--- wmmarks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> I wish that were really true. If it were only
> downtown workers
> commuting, the freeway system now in place would
> more than suffice.
> However, half (or maybe more than half) the traffic
> coming up or down
> 35W is merely passing through to a suburb on the
> other side of the metro
> from where the drivers live.
Certainly true, that's why I used the phrase "rush
hour in and out of Downtown", as opposed to "system
wide" rush hour. Witness in the PM the substantial
backups on SB 65 out of Downtown to SB35W, WB394 out
of Downtown, the 3rd St ramp to NB 94, 6th St to EB94,
all of those are Downtown outflow traffic, mostly
heading to the burbs or at least "non-Downtown"
domiciles. Congestion is both local and a system
wide issue. Plenty of backups on 35E, 694, 494, and
94 well outside Mpls.
>
> In reality, the freeway system was ill-conceived,
> party because it was
> conceived as a cold war answer to fears about the
> USSR. It was designed
> to 'move missiles, military equipment, and troops
> around the country on
> trucks.' The lie was put to that notion in
> Cincinnati circa 1965, when a
> missile moving through the city got stuck under a
> freeway overpass. Man,
> was that a mess and a half.
Yes & no regarding the cold war. While the freeway
system may have been paid & justified for National
Defense, it's still what allowed the US manufacturing,
agriculture & shipping economy to explode. You still
need to get crops to the processer, then to the store.
Same goes with widgits. River barges and RR tracks
only can do so much.
>
> A well-designed or well-corrected freeway system
> would end at the ring
> road of 494-694 where trains and buses would bring
> riders into the city
> core.
All of which would be fine if we still lived in a
"core city" environment like say 60 years ago. We
don't, jobs are no longer tied to specific geographic
marker (like the River) or to a large facility (like a
manufacturing plant). People no longer expect a "job
for life". Jobs move, people move. We don't have
geographic constraints that force us in to limited
living space (like New York, etc). The Metro region
still depends on the core Downtowns as
income/information engines, but that is becoming all
the more fluid - just like the living situation. Our
leverage as city dwellers seems to be dimishing, as
witnessed by Gov Timmy's ease in cutting LGA. The
city's abiltity to hold it's breath and stomp it's
feet to get what it wants from the state maybe more
precarious then we think.
John McClellan
Keewaydin
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