(C) Minnesota Reformer
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People vs. cars: The I-94 debate is more important than you think [1]
['More From Author', 'February', 'Eric Harris Bernstein']
Date: 2024-02-22
What if I told you the Minnesota Department of Transportation is quietly considering the biggest Twin Cities policy decision of this century?
It’s not getting the attention it deserves, but the Minnesota House Committee on Transportation is holding a hearing Thursday on the scheduled redesign of I-94 in the Twin Cities.
The renovation — which is the first major reconstruction project in the highway’s 60-year existence and likely the last during the lifetime of anyone reading this column — will have a profound impact on our Twin Cities environment, economy and neighborhoods for generations to come. Rather than rubberstamp the status quo, state and city authorities must seize this once-in-a-century opportunity to prioritize communities over cars.
The issue boils down to whether we should rebuild the freeway more or less as-is, or reconsider our commitment to car-centric urban design by reducing its footprint. It is a big question but there are very good reasons to take it seriously.
From massive health disparities and elevated emissions to suppressed property values and declining tax base, there are too many compelling arguments against the freeway to list here, and they have been covered by many commenters with greater expertise.
My interest is not so much in I-94’s discrete effects, but in the underlying impact that the built environment has on the socioeconomic structure of our society. This is something I have recognized through my day job, as an advocate for increased funding for public needs like schools, health care and child care.
To explain: With a $17.5 billion surplus, 2023 was a marquee year for public investment that we will not soon repeat. And yet, it is painfully clear how many needs remain. We are still without a fully funded child care system; the future of many state universities is uncertain; historic school funding increases will not forestall cuts in many school districts; and that’s to say nothing of affordable, accessible health care.
That doesn’t mean our money wasn’t well spent, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look to fund more investment in the programs and services that Minnesotans need. But it does mean we need to think carefully about what we can do to build (literally) a more organically cohesive society, so that we can maximize the value of our social investments.
Right now, our physical infrastructure is working against our social aspirations.
Minnesota has the 4th largest road network of any state in the country, while the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro ranks 44th out of 50 major metro areas in terms of pedestrian trips per capita. That doesn’t just mean more public dollars spent on street repairs, it means less foot traffic and fewer neighborly interactions. The necessity of car ownership is also a financial burden on Minnesota workers and families, as are the deleterious health effects of poor air quality.
The lack of foot traffic hurts local businesses, reduces community character and worsens perceptions of public safety. It is a physical manifestation of the steep rise of social isolation that dovetails with declining social trust. These are precisely the sort of underlying factors that complicate the delivery of public services and further a stubbornly individualistic culture.
Too often, policymakers fall into a similar trap, by responding to social challenges in isolation: Targeted grants for community organizations; tax incentives to produce desired behaviors; an endless debate on public safety. We do need to work to address specific issues, but we should also be setting ourselves up for success. And as long as we focus on individual actors while ignoring the world we share, we will be rolling the boulder uphill.
Put another way: If the public investments we make in better schools, affordable housing and other public priorities are the steps we take towards a stronger society, our built infrastructure is the ground we are stepping on. When we create infrastructure that is inherently isolating and expensive, we create a much more challenging path forward. And that is exactly what we have done with Minnesota’s car-centric approach.
The fight for decarbonization offers a good illustration. Right now, many elected officials are focused on subsidizing electric vehicles and appliances. EVs are indeed cleaner than their traditional counterparts, but they are resource-intensive to build, unaffordable for most Minnesotans, and they still contribute far more to our total energy consumption than alternatives like mass transit. Heat pumps are expensive and complicated. As a state, we cannot afford to put an EV in every driveway and we wouldn’t want to. We might want a heat pump in every home, but it’s not a scalable way to reduce emissions.
Subsidizing EVs or home upgrades without reducing our dependence on freeways is sort of like cranking your home heat without putting on a sweater. It’s wasteful, ineffective and plainly un-Minnesotan.
So, what can we do instead?
One proposal is to convert the below-grade highway to a surface-level boulevard with room for new housing, parks, transit and businesses; another proposal focuses on reconnecting the Rondo neighborhood, with a land bridge spanning the highway.
These might sound like outlandish ideas, and they are certainly bold. But it would be a mistake to accept the status quo as an unalterable fact of nature. After all, I-94 was anything but the status quo when transportation authorities displaced 6,000 residents and demolished Black neighborhoods to build it. There’s no reason we couldn’t make an equally impactful decision now, but in a better direction.
Major infrastructure like I-94 is constructed by and for the public and it behooves us to question whether or not we are building in a way that will create thriving communities people want to live in. On that front, I-94 is a clear failure. We need to take a close look at its future.
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[1] Url:
https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/22/people-vs-cars-the-i-94-debate-is-more-important-than-you-think/
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