Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

[acs]

I don't often compliment the Pi Press, but they put together the mother load of all info graphics, compiling all of Dayton's proposed road projects in one place and organizing them based on location and project type. There's some more info on what exactly the "mobility improvements" and "long-term improvements" from the previous map meant.

http://www.twincities.com/politics/ci_2 ... ay-updates

[twincitizen]

Now taking suggestions on what to rename this thread and/or merge it with another similar topic.

[mattaudio]

The Minnesota "Transportation" "Funding" "Crisis"

[MNdible]

"MattAudio explains it all"

[froggie]

Tracy received $908k in 2014 LGA. I'm not sure how much help they're getting in any CSAH/MSAS spending.

Tracy's too small to receive any MSAS funding...that's limited to cities of at least 5,000 population.

According to MnDOT data, there are 4 streets that are on the CSAH system: Pine St on the south end of town (that goes by both the high school and elementary school), 4th St, Center St, and South St.

[twincitizen]

Color me shocked, Anoka County is butthurt and doesn't like the plan: http://finance-commerce.com/2015/02/som ... road-plan/ (locked)

EDIT: Corrected F&C link. Thanks!

[Silophant]

To be fair, I'm not too thrilled about advertising TVs at LRT stations either.

Probably correct link

[acs]

The NW burbs won't be happy until Highway 10 is a 4 lane freeway all the way to St. Cloud and I-94 is 10 lanes.

[froggie]

A decent argument could be made FOR upgrading Highway 10 to a freeway. Much less so for I-94.

[Realstreets]

As for all the overpasses, remember the 1960s-1980s were not a high point in civil engineering.

So 35W/494 must have been built with some quality engineer and and craftsmanship, since it doesn't make the list. The 394/12 bridges are bizarre to me.

These aren't necessarily new bridges but could also be maintenance type projects. Also, this is over the next 10 years.

[Mdcastle]

I-35W / I-494 had a new deck built about 10 years ago.

[MNdible]

I'm not sure what the expected life cycle of a ferro-concrete bridge structure that's subjected to vicious temperature swings, attached by freeze-thaw cycles, and marinated in sodium chloride should be, but I'm not terribly surprised that these things wear out after 40 years.

[RailBaronYarr]

I may have said this before here (or elsewhere), but shouldn't our relatively harsh winters, which require snow plowing, lots of salting, etc (all of which help wear out roads in addition to the temp swings) be a reason to maybe not build as many roads? We spend $X on a flyover, freeway lane, etc and it lasts Y years. In CA they spend the same $X and it lasts Y+15 years. Sure, we could charge ourselves more in gas taxes (**or other funding mechanisms**) to make up that gap and faster replacement cycle. But clearly very few drivers, and basically zero fiscal conservatives, are willing to do that bcs hardworking families/choochooboondoggles.

I guess what I'm saying is, having the 5th largest road network shouldn't be a badge of honor, considering we rank 13th in truckin ton-miles moved, rank 21st in population, etc. As a state, you'd think we'd be under-invested in roads relative to warmer-weather places and rely more on rail/water/air for freight and transit/etc for personal mobility.

[MNdible]

I'd agree that our state road network is probably over-sized, and it would be an interesting exercise to figure out how exactly we got there. Probably some combination of a geographically large state that has a thinly populated hinterland (as opposed to some other large western states, which have effectively non-populated hinterlands), and a handful of scattered but under-sized regional centers.

That said, I don't think that having a statewide over-sized highway network means that we shouldn't be addressing metro bottlenecks and obsolete infrastructure.

[EOst]

We're the 14th largest state by land area, but only three of the states larger than Minnesota (Arizona, Texas, California) have more people (Colorado is close, but has about 100k fewer people).

[froggie]

I'd agree that our state road network is probably over-sized, and it would be an interesting exercise to figure out how exactly we got there.

Consider that most of the state was platted on the 1-square-mile township model, so you have a public road every mile across much of the state.

[Mikey]

I think our highway network size is a combination of relatively large sized state, flat geography, relatively dispersed population, and no large roadless areas (ie mountains)

[Mdcastle]

Don't forget the 3rd Street Bridge...

In the old days they weren't quite sure how much material was "enough" so they used "plenty", and the design philosophy was to build stuff to last.

The 1950s-1980s they now knew how much was enough so they built it "just good enough" (or in some cases as it turned out "not quite good enough"). Also with seemingly unlimited money they figured why build it to last when they could go back and build it "bigger and better" in a few decades.

More recently with the realization money was finite they're back to building stuff to last even if it costs slightly more now. I-35W in Richfield was the debut of 60 years concrete surfacing. Stillwater, I-35W, Wakota, Dresbach, and Hastings all were built with 100 year life expediencies.

[RailBaronYarr]

I'd agree that our state road network is probably over-sized, and it would be an interesting exercise to figure out how exactly we got there. Probably some combination of a geographically large state that has a thinly populated hinterland (as opposed to some other large western states, which have effectively non-populated hinterlands), and a handful of scattered but under-sized regional centers.

That said, I don't think that having a statewide over-sized highway network means that we shouldn't be addressing metro bottlenecks and obsolete infrastructure.

I think that's fair. But we should also again be honest with ourselves that our metro has the 5th best job accessibility at AM/PM rush hours. Considering we're the 16th largest metro by population, I'd say our perceived bottlenecks are nowhere near as bad as their reality when compared to other areas. Are there safety improvements we can make on freeways and highways? Sure, let's do those. But I don't think capacity is a real problem that needs addressing, at least not before we convert a lane on every grade-separated highway to MnPass.

[froggie]

at least not before we convert a lane on every grade-separated highway to MnPass.

Which isn't really possible on about half of the system, as those segments are 2 lanes each way. You'd be incurring very inefficient operations having one regular lane and one EZPass lane on those segments.