Editorial: Lessons of adversity in bridge collapse

Commuter creativity is worth studying.

Last update: September 13, 2007 - 6:04 PM

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IF YOU BUILD IT

"Induced travel'' theory holds that new roads invite people to drive more, and so become congested quickly. But the process can work in reverse. An English study of 60 road closings found that, on average, 25 percent of all trips simply disappeared because commuters found alternatives to driving.

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Since the I-35W bridge collapse, traffic congestion through the Twin Cities core has been much lighter than experts feared. One reason is that state and city authorities acted promptly. The Minnesota Department of Transportation added carrying capacity to I-94 and Hwy. 280, and Minneapolis stationed traffic cops around the perimeter of downtown. But another reason is that motorists have shown remarkable ingenuity -- they are finding alternate routes, getting a jump on rush hour, canceling discretionary trips and making dozens of other individual adaptations.

That's a natural response to emergency conditions, but it could hold important lessons for long-term planning. If the wisdom of the crowd can produce temporary solutions to traffic congestion, perhaps it can produce long-term solutions too -- especially at a time when gridlock seems to have gripped the state's political leadership. "The bridge collapse was a terrible human tragedy, but it also set up a profound experiment in commuter behavior," says Henry Liu, a University of Minnesota engineering professor who has won a federal grant to study the response of local motorists.

The ingenuity of commuters should come as no surprise. Last April, when a weekend tanker-truck inferno wrecked a crucial bridge ramp in Oakland, Calif., authorities expected a traffic nightmare on the following Monday morning. It never quite materialized. When the 1989 San Francisco earthquake damaged part of the Embarcadero Freeway, Bay Area commuters also made adjustments that averted a crisis.

"People are more creative and more adaptable than traditional transportation models assume," says James Erkel, an attorney and transportation expert at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. "If we use that creativity, we can probably get by with congestion solutions that are less expensive and less destructive than we thought." Erkel says, for example, that removing just 5 percent or 10 percent of the cars from a popular freeway can spell the difference between rush-hour creep and a speedy commute.

To be sure, many of the temporary adjustments are not acceptable as long-term solutions -- leaving for work at 5 a.m., for example, or diverting highway traffic onto neighborhood streets. And minor adaptations are no substitute for comprehensive planning that takes the long view of Twin Cities development.

But other solutions -- neighborhood carpools, flexible start times at work, employer subsidies for transit -- could prove perfectly acceptable, especially if the alternative facing voters is higher taxes, costly construction projects and more smog.

A summer of adversity has shown just how generous and creative Minnesotans can be in a pinch. The state should learn everything it can from the experience.

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