MPR: The Longest Road

The Longest Road
By Dan Olson
December 6, 1999

The clamor for road building is rising among Twin Cities suburban commuters. Congestion and long ramp-meter waits are fueling the cry for more lanes. But taxpayers should hope for a better deal than the long-delayed 18-mile stretch of Highway 212 through southwestern Twin Cities suburbs. Millions have been spent on the decades-old project and costs are skyrocketing. State officials say they don't know how long it will take or how much it will cost to complete 212.

Many of the 212 drivers will end up here - the link being built to connect it to I-494. Traffic-management officials confirm that the drivers already trying to merge onto 494 on some weekday rush-hour mornings are waiting half an hour at a ramp meter.
Map courtesy Minnesota Department of Transportation.

CAROL MOLNAU says her parents got the word 212 was coming through before she was born in 1949.

Molnau: And before they thought of having children, they were told that Highway 212 would come through their property and there would be a taking.

Fifty years later, State Representative Molnau, a Republican from Chaska and chair of the powerful House Transportation Finance Committee, is waiting for the four-lane road to be built. Chaska is ready. Land for the lanes has been bought. But in neighboring communities right-of-way must still be purchased, a costly hurdle that poses long delays.

Tinklenberg: In the last six years alone, we've experienced about a ten-fold increase in right of way costs.

Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg. Over a longer span, the increase has been twenty fold. Ten years ago land bought for 212 right-of-way in the southwest suburbs cost $5,000 an acre. The cost-per-acre for some parcels now is $110,000 and rising. The outlook is by the end of the next year, 20 percent of the 18-mile-long 212 expansion will be built.

Molnau: My hope on Highway 212 is that before I pass away, I'll have a chance to drive on the new highway.

There's only a hint of sarcasm in Carol Molnau's wish. Better than many, she knows the completion of 212 is likely decades away. Elwyn Tinklenberg.

Tinklenberg: We have not been able to identify funding for the last phases - the most-western phases of that project - until over 20 years out.

Why has it taken so long to finish a road project that legions of lobbyists, business owners and commuters say is desperately needed? Part of the answer is found in the way Minnesota finances road building. Many of the state's roads are built on a pay-as-you-go basis. Literally, when the money is available, the next phase is built. This method avoids plunging the state into debt, but delays projects and drives up costs such as buying right of way. A better way, many argue, is to finance road-building the way many people buy houses: borrow the money. For the state, that means selling bonds. Commissioner Tinklenberg says both methods have to be used. The delicate part is finding the right balance.

Tinklenberg: So that we don't reach a point where some year we have borrowed so much money to advance construction that we can't do a construction program at all because we're simply paying off the bonds that we've sold in previous years.

How much is 212 costing taxpayers? Spending on construction alone so far is $56 million. Right-of-way costs, more difficult to calculate since so many players are involved, will by one estimate exceed $100 million. Hundreds of acres needed for right-of-way through Chanhassen still haven't been purchased. Chanhassen City Council member Linda Jansen hopes they never will. Jansen says the 50-year-old Highway 212 project is outdated and won't serve the people whose homes and property will be affected.

Jansen: Highway 212 will be taking out 380 acres of land in Chanhassen to service that we understand needs to move through the community, but then the next question is where are we moving them to.

Many of the 212 drivers will end up here - the link being built to connect it to I-494. Jansen insists and traffic-management officials confirm, the drivers already trying to merge onto 494 on some weekday rush-hour mornings are waiting half an hour at a ramp meter. Aiming thousands more cars at the congested freeway, she says, is not good planning.

Jansen: We have built a beautiful bottleneck, and it is not going to serve the purpose whatsoever, because, again, we are just rerouting traffic onto a congested intersection.

Riding along the 212 corridor in Linda Jansen's sport utility vehicle gives a hint of why people want the road. Decades ago, 212 was going to be Minnesota's farm-to-market highway. Trucks carrying billions of bushels of corn and soybeans would deliver their payloads to grain elevators along the banks of the Mississippi in downtown Minneapolis. But starting 40 years ago, the elevators moved. Many are now far south, along the banks of the Minnesota River in Shakopee and Savage.

There are still hundreds of trucks, but most take a right here at Chaska and head south. They no longer need the span of 212 laid out by planners. Instead, the demand for the roadway is coming from a new crop of commuters who are buying the thousands of homes sprouting in southwest suburban developments with names like Hawthorne, Reilly Creek Ridge, Autumn Estates, and many others. Jansen says hit the road building brakes, stop the 212 project, and take a fresh look at the question and ask if alternative modes are part of the solution.

Jansen: If we build a road, people will come out and build around the roadway. If we build commuter rail and we cluster development around the commuter rail, then we're encouraging an alternative, so we need the courage to make the changes now while we still can.

At least one alternative is on the drawing board. Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg wants the Metropolitan Council to build a $120 million, two-lane Metro Transit busway from Eden Prairie through St. Louis Park into Minneapolis. Planners say the express-bus service could haul up to 15,000 people a day and help slow the increasing congestion on southwest suburban roadways. Even so, Tinklenberg says the 212 project must proceed because suburban cities have built roads and encouraged development hinging on the project's completion.

Tinklenberg: So much of the planning has been done around the availability of this corridor that now to back and say, "Oops, we've decide not to do that" would really be a tremendous betrayal.

Optimists point to the projected whopping state budget surplus, and a more modest road and bridge fund jackpot as sources that can be tapped to build more lanes. Others, who claim a more realistic outlook, say taxpayers will want a good share of the surplus back. Another set of voices say it's a dead end to think we can build enough roads to keep up with a projected Twin Cities population increase of 650,000 people in the next 20 years without also finding money for buses and rail.

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