Interstate 35W

[FISHMANPET]

To be clear, when I'm talking about homes far out, I'm not talking about Eagen, I'm talking about Albertville and Lakeville and Stillwater.

For sure everything inside the beltway is salvageable, and quite a bit outside of it.

[MNdible]

Also, for many people, a single family home with at least some outdoor space is important. I have no doubt that we'll be adding a lot of new, fairly dense multi-family housing, but that's not going to meet everybody's desires.

[RailBaronYarr]

This is true. And living close to work is one of those needs. But the reality is that the great majority of jobs are located in the suburbs or exurbs (I think only about 10% of metro area jobs are downtown). So most people need to live in the burbs because for most people that's the closest place to their job. As long as businesses continue to open up shop in the suburbs, people will need homes nearby.

This is true, but Minneapolis & St Paul proper contain 480k of the 1.596M total jobs in the metro area - 30% (and 25% of the employers). This doesn't include adjacent urban areas served by biking and transit infrastructure that would bring the share up even further (think places like SLP, Richfield, etc). These municipalities, by comparison, only have 23% of the population. There's clearly a mismatch. And saying that the jobs are in the suburbs/exurbs as justification for why people live where they do doesn't explain the why 60% of commuters take 20+ minutes to get to work (with only 11% less than 10 minutes). Also, it's not productive to point out why so many jobs are in the suburbs (60+ years of bad - IMO - policy), but we also shouldn't continue throwing money at jobs to locate in the suburbs. The state of MN and Shakopee spending $6M in subsidies for Emerson to locate there is just one of far too many examples.

If you told me we were working toward a 15-20 year out future where 70% of people who lived in the suburbs worked within a 5-7 mile radius where it would be reasonable to walk/bike or even create a local circulator system (with the rest of the 30% working downtown or elsewhere) then great! I just don't see that happening any time soon based on land-use limiting what types of jobs and housing are located where.

And yes, a SF home with yard space is important. So is a rocket car to me. But I don't demand it to be mandated by law, written in to land-use planning, or ask the government to heavily subsidize this extremely important amenity to me. Nor should people wanting detached structures with land.

[woofner]

To be clear, when I'm talking about homes far out, I'm not talking about Eagen, I'm talking about Albertville and Lakeville and Stillwater.

This is an important distinction that we haven't made up to this point, so thanks for bringing it up. Roughly a quarter of the metro population is in the central cities of Minneapolis & St Paul, roughly a third is in what the Met Council calls developed suburbs, roughly a third in developing suburbs, and the balance is in rural areas.

(Here's a map of these planning areas, note that the 2030 transitways do a lousy job of serving any area but the central cities, while the principal arterials cover the entire region well:

http://giswebsite.metc.state.mn.us/mapg ... 1-8x11.pdf)

Personally I would say that we'll have to find a way to create more sustainable lifestyle patterns in the developed and around half of the developing areas, since there is too much already there to retrench, and much of what is there could be salvaged with better infrastructure and a bit of densification. The other half of the developing areas and the rural areas could probably be retrenched without too much expense and disruption, although it would take a regional consensus that does not currently exist.

What would this retrenchment look like? The only market mechanism I can see working would by reagriculturalization incented by the relative viability of farmland in our northern climate after climactic disruption. This would come too late, of course. It's possible that a buy-back program financed by an albedo tax would work, but again it would take a regional consensus that we need to do something about climate change that doesn't exist and shows no sign of nascence.

Also, for many people, a single family home with at least some outdoor space is important. I have no doubt that we'll be adding a lot of new, fairly dense multi-family housing, but that's not going to meet everybody's desires.

This is why I bring up ADUs as ideal for suburban neighborhoods. A lot of ranch homes have excess living space on a single level that could be carved out for another single-person household without disruption to the detached housing aesthetic.

[MNdible]

And yes, a SF home with yard space is important. So is a rocket car to me. But I don't demand it to be mandated by law, written in to land-use planning, or ask the government to heavily subsidize this extremely important amenity to me. Nor should people wanting detached structures with land.

I merely brought it up to point out that it's unlikely that the market will eliminate suburban homes, as Mattaudio keeps suggesting. Even (or especially) if we never built another single family home, and if all future houses were built multi-family in the core cities, it seems likely that a fairly strong market would remain for existing suburban and exurban homes.

In a scenario where fuel prices, say, doubled or tripled, there's no doubt that this would adversely effect the price of these homes, but once the prices dropped sufficiently, they would again become viable.

[mattaudio]

I didn't say the market will eliminate suburban homes. Markets do not do anything so rash and gratuitous like government. It will just be less appealing, and people will focus on jobs close to housing (whether in the burbs or not) which makes the idea of a $700 million 20 mile HOT/BRT system look like a total abject failure waiting to happen. Not sure how anyone expects to get value out of such a system after seeing what the Red Line has done.

[mattaudio]

http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2013/ ... d-barriers
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projec ... index.html

I personally wish we were making the existing ramp at Washington a right only for autos leaving the West Bank, prohibiting a left turn from Washington to 35W for downtown traffic.

[Mdcastle]

I do think that's a good idea, especially if we're still planning on taking lanes away from cars on Washington. Maybe transfer Washington to the city in exchange for 3rd and 4th going to the county if we're going to try to encourage the bulk of the through traffic to use those routes.

[twincitizen]

Maybe transfer Washington to the city in exchange for 3rd and 4th going to the county if we're going to try to encourage the bulk of the through traffic to use those routes.

Agreed. Washington is a critical commercial corridor for that side of downtown and drastically needs to be scaled down to make it a pleasant place to walk and patronize businesses. 3rd and 4th connect to freeways on both ends(!!) and don't have much, if any, commercial activity. I don't know why this jurisdiction swap isn't being discussed.

[RailBaronYarr]

...or why they all aren't under control of the city.. maybe someone can explain to me the reason streets in the heart of cities have county ownership and thus county-wide car mobility implications?

[MNdible]

...maybe someone can explain to me the reason streets in the heart of cities have... county-wide car mobility implications?

Because they do, in fact, have county-wide car mobility implications? Not everybody driving in downtown is necessarily going downtown. It is often necessary to go through downtown to get somewhere else. And even setting aside that, having access to the core of the upper midwest's largest employment center has more than city-wide importance.

[mattaudio]

It's a good question, and ideally city streets would not be controlled by the county or MnDOT. But it all comes down to money.... transfer payments for CSAH/MSA routes. I'd settle for a jurisdictional swap in the interim, since 3rd/4th are already freeway to freeway conduits and Washington is already the main street of three growing neighborhoods.

[twincitizen]

In a perfect world, we do the jurisdiction swap after the county rebuilds it. The trick is getting them to build it correctly. Lord knows Minneapolis does not have the money to completely reconstruct Washington Avenue.

Also, in a perfect world (in which it is assumed that streetcars/aBRT will run on Washington in the next 20 years) it would be inconceivable to rebuild the road without that infrastructure included.

I know we're getting a little crazy here and probably have a general thread for Washington Ave, but I'm going to again express my confusion with the obsession over a cycle track on Washington. Would it not be preferrable to make 2nd Street the most badass cycle facility downtown? It has much lower traffic, already has bike lanes and underutilized street parking that be converted to something world-class. Crossing distances across Washington could be shrinkified by reducing the number of lanes, having super-wide sidewalks, and skipping the cycle facility. Yes, I understand that cycling facilities are needed on the Washington Ave bridge over 35W, but cyclists could be directed to better cycling infrastructure once across the bridge. I don't get the obsession with Washington Avenue when 2nd Street is right there.

[RailBaronYarr]

Because they do, in fact, have county-wide car mobility implications? Not everybody driving in downtown is necessarily going downtown. It is often necessary to go through downtown to get somewhere else. And even setting aside that, having access to the core of the upper midwest's largest employment center has more than city-wide importance.

My point is that.. isn't that what we did already with 35W, 55, and any number of other highways: to facilitate moving within the county/state/region? You're one of the more vocal proponents of leaving freeways cutting right through our downtown (3 of them!!) when people need to "go through downtown to get somewhere else." Who in their right mind is traveling by car from one part of the county, literally right THROUGH the most dense and developed part of Minneapolis, to continue on? I'm driving home the notion that the county is so concerned with shortening the last half mile of inter-county trips by 1-2 minutes at the expense of said locations being far more productive than they are right now. At one point, county roads connected places like Minnetonka, Hopkins, St Louis Park, etc to each other, and the county ROAD became a STREET within the city when it hit the developed part of town. IMHO, the county would do better to focus its efforts on the miles of its roads they've given far too many access points to that slow everything else down - all the stop-lights, driveways, curb cuts, etc that make traveling on most cty roads a 35-40 mph experience while contributing to wasteful, auto-dependent land use patterns. Shorten the trips there, not within the cities/towns they serve.

[Mdcastle]

Agreed on not using county roads to move through downtown, but the movements into and out of downtown are of regional significance, and should stay county roads. My feeling on Hennepin- if we make it car-friendly, then the county should pay for it because you'd have a lot of long distance traffic moving into and out of downtown. If we deliberately make Washington a hellish place to drive and cut off access to I-35W to have people move to 3rd and 4th, then that's of no benefit to me or anyone else outside of the city so Minneapolis can pay for it (and in turn the county can pay for rebuilding 3rd and 4th to handle all the extra traffic.

There's been talk about not seeing eye-to-eye on Minnehaha also. I don't see why that's a county road either, as far as I'm concerned if Minneapolis doesn't like what the counties doing they can take it and do what they want with it, I always use Hiawatha through the area and I'm sure most other regional traffic does too.

[Wedgeguy]

What many of you seem to forget it many of these county roads we county road for probably close now to 75 years or more. These were county road back when there was no city or commercial area along them. What too many on here forget to take into account is there is a history behind a lot of what happens in transportation that you just can't throw away because you don't like it. You have interstates (federal), trunk highways (State), County roads, and city streets. There roads and streets were platted out for the most part, especially in MPLS and St. Pau,l for well over 100 years, with interstates in the 60's. What we think now is a city street was a trunk road between cities and not neighborhoods 60 yearsago.

[RailBaronYarr]

So rectify the history. Either maintain it as a relatively high-speed connection between two places within the county by limiting access (cross-streets, businesses, residences), OR turn the sections engulfed by development in to streets. It is very obvious that county roads and many state highways operating under the design guidelines of those bodies are not functioning to increase economic output for their specified regions anymore, rather just allowing people to commute longer distances, which does nothing to add to long-term economic output.

[FISHMANPET]

And just because it was something before doesn't mean it has to be that way forever. There's no read to protect the "history" or a road's governing body. If the current entity that controls it isn't maintaining it correctly then somebody else more appropriate should take it over.

[mattaudio]

There was no state aid program before the 20th century. MnDOT turned back hwy 65 through downtown in the last decade. The downtown grid was built before it was even connected to other places in the region. These are "facts on the ground" but we cannot assume they should remain.

[orangevening]

I know we're getting a little crazy here and probably have a general thread for Washington Ave, but I'm going to again express my confusion with the obsession over a cycle track on Washington. Would it not be preferrable to make 2nd Street the most badass cycle facility downtown? It has much lower traffic, already has bike lanes and underutilized street parking that be converted to something world-class. Crossing distances across Washington could be shrinkified by reducing the number of lanes, having super-wide sidewalks, and skipping the cycle facility. Yes, I understand that cycling facilities are needed on the Washington Ave bridge over 35W, but cyclists could be directed to better cycling infrastructure once across the bridge. I don't get the obsession with Washington Avenue when 2nd Street is right there.

Yeah this belongs in the Washington thread (couldn't find it though?) or bike infrastructure thread (not sure how to move it though) . I want a cycle track on Washington because they are businesses on Washington and cycle tracks are good for businesses;

http://www.biv.com/article/20130730/BIV ... -your-ride

2nd is great to go though town and will be even more so once the tunnel under 35w / Bluff street trail is done, but until then Washington is the only way over 35w except the crappy goat path right now which you have to back track to if your heading to the U. Washington is SUPER dangerous to bike over esp. by Bobby and Steve's. Only thing on 2nd is the commercial node at Guthrie and Mill City (and now Izzy's!!) there is more "stuff" on Washington and is one of Minneapolis "main streets"- it should be for all users.