PL PACKET 11152005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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3 Three scenarios for highways Growing the transit system The TPP's highway plan–developed in close coordination — The transit plan is with the Minnesota Department of Transportation–focuses ® o intended to increase investments on maintaining and managing the existing ridership by 50 percent, 657-mile highway system, removing bottlenecks and adding or 36 million riders per capacity where possible. year, by 2020–with the goal of doubling ridership by 2030. The How far and how fast the region can go in improving the =1 strategies for achieving the 2020 highway system hinges on the success of proposals to target include: r- increase federal and state funding. Because of the political uncertainties, the plan outlines three scenarios: ■Adding new express bus routes, i 1_'i limited-stop routes, improved frequency o Constrained Plan Scenario: Based on current funding levels, and longer hours of service, as well as this scenario estimates about $283.5 million a year will be available. additional passenger amenities such as Of this total, $162 million would be needed to maintain and manage transit centers, bus stop shelters and the current highway system.Another $29.5 million would be needed for park-and-ride lots. other purposes, leaving just $92 million for expansion projects. Based on F current cost estimates, the region would be able to build by 2030 only °Funding enhancements such asr those expansion projects previously planned for construction by 2025. bus-only shoulders, ramp-meter bypasses and signal priority that give buses cv ® Unconstrained Plan Scenario: This scenario illustrates the travel-time advantages in mixed traffic. magnitude of highway investments required to hold congestion on the °Providing additional fare incentives ` metropolitan highway system at the same level that existed in 1998. Its such as the MetroPass now available implementation would require about a 425 percent increase in highway through employers and the U-Pass avail- funding over the current levels, admittedly an unlikely prospect. able to University of Minnesota students. ° ■Developing a network of dedicated ® Constrained Plus 30% Plan Scenario: This scenario assumes a 30 "transitways" –including bus rapid percent increase in highway funding over the Constrained Plan Scenario. transit, light rail and/or commuter rail– Of the $368.5 million in annual resources, nearly$200 million would be with mode choices based on a usercarerail available for expansion projects.This scenario would accelerate by 10 years cost-benefit analysis.The region now has the improvements planned by 2030 under the Constrained Plan scenario. cost-benefit such t analysis. nsitways: bus rapid transit In addition, it would provide funds to expand the entire I-494/694 beltway on Isuc and LRT in the Hiawathait to six lanes, and expand and upgrade certain minor arterials. cor- ridor. Five additional transitways should be added between 2005 and 2020, with work done to advance three more. The cost of implementing the transit plan: $500 million in capital investments to grow the bus system and $800 million to $1.4 billion to build the transitways, _ with an additional$120 million a year for operating costs by 2020.