rail, it's more than offset by the number of motor vehicles removed from the roads due to those additions. By the way, you do not have the "freedom" to drive through multiple wide lanes of roadway.....that's a privilege. You don't have to be a tree-hugger to understand that not everybody can/should drive everywhere they go in a city this size. At some point it just makes more sense to take mass transit or bike/walk.

Most traffic bottlenecks are caused by merging roads, whether it's two freeways merging or on-ramps from city streets. There is almost NOTHING you can do about some of these mergers, unless you want to eliminate the on-ramps or tear down hundreds of homes just to widen the freeways enough to account for half-mile merge lanes. For example, Hwy. 62 through Minneapolis has a lot of on-ramps from city streets as close as 1/4 mile apart. We can eliminate those ramps, or we can accept the fact that the highway is not an Interstate with unlimited space to grow. Hwy 62 can be 3 lanes in both directions to accommodate the heavy traffic volume (something I'd be in favor of, even though I'm a proponent of mass transit), but the merging issue wouldn't disappear, and I GUARANTEE you that there'd still be serious traffic congestion on the hypothetical 6-lane Hwy. 62 anyways. On I-394 there are very long merging lanes so traffic from multiple ramps can convene and merge onto I-394 safely. The result is that I-394 is wide enough in most places to accommodate 4+ multi-purpose lanes of traffic flow in both directions, but instead we get 2.5 lanes (the 0.5 is the Lexus Lanes) in both directions, AND we still see serious congestion where the on-ramps merge with the highway.

Merging just causes congestion, and widening the freeways will only do so much to improve that congestion. If you're a fan of fewer mergers, then you'd love tollways, which have on/off-ramps every 10-20 miles. That's the most efficient way to move traffic through a city, but it seriously limits your options for getting on/off the freeway, AND it's much more costly to drive on.

If somebody gave me the key and budget for the city/metro, I'd spend it on both mass transit AND highways. I'd build out our rail network so it reaches all key areas of the metro, like the Met Council envisions. The extensions of the Green and Blue lines are an absolute MUST, and there are other spokes that are almost as necessary (e.g. the Riverview Corridor between DT StP and the MOA/airport). A metro without a robust rail network is not going to attract/retain top talent and sustainable growth/development. In addition to the railways (or rapid busways), I'd widen several of our highways, because they're frankly underbuilt. Here's a wish list:

Hwy. 169 -- from I-494 to I-94/694 (3 lanes in both directions)
Hwy. 62 -- at least from the Hwy 212/62 split to I-35W, if not all the way to Hwy. 77 (3 lanes in both directions)
I-494 -- from Hwy. 100 to 34th Street (4+ lanes in both directions)
I-94 -- from downtown Mpls to downtown St. Paul (4+ lanes in both directions)
I-394 -- rip the whole thing up and redo from downtown to I-494 (3 multi-purpose lanes in both directions plus Lexus Lane from I-494 to Hwy. 100, and 4+ lanes from Hwy. 100 to downtown)
Lowry Tunnel -- should be 4, but preferred 5 lanes in both directions in the tunnel


I'm sure there's more, but these are several that I'd love to see done in the next 20 years. This list doesn't even include the I-494/I-35W interchange in Bloomington, that needs to be completely redesigned as a flyover interchange (turbine model looked like a good option).

By the way, I'd gladly pay more taxes to support rail and mass transit, just as long as those who demand to be able to drive everywhere they need to go pay for their roads proportionally. Roads are still very important and will be for quite some time, but the unsustainable way we sprawl and support road infrastructure is wasteful and costly -- much more costly than building out a mass transit network on a per-ridership basis.

[Thedosius]

Originally Posted by Doctor Z

I can personally attest that Light Rail, and poor stop light timing has made traffic congestion a lot worse in Minneapolis, city wide.

Obviously, you cannot. Personal observation and anecdote can amount to "I notice a great deal more congestion wherever I go" but obviously cannot perceive a causal link between that and light rail. Unless your personal observation extends into a counterfactual world where the cities developed without implementing rail and you could compare the two worlds side-by-side would personal observation or anecdote mean anything. Your post really gives us no new information about the issue at hand but does tell us you've formed your position on very bogus grounds.

Finally, the root cause of this legislation is the United Nations Agenda 21, which seeks to remove all personal freedoms and turn our Country into Socialist slaves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21

And jumped the shark into cuckoo-land.

[Thedosius]

The CAE report would have you believe that only transit kooks and nameless bureaucrats support transit development. Unfortunately for them, the presidents of the (conservative-leaning) Minneapolis and St. Paul Chambers of Commerce, and indeed the business community in general, have consistently supported transit for more than a decade now:


Counterpoint: In the Twin Cities area, transit is needed, wanted


"Recent arguments by the Center of the American Experiment (“The sad truth behind our congested mess,” June 9) have been disproved any number of times. But rather than go point by point, let’s look at the CAE’s own examples. The CAE wants us to be more like Kansas City, where you can drive around at high speed. There’s a reason Kansas City highways are empty: It’s not as attractive as we are, so its economy is weaker. “Kansas City: Economic competitiveness has slumped,” reported the Kansas City Star in 2014, just before Kansas City decided its highways-only approach was wrong and began investing to give people the option to move around by transit, bikes and walking. Same story in the CAE’s other example, Indianapolis, which just this winter passed a new sales tax to build new transit lines. The strategies that the CAE admires are being abandoned by the places the CAE itself points to."

[Glenfield]

A solution to our traffic congestion problem is just around the corner and it's not mass transit or bike lanes. Driverless cars could be the solution to reducing traffic congestion - BT

[Cruz Azul Guy]

The number of people who telecommute is growing as well. I saw somewhere that up to 37% of US employees currently have some kind of telecommuting capability. This isn't the only answer but the more people who work from home the less cars that will be on the road. I think local governments should consider incentivizing employers to expand telecommuting of their workforce to recognize the benefit it has in alleviating traffic.

Also as I've mentioned in the past. Minnesota needs to consider legalizing motorcycle lane splitting which is another easy way to improve traffic flow. This is done in California and studies have shown it not only has a substantial effect in lowering traffic congestion but also improves safety for motorcyclists.

[Glenfield]

Originally Posted by Cruz Azul Guy

The number of people who telecommute is growing as well. I saw somewhere that up to 37% of US employees currently have some kind of telecommuting capability. This isn't the only answer but the more people who work from home the less cars that will be on the road. I think local governments should consider incentivizing employers to expand telecommuting of their workforce to recognize the benefit it has in alleviating traffic.

Also as I've mentioned in the past. Minnesota needs to consider legalizing motorcycle lane splitting which is another easy way to improve traffic flow. This is done in California and studies have shown it not only has a substantial effect in lowering traffic congestion but also improves safety for motorcyclists.

Both good points. And a lot less costly than another light rail line. These, along with autonomous cars, are 21st century solutions to the problem.