The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT) announced a couple of days ago that they are $50 billion short of meeting their 20 year plan for road building.  Brian Bakst of the Associated Press writes here about the problem. Digging a little deeper though, the funding gap is about more than just roads, it includes waterways, airports, bus transit and rail transit all under the moniker of 'mobility'  The Minnesota Statewide Transportation Policy Plan for 2009-2028 is a very nice document that does not shed any light on how much is actually spent and/or needed for road construction.  In fact, they only mention road congestion in one section called Policy 6 - Twin Cities Mobility.  What is most distressing is that the policy admits "This plan moves the region away from its long-held and historical approach of attempting to build its way out of congestion by adding more highway lanes — one major project at a time — to a more innovative, balanced and financially realistic approach to address regional mobility needs.  This new approach reflects an understanding that congestion may be mitigated but not eliminated."  There you have it, MNDOT has now abdicated responsibility for reducing congestion on our roads.  This is a stunning, though not surprising admission.  As the Forgotten Man has written before, road congestion is a major problem around the country threatening economic growth and quality of life and many transportation planners don't even consider it as a major indicator of performance.  In Minnesota, they don't even have a target for Twin Cities congestion as shown in this chart. 

Digging a little deeper though, MNDOT has a Congestion Report for Twin Cities freeways in 2008.  One nugget; "since 2007 congestion was measured, two large projects were completed that contributed to the most recent decrease in congestion.  They were the new bridge carrying Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River and the addition of lanes and separation of movements at the interchange of Interstate 35E and Interstate 694."  In fact, the reduction was so significant from these two projects that it lowered congestion to 2006 levels, before the tragic collapse of the 35W bridge.  This would seem to indicate that we can 'build our way out of congestion by adding more highway lanes'.  So why the change in strategy to de-emphasize road construction?  Maybe the costs really are out of line or is there another agenda?

Trying to get to the bottom line on the real cost to increase road capacity is a maze of government websites.  But I did find one interesting chart in the Transportation Policy Plan that may provide a clue what not to do.  Policy 6 of the Plan has a chart on page 16 that shows the number of freeway transit passengers and automobile vehicle occupants.  Though the raw data is not shown, it's pretty easy to see that transit riders are a significantly smaller portion of the total travelers for every major highway. (This would seem to validate the Forgotten Man's claim that people would prefer their own car to riding mass transit.)  So let's take that $1 billion for the Central Corridor, another $1 billion for the Southwest Rail and the hundreds of millions for extending the North Star Line (unfortunately already under construction) and add a few lanes to our highways.