Has your commute been a lot longer over the past two weeks? Mine, too.
I guess this is what our highway system can handle when few drivers are on vacation. For those of us in the southwest metro, the Crosstown Freeway and Interstate 494 are already beyond capacity during the four hours formerly known as rush hour.
It’s only going to get worse. The anticipated population growth is going to add many more cares in the next 20 years. And if the Republican-controlled Legislature has its way, there will be no fix for the congestion. There will only be more transit users getting on the road.
The Republicans have a transportation plan. They looked around the country and determined that places that the Twin Cities competes with for talent, like Seattle, Portland and Denver are doing things all wrong. Rather, they have chosen the Detroit model. All cars and no transit is their path to greatness.
But what about all the money that the Republicans want for roads and bridges? How hard can it be to just add another lane to the Crosstown or I-35W?
If history is a guide, it’s really hard. The $300 million Crosstown Commons rebuild was completed in 2010. It added six miles of new lans, and it took 18 years from initial concept to completion. Since there is no current plan to widen the Crosstown, start your timer now. It’s going to take forever to fight the legal battles to get the land needed to modify the roads and widen all the bridges. Should a plan ever clear those hurdles, can anyone imagine the traffic nightmare that would be created by the construction? The economy isn’t in a massive recession like it was during the Crosstown Commons project, when 10 percent of the population stopped commuting.
It’s not ideal, but the only project on the horizon that can help reduce congestion is the Southwest Light Rail. Yes, it’s expensive and, no, it won’t take every car off the road. But it will take enough cars off the rod to get the highways moving again. It won’t take forever to complete, its construction can be done without disrupting normal commutes, it further integrates a reliable rail transit system, and it makes it possible for those without cars to commute to and from the southwest metro.
It’s increasily likely auto-related and general taxes will be used to pay for our transportation system. Given all the taxes paid by the communities along the Southwest Light Rail Transit — Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Hopkins, Edina, St. Louis Park and Minneapolis, I’m baffled as to why we pay more than our fair share to keep this state moving, and yet we’re stuck in the worst traffic.
The time to fix this is now. Fund Southwest Light Rail and let’s start moving again.
Gary Simons, Eden Prairie
Eden Prairie News, May 4, 2017