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Transportation After COVID-19

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Minnesota transportation agencies need to reinvent themselves if they are to survive after the pandemic, according to a new report published yesterday by the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s free-market think tank. Off the Rails: Minnesota Transportation After COVID-19 says that the world has changed so much that any transportation plans written before 2020 will no longer make sense (if they ever did).

Click image to download a 3.1-MB PDF of this 48-page report.

In case you can’t read the fine print on the image above, the report was written by yours truly and so all of its themes — increased numbers of telecommuters, the follies of light rail, the importance of funding transport out of user fees, not to mention more than a dozen brightly colored charts — will be familiar to Antiplanner readers. But in some respects, the Twin Cities’ post-pandemic experiences have been more extreme than most. Continue reading →

Time to Pull the Plug on SW LRT

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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As noted here before, a light-rail line from Minneapolis to the wealthy suburb of Eden Prairie was originally supposed to cost $1.2 billion for 15.8 route miles, or less than $80 million a mile. Now the projected cost has risen to more than $2 billion for just 14.5 route miles, or around $140 million a mile.

On top of this, the Metropolitan Council, which is planning the rail line, is in a dispute with a local railroad whose right-of-way Metro wants to use for the light rail. The railroad is concerned that light-rail construction will delay its trains. This dispute is being dealt with in a time-honored American fashion in which the railroad is suing the Met Council.

The Met Council is counting on getting $929 million from the Federal Transit Administration, but the FTA hasn’t signed a full-funding grant agreement and the Trump administration is resisting funding any projects without such agreements (though, as noted yesterday, it has made some exceptions). Local governments, however, would be responsible for covering all cost overruns including the recent $200 million increase in projected costs. Continue reading →

Stuck in Traffic? Blame the Planners

By | | Transportation
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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. Continue reading →

Challenging the Poverty Plan

By | | Regional planning, Urban areas
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In late February, the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council issued its draft Thrive 2040 plan for public review. No one will be surprised to learn it is a standard smart-growth plan with lots of emphasis on transit, high-density housing in transit corridors, and reducing driving. Of course, this isn’t always obvious, as the plan uses euphemisms such as “affordable housing” when it means high-density housing and “orderly and efficient land use” when it means restricting development in rural areas.


Click image to download the 3.7-MB plan.

The Met Council calls it the Thrive plan because it wants to give the impression that, without government planning, the region will wither away and die. Of course, the Antiplanner believes the opposite is true, and that it would be more accurate to call it a poverty plan, since it will likely make housing unaffordable and require higher taxes, both of which will slow economic growth.
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The Decline of Twin Cities Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The Minneapolis Star-Tribune frets that “getting around the Twin Cities is nearly as costly as housing.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer expenditure survey, the average resident of the Twin Cities spent $10,359 on shelter in 2012 and $9,897 on transportation.

“In 2007, the annual cost of housing was $3,173 more than annual transportation costs,” says reporter David Peterson. “By 2012, the gap had shrunk to $462.” Without any grounds for doing so, Peterson speculates that “rising transport costs may also be due in part to our sprawling development patterns, leading to lots of long and congested single-motorist drives.”

Let’s test that theory. The BLS estimated that the average consumer spent $8,806 on transportation in 2011. Thus, the 2012 costs were 12 percent higher than in 2011. Does Peterson really think that the Twin Cities sprawled enough in one year to drive up transport costs by 12 percent?

Continue reading →