Tag Archives: planning

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 4)

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Yet another view on the proposed Stillwater bridge to Wisconsin.  This time from Micky Cook, a Stillwater city council member in the Pioneer Press.

There are roughly 18,000 commuters who use the Stillwater lift bridge during rush hours on weekdays. The cost of the new bridge is $668 million. Rebuilding the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis cost less than half that amount, $261 million. How can we justify such an outrageous expense in this economy to accommodate a Wisconsin commuter corridor? According to MnDOT, 75 percent of weekday trips are commuters coming from Wisconsin. There already is a major freeway bridge roughly five miles south of the proposed site on Interstate 94 that connects to a network of highways in Wisconsin.

We all know the litany of economic ills we face. Gas prices are approaching an all-time high, a record number of homes are in foreclosure, people have lost their jobs and there is no more local government aid to help municipalities maintain services. The price tag on this project warrants serious discussion. If we do have that kind of money, shouldn’t we use it to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of existing bridges and roads?

Isn’t this really just another development story? The current contingent pushing hard for a new bridge argues it is for the greatest possible good. We need to ask for whom and at what cost?

Ms. Cook also proposes some alternative solutions to deal with traffic in the area caused by commuters.

What about metering traffic lights or negotiating with the Coast Guard for a change in the lift bridge schedule to reduce the number of times the bridge is lifted during peak times? We could post the lift schedule and ask MnDOT to set up a traffic notice at the I-694 and I-494 interchange off of Highway 36, alerting drivers of bridge delays and redirecting them to alternate routes. We could lobby to make the lift bridge one-way heading west in the morning and eastbound for the afternoon commute. Big employers in the area could provide shuttle services and offer incentives for Wisconsin employees to use it from a Park & Ride on the other side of the river. Stillwater could use reserve officers to direct traffic during critical commute times and on busy summer weekends.

I’m sure there are other traffic control measures that could be implemented. Not all solutions have to cost outrageous sums of money. But it’s not as exciting as building a big new shiny bridge. And it goes without saying, if the lift bridge poses a real safety risk, it should be shut down immediately.

A very cheap traffic control measure not mentioned would be closing the lift bridge to car traffic.  I don’t believe this would have much ill effect on Stillwater, and would quickly solve traffic problems caused by commuters (I think they’d still have a lot of traffic, which is a good thing for downtown).

P.S. I really don’t intend for this blog to be all Stillwater bridge, all the time, I promise.  Things have just been a little busy lately.

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 3)

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Stillwater Bridge "Low-Slow" Alternative Drawing

Writing for Minnpost, Steve Berg points out that most politicians seem to view the Stillwater bridge as a freeway-style-bridge versus no freeway-style-bridge proposition, even though there may be another alternative.

What might this new bridge look like?

As I wrote here on March 4, a new bridge should relieve Stillwater’s summertime traffic problems without inducing an excessive amount of sprawl development on the Wisconsin side of the river. Obviously, its design should not intrude on the historic and natural quality of the valley.

That means a so-called “low, slow” solution (PDF) — a bridge that wouldn’t span the river from bluff top to bluff top but drop down to a level more in scale with the existing Lift Bridge. Speeds (and noise) should be kept to a minimum. Engineers might consider a three-lane design that would allow east-west flexibility depending on traffic flow. The bridge should be dynamically tolled as a way to fairly shift costs to users and to help manage traffic buildup in the area.

The park service, in rejecting the freeway-style bridge, seemed almost to invite such a design while rejecting outright the freeway-style bridge that MnDOT proposed.

Note that Berg calls for “dynamic tolling” to shift the cost to users, manage traffic and assumedly reduce sprawl (not subsidize low-density development in Wisconsin).  Other expert sources say a 4-lane bridge would not have enough demand to pay the tolls required to fund it, so I assume demand from a slower, narrower span would not generate enough in tolls to pay the cost.  Perhaps this is why MNDOT has floated the idea of a $3 toll, which would only cover half of the construction cost (but would cover maintenance) of the bigger bridge.

On the proposed Stillwater bridge (part 2)

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Alex, author of Getting Around Minneapolis, has posted an excellent letter he wrote to his representatives and Governor Dayton about the proposed Stillwater bridge.

Dear Senators Franken and Klobuchar and Governor Dayton,

I’m writing to urge you not to support a new bridge across the St. Croix River near Stillwater.  A new bridge would hugely encourage sprawl, which damages the environment, requires costly infrastructure such as sewers and roads, and fosters unhealthy automobile-dependent lifestyles.  Furthermore, a new bridge is not necessary, since the I-94 bridge just 5 miles south of Stillwater has a great deal of excess capacity.

Continue reading →

On the proposed Stillwater bridge

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David Levinson (The Transportationist) on the proposed Stillwater bridge to Wisconsin:

I think building a four lane bridge to replace a two lane bridge does not fully count as “preservation”, but rather as “expansion”. Given the state of the network, and the need to give priority to preservation, a four lane bridge violates that principal. As to whether a four lane bridge passes a B/C test, or better yet, a market test of whether a private firm would build it, the answer is clearly no. This four-lane bridge would not have enough demand to pay the tolls required to fund it. That should tell you something about its true necessity. The Franken article cited above suggested Wisconsin wasn’t interested in funding it. Since the majority of benefits for the bridge accrue to Wisconsin land owners, it makes no sense for Minnesota to lead on this.

Indeed.

TTI’s Urban Mobility Report Is Still Only About Mobility

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Traffic

Evaluating land use and transportation policies in terms of accessibility rather than mobility is the goal of many planners and advocates, whether they know the terminology or not.  This new focus requires recognizing the interconnectedness of land use and transportation decisions.

Unfortunately, one of the most influential voices in transportation research and policy has not yet made these changes.  From Greater Greater Washington (via Market Urbanism):

The Texas Transportation Institute today released the final version of their report on congestion, which ranks the DC area tied for first with Chicago in hours wasted in traffic. Unfortunately, the report’s methodology completely misleads as to the seriousness of traffic, and TTI is pushing the wrong policy solutions.

The TTI report narrowly looks at only one factor: how fast traffic moves. Consider two hypothetical cities. In Denseopolis, people live within 2 miles of work on average, but the roads are fairly clogged and drivers can only go about 20 miles per hour. However, it only takes an average of 6 minutes to get to work, which isn’t bad.

On the other hand, in Sprawlville, people live about 30 miles from work on average, but there are lots and lots of fast-moving freeways, so people can drive 60 mph. That means it takes 30 minutes to get to work.

Which city is more congested? By TTI’s methods, it’s Denseopolis. But it’s the people of Sprawlville who spend more time commuting, and thus have less time to be with their families and for recreation.

Sadly, despite CEOs for Cities pointing out these methodological problems last year, TTI went ahead and finalized its report without fixing them (PDFs). TTI ranks Portland as worse than Nashville, with a Travel Time Index (TTI) of 1.23 1.15 for Nashville and 1.151.23 for Portland. However, because of greater sprawl, Nashville commuters spend an average of 268 hours per year commuting, while the average Portland commuter spends 193 hours per year.

What does this mean for public policy and the Washington region? TTI’s data is often used to justify spending money on new freeway capacity, since congestion sounds bad. TTI even promotes this approach. Tim Lomax, a co-author of the report, told the Post’s Ashley Halsey III, “You can do little things like stagger work hours, fix traffic-light timing and clear wrecks faster, but in the end, there’s a need for more capacity.”

In some sense, we shouldn’t be surprised, since the report is titled the Urban Mobility Report.  However, the goal of commentators and the CEOs For Cities report is to call attention to the fact that mobility (or level of congestion) alone is not an adequate means of measuring the performance of our land use and transportation systems.

An Elected Met Council? A Met Council Of Electeds?

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The new chair of the Metropolitan Council was sworn in last week, and her first week on the job was accompanied by a flurry of suggestions about how to improve the Met Council and it’s policies.  Commentary by Dave Van Hattum and Jim Erkel is particularly persuasive to me, calling for focusing more growth along transit corridors and maintaining a focus on building and enhancing transitways.

Many critiques of the Council include some variation on the idea that the current composition, only individuals appointed by the Governor, is not adequate.  Many think the Council would be more transparent or responsive if it’s members were elected.  This seems to be a perennial issue, and was argued about even during the formation of the Council in 1967.  A Minneapolis proposal suggests the a majority of the Council members should be local elected officials, like mayors, council members, and county commissioners. Continue reading →

In Search Of Livability And Many Types of Lettuce

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There has been quite a discussion going on recently about “Livability”, the term the US DOT is using to guide many of its initiatives and collaborations with other federal agencies.  I got into that discussion over at The Transportationist, in response to a post about an article by Alan Pisarski who roundly criticizes livability and basically deems it undemocratic and not sufficiently market-driven.  A little sample:

The problem here is a total disconnect between what people in a diverse democracy want, and what the central bureaucracy, and their academic allies, wish to impose. The livability agenda may be popular in the press and among pundits, but for most communities and people it’s neither popular nor remotely democratic.

While I don’t disagree with all his points, and I don’t disagree with Levinson’s point that livability needs to be better defined (with some quantitative performance measures, which I believe are in the works), I still think the article is full of holes.  I was all in a lather and ready to write a long rebuttal, but alas, I wasn’t quick enough.  Robert Steuteville has gone and made most of my points over at New Urban Network.

Steuteville’s says that Pisarski’s over-simplification of livability is ridiculous (is there any shortage of lettuce in compact communities?)  He also rightly points out that there is definitely a market for “livable” development (it may be the strongest real estate market right now) and highway-backers should be careful espousing anti-federal, anti-centralized planning mantras.

It’s ironic that Pisarski raises the specter of the 1950s in this piece. At the time, the federal government was imposing destruction on urban neighborhoods, often tearing them down wholesale. Big government was pouring billions into highways while neglecting or actively eliminating rail transit. (According to a report in the Free Congress Foundation, this lopsided subsidy had been going on for decades prior to the 1950s and amounted to billions annually.) Federal lending guidelines meant that financing went mostly to Leave-it-to-Beaver-type housing in the suburbs. Meanwhile, zoning and development codes and parking and street standards were adopted that made it illegal to build a downtown, a main street, or a walkable urban neighborhood virtually anywhere in America.

Go read both articles.  The livability discussion (and it’s definition) are important, and its clear that this administration intends to use these principles to shape transportation (and housing, and environmental) policy.

The Rest Of The Story On Robot Cars

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The City Fix scooped me on using the Johnny Cab image, but tribute must be paid to such a forward-looking film.

The internet seemed to resound with almost unmitigated delight when Google announced their progress on driverless cars last week.  German scientists see a “golden future” for their driverless vehicles.  There are, however, some key implications that are being missed about what it means if our cars are driven by robots.  I’ll preface the rest of this post by saying that I think the benefits of robot cars probably outweigh the drawbacks.  However, robot cars are not a panacea, and we shouldn’t overlook unintended consequences.

David Levinson at The Transportationist does an excellent job summarizing why robot cars matter, but in my opinion doesn’t go far enough explaining the potential downsides.  Here are some of my thoughts on why we should adopt robot cars carefully, even with their myriad advantages.   Continue reading →

Using LEED ND for municipal planning and zoning

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This video from Criterion Planners shows a step-by-step process to use LEED ND to assess “smart” locations in a city. This process could be used during a plan update, or to make changes to the zoning code. Knowing the process, and which parcels are eligible, can also help the city increase the number of eligible areas using regulatory tools.

This process is very similar to the method I used to assess LEED ND eligibility and “location efficiency” for the Twin Cities metro region in previous posts.

Minneapolis Bike Master Plan: “Tier 1″ Projects

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View Minneapolis Bike Master Plan in a larger map

The new Minneapolis Bike Master Plan has a long list of projects necessary to build out the system.  82, if I count correctly.  However, only 6 of these are considered “Tier 1″ in the plan, which I think means that they are high priority and meet criteria necessary to qualify for funding sources. These six are shown in the map above.  The Upper River Trails count as one project.

According to Don Pflaum, the project manager for the plan, much of the funding for these improvements will come from outside sources, such as SAFETEA-LU grants.  So each project must be evaluated based on a number of criteria, and must meet these criteria before being eligible for consideration by the City.  The criteria include the ability of the project to increase mode share, improve safety, and be cost effective, among others. The end of Chapter 7 contains a matrix of all the projects including their ability to meet each criterion.

This ranking doesn’t exactly prioritize projects, except to say what is and isn’t currently eligible for funding.  After speaking with Don, I know the city wants more input on cyclists priorities for the system. 

So what are your priorities?  Should the six projects above be first?  What projects do you think would bring the most benefit? You can add your top priorities right on the map. Click on the view larger link, then click on “save to my maps” and then you can draw right on the map. Ideally, you’ll want to check the project list in the plan to make sure your project is in there, but if you have something the plan doesn’t have, go ahead and add that too, just make a note so we all know it is something new. Also maybe add your name and a short description of the project so we know what it is.