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Funding highway projects: Council explores a new approach

The Metropolitan Council and its transportation partners are exploring a new approach to planning and funding highway projects in the seven-county metro area.

A study of the network of “principal arterial” highways in the region – primarily interstates and state highways – suggests that the time has come to increase the focus on relatively low-cost projects that maximize current road capacity and smooth traffic flow, as well as provide a higher congestion-relief benefit for the investment.

The cost to provide a congestion-free principal arterial system that accommodates forecasted travel demand in the year 2030 is 20 times the amount available for highway expansion projects in the next two decades, according to the study.

“Major freeway expansions reduce congestion in the immediate area but can simply shift traffic bottlenecks to another location,” said Carl Ohrn, Council transportation analyst and coordinator of the study. “So while they provide relief to the people driving that particular highway segment, they may have little system-wide impact on congestion or driving speeds.”

The benefit of funding more low-cost/high-benefit projects would be to reduce congestion and accidents at many specific locations. An example of such a project is the short lane additions on I-94 near 3M in Maplewood. For $9.8 million, the project achieved a reduction in annual hours of driver delay of 139,500. Speeds were increased to 60 miles per hour during the peak morning period. 

A new era of highway funding

The goal of eliminating congestion dates back to the 1970s. The region’s intent then was to accommodate added traffic on interstate-type facilities, which were extremely successful in handling the growth in auto traffic after World War II. Post-war congestion was reduced as the interstate system was built.

But as baby boomers became adults and the population and economy continued to grow, so did congestion, the study says. More people became licensed drivers and households bought more vehicles. As development spread, transit use decreased. Highway funding did not allow construction to keep up with demand. Congestion grew further and faster.

In the last decade, it has become clear that future traffic cannot be accommodated without significant increases in revenues or changes in travel behavior, Ohrn said. The goal of accommodating added travel was changed to attempting to reduce the rate of increasing congestion.

Until the passage of the transportation funding bill by the 2008 Minnesota Legislature, the state was looking at a funding deficit to just preserve the highway facilities it already has, Ohrn said. While the bill provides new funding for highway expansion projects related to major bridges, it doesn’t come close to generating the revenues that would be needed to stop the growth in traffic congestion.

“People would not tolerate the level of taxation needed to solve our congestion problems,” he said. In addition, it is very likely that a number of such projects could not be implemented due to the need for extensive right-of-way in the most densely developed parts of the region.

Region needs to ‘be creative’ in deploying limited resources

Still, it is very difficult for communities to let go of a major highway expansion project that has been on the drawing board for a decade or more, Ohrn acknowledged. Shifting the funding focus from a few high-buck projects to many smaller projects across the region may be resisted by some.

“We need to be more creative in deploying our limited resources for highway improvements,” said Donn Wiski, chair of the Council’s Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) and Community Development Director for Vadnais Heights. “That means a mix of investments that improves safety and chips away at congestion at a number of locations. 

“We need to consider implementing multi-modal solutions where they fit,” Wiski said. “The notion that every improvement must solve all of the needs in the area for the next 30 years has to give way to shorter horizons, flexible standards, and partial solutions. Some major projects will get built, but will fall far short of projected needs.”

Study compares four funding approaches

For comparison purposes, the study looked at four approaches to funding the highway system: a small number of major projects (the current 2030 Transportation Policy Plan approach); low-cost/high-benefit projects; fixing congestion; and a priced system. Under the last approach, the region would make investments in a network of lanes like the MnPASS HOT lane on I-394. This approach would provide a priced alternative in the most congested corridors in the region.

The costs of the four approaches range from $1.5 billion over two decades for low-cost/high-benefit projects to $43 billion to eliminate congestion. The available funding in the current TPP is about $2 billion for expansion projects.

The Council’s 2008 update of the Transportation Policy Plan (TPP) is likely to combine features of the low-cost/high-benefit and the priced-system approaches. Major highway capacity expansion projects will not be completely eliminated from the TPP, but they will all be put on hold and will be rescoped to determine whether a low-cost/high-benefit alternative project is more appropriate.

The study was undertaken as part of this year’s update of the TPP, which federal law requires the Council to update every four years. Federal rules require transportation plans to be “fiscally constrained,” that is, based on the likely available forecasted funding as opposed to what regions hope they could build.  

The updated plan is being drafted through early summer in consultation with the TAB. A public hearing draft will be adopted by the Council in early September, followed by a formal public hearing in late October. Final adoption of the new plan is scheduled for December 2008.