urbanMSP

a very urbanist response to the snowmagedon happening in ATL right now. An interesting read for sure.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... uqiSyiIB95

15 lanes? Wow, why can't we build highways like that.

I've noticed around the Twin Cities that freeways can have a pretty huge variation in travel time from day to day. One of my coworkers lives in Hopkins and commutes to downtown St. Paul. At good times, it's a half-hour drive. When weather is not-so-great or there are crashes, it jumps to 90 minutes. I'm not sure how bad it would have been today (she tends to work from home at least one day a week because of traffic).

In contrast, my bus running on surface streets typically takes about 25 minutes between picking me up by Como Park and dropping me off in downtown St. Paul. I think the biggest on-bus delays I've experienced have been on the order of 10 minutes, and that's only happened once or twice in the past year (delays before the bus even gets to me have been much more frequent, though). To a certain extent, that shows the resilience of surface street grids -- on the other hand, it kind of underscores the low speed of the bus and how little time it spends in motion in the first place (probably only about 12 of those 25 minutes).

I heard things got really bad in Uptown with our snow this morning, though -- one person reported giving up on a bus after it only made it 7 blocks in 50 minutes. I didn't have any delays this morning, and it even seemed like the bus ran faster than normal since there wasn't much competing traffic on the road.

Still, aside from the most crowded areas, it's probably a good idea to encourage people to click the little "Avoid highways" checkbox in Google Maps as they choose their route home on bad weather days. It won't work for everyone, but each person who avoids the freeway helps keep it open for others (especially considering how any incident can drastically reduce the effective capacity of a freeway). Transit should be a part of that, though unfortunately MARTA had to halt their bus service because things got so bad. Their subway/metro system kept running, as far as I can tell, but wasn't operating at full capacity either. They do have a problem with fragementation of service with buses, though -- even though we have a few opt-out carriers in the Twin Cities, the region is dominated by Metro Transit, and the others cooperate pretty well with them.

Anyway, I don't know much else about Atlanta, so I'll stop...

From what I understand about Atlanta, is that the city is reliant on arterials and freeways as there really isn't a good grid.

Additionally, the MARTA rail really only serves the central city, and some of the rougher areas at that.

I heard things got really bad in Uptown with our snow this morning, though

Can confirm. My 25 minute bus ride took over an hour this morning. Spent about 20 minutes just getting through the Hennepin Lyndale bottleneck

From what I understand about Atlanta, is that the city is reliant on arterials and freeways as there really isn't a good grid.

Additionally, the MARTA rail really only serves the central city, and some of the rougher areas at that.

it does go to the airport south of town

We're about the same size as Atlanta. Traffic here in MSP also is horrible. What do we have now, 15 freeways. You can't go anywhere without hitting a traffic jam. It's time to remove the freeways. Urban sprawl is destroying the quality of life here.

Traffic here is only bad in rush hour, which is a problem in all cities. Atlanta also has 5.8 million people, which is essentially twice the population of the Twin Cities.

Urban sprawl is 70% of the Twin Cities by population. Removing the freeways will just cause economic meltdown, as it will be impossible for suburbanites to get anywhere.

We're about the same size as Atlanta. Traffic here in MSP also is horrible. What do we have now, 15 freeways. You can't go anywhere without hitting a traffic jam. It's time to remove the freeways. Urban sprawl is destroying the quality of life here.

lol that you think our traffic is bad or even comparable to Atlanta's. in the last worst traffic study I saw for urban metros we scored 45th out of 50... so our traffic is not as bad as 45 other metros, and we're the 17th largest?

Atlanta also has 5.8 million people, which is essentially twice the population of the Twin Cities.

2012 estimates has MSP at nearly 3.8 Million. Just a fun fact.

It depends on which definition you use.

CSA: Atlanta (10494 sq mi), 6.09 million; Minneapolis (9556 sq mi), 3.76 million
MSA: Atlanta (8376 sq mi), 5.46 million; Minneapolis (6364 sq mi), 3.42 million
Urban area: Atlanta (2645 sq mi), 4.52 million; Minneapolis (1021 sq mi), 2.65 million

The CSA for Minneapolis is a 17 county region including St. Cloud, the MSA is a 13-county area, not including St. Cloud, and the Urban area is the one that I generally use, as it counts pretty much only the continuously-urbanized area.

And here's a map of CSAs: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... o_Rico.gif

TC, do you know why Miami or Phoenix don't have CSAs? I just noticed that on the map.

As far as I understand it, it's based on how many employees work in the adjacent MSA. So perhaps Miami and Phoenix do not have enough people working in the adjacent MSAs for them to become CSAs.

From Wikipedia: " The primary distinguishing factor between a CSA and an MSA is that the social and economic ties between the individual MSAs within a CSA are at lower levels than between the counties within an MSA.[1] CSAs represent multiple metropolitan or micropolitan areas that have a moderate degree of employment interchange. CSAs often represent regions with overlapping labor and media markets."

From what I understand about Atlanta, is that the city is reliant on arterials and freeways as there really isn't a good grid.

Additionally, the MARTA rail really only serves the central city, and some of the rougher areas at that.

Exactly. There are only limited ways to get from one place to another. 4-5 lane wide avenues are the norm and referred to as 'connectors.' Meaning they are the only real way to get from one point to another.

For a little perspective, my dogs vet is about 8 miles away in a straight line. I had to drive 25 miles to get there.

Marta has more than just the downtow. Going to Sandy Springs is rough? you must consider all bus routes in minneapolis "rough" then

I took te MARTA from downtown to the airport. It picks you up in a bum park and cruises through an area I think would objectively be characterized as "rough." I'm sure it goes through some nicer areas too.

I took te MARTA from downtown to the airport. It picks you up in a bum park and cruises through an area I think would objectively be characterized as "rough." I'm sure it goes through some nicer areas too.

The only nice direction is north from downtown. I don't suggest going west, either.

They recently cleared out many of the bum parks, as well.

I keep wondering why Atlanta is indeed so sprawly and freeway-centric, given that they've had heavy rail subways for over three decades. Thoughts?

I keep wondering why Atlanta is indeed so sprawly and freeway-centric, given that they've had heavy rail subways for over three decades. Thoughts?

If you look at a map of the rail system, you will see that very little of the MARTA system actually leaves the confines of the city. The suburbs either opted out of did now want the rail going into their cities.

The MARTA is a bit underfunded too, thanks to a weak regional transit authority. 3 of 5 metro counties opted out of transit.