Stuck in Traffic? Blame the Planners

In 1982, the Twin Cities had the 35th-worst congestion in the nation. By 2016, it had grown to be the 17th-worst and amount of time the average commuter spent in traffic had quadrupled. If you are stuck in traffic in the Twin Cities, says this new report, don’t blame population growth; blame the Metropolitan Council, the region’s metropolitan planning organization.

Click image to download a 1.7-MB PDF of this report.

The Metropolitan Council’s official attitude is, “We can’t build our way out of congestion, so we will provide alternatives to congestion” in the form of light rail, bike paths, and maybe a few high-occupancy/toll lanes. The council’s 2040 plan has $6.9 billion programmed for transit improvements, $700 million for bike paths, and $700 million for road improvements. That means 8 percent of the funds goes for the 90 percent of the people who drive to work while 83 percent goes for the 6 percent who take transit.

Beyond providing alternatives, many of the council’s policies actually make congestion worse. These include traffic calming, giving transit priority at traffic signals, giving buses priority at metered freeway ramps, increasing urban densities, and complete streets programs that take lanes on busy streets from cars and giving them to bicycles when safer bike routes would have been available on parallel streets.

The council’s policies are like a homeowner who says, “I can’t afford to restore my house to its original condition, so not only am I not going to maintain it, I’m going to encourage termites to move in to make the house rot away faster.”

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As I’ve noted elsewhere, road pricing actually increases the capacity of roads to move traffic. We treat our highways like soviet grocery stores, where people stood in line to get what was available and were rarely able to get what they wanted. We should treat them like American supermarkets, where people pay for what they use and don’t pay for what other people use.

The Center of the American Experiment, which published the above report, is starting a campaign to make Twin Cities residents aware that congestion isn’t accidental, but planned. This campaign includes the above billboard, bumper stickers, and similar publicity efforts aimed at encouraging people to visit MNCongestion.com, where the above report and other documents will be made available.

The Metropolitan Council is unusual among metropolitan planning organizations in that it does not consist of representatives from local governments in the region but is appointed by the governor. The current governor, Mark Dayton, supports light rail and the council’s policies, the Center’s billboards and bumper stickers take a swipe at him too. Perhaps this campaign combined with the state’s recent legislation will persuade the council to change course.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

3 Responses to Stuck in Traffic? Blame the Planners

  1. NoDakNative says:

    As someone who has had the misfortune of having to drive through “The cities” as us ND locals refer to it, I would be thrilled to offer a thought for others and the Antiplanner to give feedback on.

    Look at a map of Minnesota, you will note that damm near every road around the cities funnels towards it. Traffic that has no reason to be in the cities MUST go through the cities on I-694 and I-494 because there are no viable alternative routes except for MN-95 that let’s you scoot east/west north of the cities to a degree.

    There needs to be a larger “ring” that let’s I-94 traffic efficiency get to I-35 south of the cities and to link I-94 on each side.

  2. prk166 says:

    Take every adjective applied to Trump – petulant, whiny, tyrannical, impulsive, et al. – and Governor Mark Eeyore Dayton has earned them. Just couple years ago he had a painfully public spat with his own party leaders who had a lot of negative things to say about their governor. His most recent move of line item vetoing funding for the legislature takes the cake when it comes to puerile impulsive acts of spite.

    I can’t figure out what this all means. I’m not sure if anyone knows. It’s correct to say the legislature passed that budget. I’m just not sure how things will play out in this dance to re-fund the legislature. Maybe some of that funding will come back.

    if it doesn’t, does this mean Metro Transit’s Bottineau line and Southwest Light Rail Lines are dead?

  3. prk166 says:

    NoDakNative, for all the talk about planning by the met council they’ve never put together a plan for a proper bypass of the twin cities as it’s grown. It doesn’t have to be a freeway, it can be a highway, and it’ll come out top.

    When I lived south of the Cities and went to my grandmothers north of Grand Forks, I’d take US14 across to New Ulm and then cut up over to US 71 up to Sauk Centre. It took an extra 30 -40 minutes of driving but I was guaranteed to miss out on traffic in the Cities. If I hit the bloomington strip during an accident or misjudged 35W traffic and go stuck in MPLStown, I could easily eat up that time twice over. It was a little more time for sure but it was worth the piece of mind. An extra 20 minutes of open highway was much more peaceful than an extra 20 minutes of a congested freeway peppered with a few too many agressive a-hole drivers.

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