Transportation and Placemaking: Framing the Issue

How transportation shapes place

When you think about the Twin Cities as a unique and interesting destination, you don't think about the freeway system.

More likely, you think about the urban lakes, the incredible system of parks and open spaces, the variety of neighborhoods, our rich arts and cultural opportunities, the distinct histories and characters of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the spectacular river that divides them. These are the qualities that draw visitors, that keep current residents, and that will attract nearly a million new residents over the next 20 years. These are the qualities that have kept us near the top of national "livability" lists for decades. It's only enlightened self-interest to protect this wonderful heritage.

Admittedly, we've already sacrificed some of that heritage. Many splendid historic buildings have been torn down. Many of our open spaces have been developed. And many of our neighborhoods have suffered decline from transportation decisions that have ignored the concerns of people and communities.

A lot of these decisions at street level are almost invisible to average citizens. Decisions like the width and location of sidewalks; where medians, shoulders, speed bumps, traffic signs, and trees are placed; how wide or narrow lanes are; where turn lanes are located; how the pavement is textured; and speed limitations. But these decisions can have big impact on our daily lives.

Even if we want to walk, there are too many places where there are no sidewalks or they are too narrow. If we want to ride bicycles, there are few bike lanes to make it safe. If we live on a street that's now become an alternative to the congested freeways, we have little control over the speed at which cars race through our neighborhood. That affects property values and means we have to watch our children's front-yard activities very closely. And those cars create exhaust fumes that can worsen asthma in children and seniors. If you have a business located on a street where traffic whizzes by and sidewalks are narrow, fewer customers seek you out.

Those are street-level decisions, but transportation decisions at higher levels affect us all, too. All the decisions we've made for decades that put road-building for automobiles above all other forms of transportation have helped get us to the traffic congestion that now plagues us. We are paying for our own short-sightedness. Large segments of our population—teenagers, seniors, those with disabilities, and those who can't afford cars—live much more difficult and expensive lives because of those decisions. Families have less time together because parents are caught in lengthy commutes. The lack of attention to creating a pedestrian friendly region has also contributed to high rates of obesity and heart disease. No wonder our urban parks are more crowded than ever before—it's one of the few pedestrian friendly areas we've protected.

As we build more and more roads farther and farther out, we lose open land to concrete. These are often the very farmlands, forests, wetlands, and fields that have helped define our outdoor way of life in the Twin Cities region. And because of the loss of wetlands and the contaminated storm water run-off from roads and parking lots, we now have decreased water quality—ironic for the heart of a "Land of 10,000 Lakes."

Clearly, transportation plays a big role in shaping our sense of place—regionally and locally. How do we start making policy and street-level decisions that reflect that fact?

The time is now

We can't easily undo transportation decisions we've already made but we can think more carefully about the impact on place and people in the decisions we make from now on.

There are nearly a million reasons why we should act quickly—all the new residents that will be on our streets and in our neighborhoods within the next two decades, most of them with cars and all of them with places to go.

This expected influx (more than twice the current population of St. Paul) will add almost five million trips daily on our heavily burdened roads. If we think our streets and highways are congested now, just wait.

One of the biggest factors contributing not only to congestion, but to many other ills associated with our current transportation situation is auto-dependency.

Because Minneapolis/St. Paul offer fewer modes of transportation than many other metro areas, people here almost have to own cars to move around to jobs, shopping centers, healthcare clinics, and to visit friends and relatives.

Metropolitan regions like Portland and Phoenix already offer people a choice among automobiles, buses, trains, trolleys, bicycles, and pedestrian paths. These "multi-modal" systems not only make people's daily lives easier and less costly, but they enhance the economic competitiveness of the region.

When corporations decide where to locate, available transportation for their workers is a major concern. A few years ago Boeing relocated to Chicago rather than Dallas largely because its workers favored Chicago's multi-modal transportation system. Ease of getting around is a big factor in where people want to live and work. Many information-age workers can chose to live almost anyplace, so transportation issues like traffic congestion and the availability of trains and buses and bike paths play an increasingly role in their location decisions. They want to live someplace that has preserved a unique character, not someplace that's paved and built itself into anonymity.

The role policy has played

Beginning in the 1930s, when the first cars rolled off the assembly lines, roads became the preferred transportation mode in America. Those roads led increasingly to the suburbs. The link between transit (the streetcar system) and real estate development was broken. And developers got out of the business of building transit systems. The face of the Twin Cities began to change radically.

But it wasn't just car production that fueled these trends, transportation policy played a significant role, too. Early on, government began focusing resources on transportation systems that accommodated cars. Departments of transportation were given road-building as their primary responsibility, with the emphasis on engineering rather than urban planning. As a result, our main transportation mode became the auto. We didn't try to create a balanced system that integrates the use of cars, buses, streetcars, and railroads with safe walking and biking.

Our region's transportation funding formula both reflects and helps perpetuate our over-reliance on cars. Roads have a (state) constitutionally dedicated funding source, and those revenues have been increasing steadily for more than a decade. In contrast, transit has no dedicated state funding source, so every year Twin Cities transit providers must solicit the governor and the legislature for money. "This lack of a designated funding source for transit makes long-term planning difficult, and hampers our efforts to get federal matching grants for major transit projects," says Barb Thoman, program director at Transit for Livable Communities in Minneapolis.

Urban planning alternatives

Various coalitions can work together for many kinds of change. Business leaders, environmental advocates, and transportation policy experts are beginning to form a sometimes unlikely alliance on the topic of transportation. Transportation planning is one of the top priorities of the recently formed Itasca Group—Twin Cities business executives who recognize the issue's urgency for our region and it's relevance to their own bottom lines.

Many experts believe we need a different approach to residential and commercial development, one that links development to public transit. A newly released, ground-breaking text, The New Transit Town, explores the need for what they call "transit-oriented development"—a blend of regional planning, city revitalization, suburban renewal, and walkable neighborhoods. The idea is that you carefully think through a transportation system and spur development around that system. The result is usually more compact, less sprawling development where houses and stores are closer, open space is preserved, neighborhoods encourage walking, and everything is close to a transit stop. Such development often entails revamping road-design standards to balance needs of all users: vehicle drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders.

A local example is Excelsior Boulevard—a suburban road that moved traffic from the city to the suburbs quickly but offered little to attract pedestrians. Thanks to a public-private redevelopment project completed in 2003, the area now welcomes pedestrians as well as motorists to a town center that's walkable and has hidden parking. The project's ultimate success owes a lot to ongoing public involvement. Today, streets have extra-wide sidewalks, buildings feature interesting architecture and storefronts, and the main street surrounds a large town green.

Another concept that could help us make choices that balance high levels of mobility with the desires of people and communities is called Context Sensitive Design (CSD). It's an approach to transportation design that looks beyond the pavement to the role that streets and highways play in enhancing communities and natural environments.

The CSD process guides a community through development planning and encourages stakeholder collaboration. To get citizens involved, community design charettes are often used. These are public meetings, typically employing visual renderings or scale models, that build community vision and harness the talents and interests of all stakeholders. Design charettes have recently been used in Minneapolis for development along the northern part of the Mississippi River and will be used in the repaving of Lake Street. They are an effective way of taking into account the needs of people in transportation design decisions.

Learning from others

We're just beginning to understand how health, aesthetics, economic development, and mobility intertwine. But many other urban areas already have recognized the important role transportation plays in community livability. They've recognized that a full-blown transportation system—not just roads—can create friendly neighborhoods, provide efficient ways to get to and from work, help bridge income and racial disparities, and even contribute to the success of a city's arts and cultural organizations. We can learn much from the vision generated by these other cities.

A few examples across the country include:

• Phoenix—Phoenix is growing at twice the rate of the Twin Cities, and public understanding of how fast new development can hinder mobility has generated public support for a half-cent sales tax increase. This city was able to convince the Arizona Legislature to authorize a referendum to fund almost $16 billion in transportation improvements over the next 20 years. Surveys show that 75 percent of Phoenix area voters favor the plan. The Translational Genomics Research Institute recently decided to move to a new biosciences campus in downtown Phoenix in part because of the community's transportation commitment.

• Charlotte, N.C.—Here, the local business community deserves credit for generating a regional transportation plan. Although Charlotte's metro area is about half the size of the Twin Cities, it offers a good model for what is needed here. The city dedicates funding for transit from a local sales tax charged in the metro area.

• Portland—Portland has passed an intentional urban growth plan and has refused to spend all of its transportation budget on highway expansion. Already, Portland has three light rail projects, one Rapid Bus Transit project, and twice the transit success experienced by the Twin Cities. Part of Portland's success can be attributed to leadership continuity. In Minnesota, leaders of the Metropolitan Council, which is responsible for metropolitan public transit, are appointed by the governor. Thus transit leadership can change every four years, and that can disrupt progress.

Local projects show progress

Slowly we've begun diversifying transportation choices in our region. There are some exciting projects on the horizon.

• The state's first light rail project, the Hiawatha Line, will give Minnesotans their first taste of the efficiencies of this transportation mode. Full service to the airport and Mall of America will be available next year. For each dollar the state invested in the project ($100 million in bonding funds), it received more than $5 from other sources, allowing the state to leverage its limited transit budget. The Hiawatha Line is expected to generate a variety of transit-oriented development projects, including a Cedar/Riverside rail station and apartment project for lower-income residents, the 46th Street rail station, and massive redevelopment adjoining the Lake Street/Midtown station. These projects will involve a mix of public and private financing.

• Bus rapid transit (BRT), which gives buses roadway priority, gets people to work fast without having to build additional infrastructure. A new BRT in this region will rebuild the aging County Road-81 between Osseo and Minneapolis, affecting residents of Osseo, New Hope, Crystal, Robbinsdale, and Minneapolis. Certain stretches of the new road will include dedicated bus lanes; other stretches will feature "queue jumps" to give buses an advantage at stoplights. Because the project involves several communities, project leaders have actively solicited input from representatives of a variety of civic and government organizations, as well as the general public.

• If funded, another Minnesota transportation first will allow long-distance commuters to make trips to work without the need for a parking place. The Northstar Corridor is an 82-mile transportation corridor that runs along [State] Highway 10 and I-94 from downtown Minneapolis to the St. Cloud area. The initial phase will include construction of a 40-mile line with six stations; estimated daily ridership is 5,600 trips per day. This project and the BRT project described above have required extensive multi-jurisdictional cooperation and collaboration which, given the complex nature of the projects, is no small challenge.

• In 2005, Hennepin County will launch a critical road reconstruction project. The project will include the total redesign and rebuilding of Lake Street, from the Minneapolis Uptown area all the way east to the Mississippi River. If all goes well, this project can provide a template for revitalizing other aging commercial corridors. Planners hope that trees, lighting, storefront and parking lot standards, transit stops, connections to the Midtown Greenway, pocket parks, and other pedestrian features will combine to make Lake Street another powerful model for transit-oriented development.

How you can get involved

The first step is to educate yourself about the issues. Some of the resources below should be helpful. You can also find out a lot by monitoring the local media.

Getting involved at the local level is another first step. Attend town and neighborhood meetings. Encourage political, community, and business leaders to come up with a transportation plan that offers choice and preserves a sense of place. Work with local officials to develop land-use plans that are safe for bikers and pedestrians.

Think about making changes in your own life, and encourage family members to do the same. Walk, bike, or use the bus more often. Discuss with other household members whether you can get along with fewer automobiles. (Your reward could be up to $10,000 savings annually in car payments, maintenance, and insurance.)

Talk with your employer about the transit options your organization supports. Encourage transit passes and bicycle storage facilities as an alternative to free or subsidized parking. The Met Council's 2030 Regional Development Framework suggests that employers can support efforts to make more efficient use of current highway capacity by encouraging flexible work hours, telecommuting, ridesharing, and other traffic management techniques.

Transportation should be treated as a means to serve people, not an end in itself. The real goal is moving people all over the region conveniently, safely, and affordably, while preserving the amenities and character that have made this area a great place to live.