Minneapolis/ St. Paul Traffic (Bloomington, Eagan: 2013, apartment, home)

[Cruz Azul Guy]

It's difficult to keep traffic down with a rapidly expanding metro area. It'll be interesting though to see how the central corridor line and northstar corridor line and the increased housing in Minneapolis/Saint Paul propers will affect traffic, (if at all) in the next 5-10 years.

My personal commute? 4 miles from Eagan to Eagan, a commute which I bike when possible (my 1970's Schwinn 10 speed is currently in the shop for repairs).

[Minnehahapolitan]

The question becomes one of expansion vs. growth. One does not imply the other. The metropolitan area could certainly grow within its current boundaries. However, it will not. This will be worsened by suburban job growth. The type of thing that Target does when it tries to build so much office space in Brooklyn Center that it rivals Downtown Saint Paul. Brooklyn Park does not have the necessary infrastructure or transportation that Saint Paul does, and they certainly won't pay for it. So you will have thousands of workers taking roads meant for a largely residential area. Public transportation, I suspect, will be lacking. Think of the companies that have decentralized from downtown. Cargill, United, 3M, Best Buy, et. cetera. It is one thing to get a half-million workers to downtown, but how do these corporations plan to have alternative means of transport to their suburban complexes. Best Buy could have built a fifty-story office complex downtown that could have benn reached by buses, trains, bikes, feet and cars. Instead, they had Richfield condemn McCarthy's and built a $20 million bridge. People like the Met Council, who should say that you prob. shouldn't build 5 million feet of office space in a cornfield don't. It will come at a peril to our city.

[Ben Around]

Keep it up, Minne, and somebody might just learn something here!

[Minnehahapolitan]

I'm banking on Misters Bell and Pawlenty. But hell, it only takes one man to care and start a wave. I'll give YOU a point for your troubles. Cheerio.

[Isaysos]

Hooray! There are people that think like me and see that we need to put logic into our illogical planning practices. I think that most urban land use planners know whats right, but sadly money talks and for some reason developers and (some) city officials think that everyone wants a huge yard on a cul-de-sac and commute on a bottleneck road to work so planners obey. Thank goodness this trend is slowly changing.

[SlyFrog]

Originally Posted by Minnehahapolitan

I haven't kept up, so i'm going back a page here to respond to SlyFrog, who's unnecessairily sly answer doesn't invalidate facts he obviously does not understand.

Right, so the answer is that too many lanes causes too much traffic. The unnecessarily sly answer is to question such logic, and ask you how many lanes there should be on 494. Obviously if there are three, someone 40 years ago could have insisted on never moving up from two, because it would mystically make the traffic worse. From there, why did we ever move up to two lanes? Traffic is clearly better with fewer lanes.

I do not care much about your urban planners. Once they actually appear to be capable of getting things right, then I'll listen. Until then, I'll just watch their work in awe at the amazing effect all of their past efforts have had in making our cities' traffic flow so smoothly.

Hopefully, the advice will not be the amazingly profound suggestion that people in an overworked transportation grid will all desperately flock to any possibility of getting to work faster, and thus bog down a single new road that opens. Next you will be telling me that 5 people will be able to run faster on a 5 lane track then on a 1 lane track. Of course, if more people want to come and use the track, the clear solution is to refuse to open up more lanes. That'll fix em', it will somehow be magically faster. We might just as well scrap the interstate system; it is clearly what led to traffic gridlock, with its multilane structures and all. Could not have anything to do with the fact that they are not putting up new roads fast enough for the increasing population, it must be that the population just seems to go where roads are and use them up.

But it is clear that this is an topic, much like the, "Is anywhere in the world somewhat dangerous," topics that appear from time to time, where people will obviously align along their clear political axis. Much like you can not suggest that perhaps, there could be a neighborhood or two that are dangerous, because not every person, insect and bunny rabbit in that neighborhood will kill you on sight, only a lot of them will, we can not add roads, because when we do, people seem to use them, and that shows that we should not have added the road. Of course in all such cases, the answers respectively trotted out conveniently fits political biases held by both sides, but are stated as some sort of certain science.

[Isaysos]

Not sure what point you are trying to get across SlyFrog, but I will try to explain the process of road improvement (widening) leading to increased spraw by using an example. Hwy 169 going through Shakopee used to be a normal 4 lane road, but with stop lights and all. A new interstate bypass was constructed to the south of Shakopee in 1995-96. As a result, the population of Shakopee as well as Jordan and Belle Plane went skyward. Not becasue people suddenly thought it would be a nice area to live (which it was before the sprawl ate up most open space) but because this huge highway improvement allowed more people to live further out and commute into the cities proper and 494 corridor. When the new highway first opened, traffic flow was excellent, but now with all of the new people in the area as a result from this highway, the new highway is becoming congested. What do we do now? Construct a by-pass around the by-pass or widen 169 to 8 lanes so the suburbs can extend past Mankato? Sounds illogical and unsustainable to me. There has to be another way to plan for population growth in the metro area.

[Minnehahapolitan]

The point he was trying to make is that he refuses to believe people who actually go to a university to learn how to STUDY TRAFFIC PATTERNS. He, obviously, knows better. 494 strip was built with three lanes. That argument holds water like a sieve. My argument isn't some political agenda. It has been proven, like gravity. I am more than happy to add roads. But when you use those roads, don't come back in ten years complaining about how slow said roads have become. Spending billions of dollars to appease you won't make them go any faster. This leaves you with three options.
--Find another road
--Get used to it
--Move
Those idiot urban planners have got things right, you just refuse to put creedence into them. You are shooting the messenger who told you the truth simply because you don't like it. Some things can't be dummied down to meet your need for simplified logic. I will, however try. Traffic is much less like a race. A race has a set number of people. In reality, it is much more similar to a mob. What will that mob do? How will they do it? When, where and why will they do it? Remind me, SlyFrog, the last time that a mob responded to logic?

[golfgal]

Originally Posted by Isaysos

Not sure what point you are trying to get across SlyFrog, but I will try to explain the process of road improvement (widening) leading to increased spraw by using an example. Hwy 169 going through Shakopee used to be a normal 4 lane road, but with stop lights and all. A new interstate bypass was constructed to the south of Shakopee in 1995-96. As a result, the population of Shakopee as well as Jordan and Belle Plane went skyward. Not becasue people suddenly thought it would be a nice area to live (which it was before the sprawl ate up most open space) but because this huge highway improvement allowed more people to live further out and commute into the cities proper and 494 corridor. When the new highway first opened, traffic flow was excellent, but now with all of the new people in the area as a result from this highway, the new highway is becoming congested. What do we do now? Construct a by-pass around the by-pass or widen 169 to 8 lanes so the suburbs can extend past Mankato? Sounds illogical and unsustainable to me. There has to be another way to plan for population growth in the metro area.

Actually 169 used to be a crappy, potholed, 2 land road through Shakopee.

The one point of the urban development you are totally negating is WHERE do you plan to put all the people that live in the suburbs? You seem to think everyone should live inside 494-694 and that just simply isn't possible with the size of the Twin Cities metro area. I guess I don't see the sprawl the same way as you and I could not live on a 40x60 lot in the cities with no yard to enjoy. While that is ok for some, most people with families want a yard for their kids to play in and they don't want to have to go down to the park if their kids want to play. Having a park close by is nice but it isn't a good option for every day/all day family use.

Many developers have tried plans similar to what you have, look at the Cobblestone development in Apple Valley, they can't give lots away anymore because the houses are too close together. In the 90's the development trend was for everyone to have 2+ acre lots so it wouldn't look so 'urban', well, then people figured out that it isn't much fun keeping up a 2+ acre lot. Your standard suburban developments are the way they are because they are a good mix of both, some average size lots yet plenty of open/pubic spaces.

Maybe some of the solution is to move some companies out to the suburban areas to cut down on the commutes into Minneapolis and St. Paul proper, which, many companies are doing.

[TimtheGuy]

You are right GolfGal, what these guys want is for everyone (ALL 3 MILLION OF US) to live inside the 494-694 loop where we could all live in high rises and use mass transit. They would outlaw auto ownership. Forget a yard...our families would use the parks which would obviously be PACKED with people.

They don't want ANY company moving outside the loop as this causes urban blight. And this would need to be in every city in our nation because cars and traffic are evil...they cause global warming and are going to destroy the entire planet!