Editorial: The Band-aids are running out

Three years ago, in its annual report on traffic congestion in the nation's major cities, the Texas Transportation Institute threw a bucket of cold water on Twin Cities commuters. While traffic delays here were about average for a medium-sized American city, the institute said, overall Twin Cities congestion was getting worse faster than in any other large metropolitan area.

A Twin Cities motorist who lost five hours sitting in traffic in 1982 was losing 40 hours a year by 2004 (and 43 hours by last year), the institute's researchers estimated.

The report came as no surprise to local drivers, who find themselves spending more and more time every year in slow-and-go hell. But it was a jolt to civic leaders and elected officials, who for years had coasted on the notion that life was easy and uncomplicated in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The institute's 2007 report, released last week, presents a more encouraging picture. On almost every major measure of congestion -- fuel wasted, hours lost sitting in traffic, overall delays -- the Twin Cities has dropped several rungs in the rankings of peer cities.

Between 2001 and 2005, for example, the Twin Cities dropped from No. 14 to No. 23 in peak-time delay per traveler. It dropped from No. 16 to No. 17 in overall traffic delays.

But anyone who reads this year's report as evidence that Minnesota has come to grips with its long-term challenges would be wrong. It turns out that congestion has eased in the Twin Cities because the state's planners and engineers have made ingenious use of Band-Aids and aspirin -- and have only bought time for state leaders who have yet to confront the underlying ailment.

David Schrank, a research scientist at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the 2007 Urban Mobility Report, says Minnesota has become a leader in the use of "operations strategies" -- that is, modest adjustments such as ramp metering, traffic cameras and ready-response trucks that clear accident debris from busy roads. Opening the Hiawatha light-rail line in 2004 and fixing the Interstate 694 bottleneck in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park also added to the system's effective capacity.

"Between your state transportation department and your Metropolitan Council, you are showing a lot of innovation, a lot of planning, a lot of cooperation, and putting a lot of things on the ground to help travelers," Schrank said in an interview last week.

The problem is that these modest changes do not add up to an adequate transportation system; they can only make the best of one that is inadequate.

Twin Cities freeway and arterial capacity has increased by about 12 percent in the last decade, but traffic demand -- as measured by driver-vehicle-miles -- has shot up by 25 percent. Considering the last 20 years, the gap between commuter demand and system supply is even wider. Buses driving on freeway shoulders, HOV lanes converted to HOT lanes -- these can only buy time for a state whose political leadership has itself fallen victim to gridlock.

Three times in the last three years, the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty have tiptoed up to a comprehensive transportation package -- one that encompasses road and transit options and a steady source of adequate revenue -- and three times they have come away with a veto or a deadlock.

A metropolitan region that will add 1 million new residents in the next two decades cannot wait much longer.

Meanwhile, other metropolitan areas such as Denver, Dallas and San Diego have made the tough choices and committed themselves to long-term transportation strategies and the revenues that make them possible. That doesn't simply mean laying more pavement. The Texas A&M researchers point out that a modern metropolis can solve its congestion problems only by using every tool available -- building more roads, adding more transit, offering commuters an array of choices and rethinking urban and suburban development -- and it is precisely this ambitious, comprehensive strategy that Minnesota has so badly failed to find in the last two decades.

The barrier, of course, always seems to be taxes. But as the Texas A&M researchers point out, that's the mind-set of a community that sees only half the puzzle. The other half is the cost of congestion itself. Last year the Twin Cities economy lost $1 billion to congestion -- wasted fuel, lost employee productivity, delayed deliveries, according to the institute's 2007 report. The intangible costs are higher: pollution from idling engines, for one; scaring off potential economic development, for another. Put more simply: The last major transportation package proposed in the Legislature -- by a bipartisan team of lawmakers -- would have cost the average driver $250 per year. Congestion costs that same driver $790 in lost time and wasted fuel.

It's worth remembering that busy freeways and crowded roads are a sort of compliment to a city, a sign of growth and vitality. Buffalo, N.Y., for example, and Kansas City, Mo., would love to have some of the Twin Cities' growing pains. But with the benefits of growth comes the obligation to address it responsibly.