Should the Twin Cities add Significant Capacity to our Roads?

There was a good article in Friday's STRIB summarizing the Met Council's position that we won't have any more significant highway projects in this region.  This isn't good news for highway designers and I'm not sure it's good news for me as a traffic engineer.  But, engineers (including me) are a conservative bunch.  I don't think you'll get many of us bashing the idea of spending tax money wisely.  However, I think most engineers like to make prudent investments in the future.

We know the Twin Cities is in the top 25 when it comes to congested regions (that hits the news cycle every year when the Texas Transportation Institute releases its annual study), but is that because of a lack of investment or is it due to a mismatch between infrastructure-homes-jobs?  To get at this, I decided to see where we stand compared to the other 49 states in the Union.  I was able to find population estimates from the Census Bureau and miles of road lanes from FHWA.  The most up to date data sets I could find for both were from 2007.

I divided the number of lane miles of major road (interstates, principal arterials, minor arterials, and collectors – eliminating local roads) by the number of people in the state.  I think this is a decent estimate for how much thoroughfare pavement is in the state per person.  The results are in the table below.  We rank 11th out of 50 on the list.  Based on this quick analysis (and I grant you it is simplistic), it seems Minnesota has enough pavement per person.  As transportation engineers and planners, the time has come to shift our focus to maximizing the benefit we can gain from the investment we've already made.  At least this is what the policy makers are telling us.