Congestion is a fact of life in large urban areas, no matter how much money
you throw at freeways and/or mass transit.
Mark Anderson is right to point out some problems with the "you can't build
your way out of congestion" mantra.
You can, in fact, build your way out of congestion, for a few years at a
time at least. But at what cost? For what purpose? Congestion or lack
thereof says nothing about where people are going, how far, and why. And
it says very little about the overall transportation system performance;
how good the connectivity is between the places we (as a whole, not from an
individual perspective) need to go to carry out our daily lives.
Should public policy ensure a congestion free daily commute from Hudson to
Golden Valley, or a trip from Wayzata to Rosedale mall when Ridgedale would
have sufficed?
Should we in Minneapolis have to put up with the increased traffic, and
maybe an even wider swath cut out of the heart of our city?
I grew up in Houston. Here in the Twin Cities we have cloverleaf
interchanges. In Houston they have Spaghetti Bowls. As uber-urbanist
James Howard Kunstler points out, you can fit an entire Italian hill town
in the land taken up by a Houston Spaghetti Bowl. It's ridiculous. And
the driving never ends. Let's not have that here.
Also, we shouldn't demonize MnDot and "the politicos". While there is
undoubtedly a lot of tail wagging the dog, most employees are working in
the only way they know how, in and attempt to serve a public need. Most
politicians do what they can to please the diverse and often competing
interests of constituents, and still manage to get elected.
Mike Jensvold,
East Isles
At 05:16 PM 5/30/2005, Anderson & Turpin wrote:
Jane Strauss wrote:
I keep wonderign how long it will take for politicos and others to figure
out that you can't build your way out of congestion. The more traffic lanes
there are, and the less conveneint, reasonably priced, transit, the more
folks will drive.
Mark Anderson:
I have three responses to this:
1) The fact that mass transit advocates have repeated ad nauseum that you
can't build your way out of congestion doesn't make it so.
(snip)
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