Driving around the other day listening to Minnesota Public Radio (yes, all the AM talk radio stations had commercials on and the music stations were playing crap) I caught a bit of a discussion on transportation issues facing Minnesota. The host chimed in with this wonderful insight:
"We just can't keep building more roads."
My response is the same as to the tired old cannard that says "we can't just keep building more prisons".
Yes. Yes we can. Using my taxes for either road or prison building is exactly where I want my money to go. If we need more prisons to make society safer build em'. If we need more roads to ease congestion build em' too.
To imply that the transporation infrastructure in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area has reached max capacity for roads is ridiculous. The metropolitan area is relatively new compared to Eastern cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and would hardly be considered high density. It also doesn't have the geopgraphic constraints that limit road building in cities like Seattle, Chicago, and Denver. Other than needing bridges to crosss a couple of rivers the downtowns are fairly wide open to approach from all directions.
The fact that major beltway around the metro area the 494/694 loop has only two lanes for most of it's length is in itself proof that we haven't even begun to build yet. Let's get that concrete pouring.
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