Lost jobs add up to speedier commute

Commuters surprised to be zipping down Twin Cities highways can partly thank former colleagues who are unexpectedly off the roads, sitting at home jobless.

"The difference in the traffic volume is dramatic," said Peter Berven, of Forest Lake, who commutes to his dental practice in St. Louis Park, a drive that for the past three months or so has been a half-hour shorter.

"It's not like it's just occasionally lighter," he said. "It seems like there's half the traffic there used to be."

Traffic is indeed down on many routes around the metro area, said Brian Kary, freeway operations engineer at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, which will release a congestion report this month. Data that Kary compiled from three stretches of highway not directly affected by the Interstate 35W bridge collapse -- including I-494 in Plymouth and Maple Grove and I-35W through Bloomington and Burnsville -- show a decrease of about 2 percent when comparing February 2009 to February 2007.

That might sound negligible, but "it doesn't take much of a decrease in volume to really see a significant decrease in congestion," Kary said. Such declines "could be causing a 5 to 8 percent decrease in congestion, and that would be something that's noticeable."

According to the Federal Highway Administration, traffic on urban interstates around the country dropped 3 percent in 2008. INRIX, a traffic management company that released a national congestion study last week, says "peak-hour congestion on the major roads in urban America decreased nearly 30 percent in 2008."

The INRIX study, which ranked the Twin Cities as the 10th-most-congested metro area in the country, cites fuel prices and unemployment as the two main reasons congestion is down.

"Gas prices probably got this trend started, but at some point along the way, it evolved into something different," said Doug Hecox of the Federal Highway Administration. When fuel costs really began to fall, it was "about the time Wall Street melted down. ... We just didn't see the return to traditional behavior again the way we might have.

"There's a lot of variables that are kind of combining about the same time and pushing those numbers down."

Minnesota has lost nearly 75,000 jobs in the past year, the Department of Employment and Economic Development reported last week, with more than 20,000 of those coming in January alone. The department reported a year-to-year job drop of 2.8 percent in the metro area.

Completion of major construction projects such as "Unweave the Weave" at Interstates 694 and 35E and the new I-35W bridge probably have played a role in loosening up traffic, Kary said, and he noted that there are also seasonal variations in traffic volume. People tend to drive less in January and February than in some other months, and December, with its holiday shopping and activities, keeps more drivers on the roads for more of the day, he said.

"Probably around Christmastime, I noticed it seemed to get lighter," said Brad Kaeter, who has been commuting between his Shoreview home and his job in downtown Minneapolis for years. On the drive home up 35W, "I started noticing that I was going farther before I hit the traffic jam."

"And coming in to work in the morning, it's usually just a smooth sail in down 35," he said, musing that perhaps gas prices had inspired more people to take the bus.

Metro Transit did have a booming 2008, though it saw some year-over-year declines in December, as well as in January of this year. However, suburban bus providers such as Minnesota Valley Transit and SouthWest Transit, which primarily serve rush-hour commuters, say their ridership appears to be holding, so the cars in their park-and-ride lots are staying off the freeways.

A relatively small number of vehicles can make the difference between a freeway that's free-flowing and one that isn't, something drivers understand when they see cars coming down an entrance ramp -- one or two can often merge in smoothly, but a half-dozen or more at once can lead to braking and slowdowns.

Congestion, the FHA's Hecox predicts, will resume its climb. "It's the sort of thing we think is going to return to normal," he said. "We just don't know when."

Jim Foti • 612-673-4491