Center’s New Traffic Congestion Campaign Revs Up Media Interest

American Experiment’s new campaign to rev up awareness of the policies and politics behind the Twin Cities’ traffic congestion has caught the attention of Fox 9 News reporter Christina Palladino.

Getting stuck in traffic is now a daily ritual for many Minnesotans in the Twin Cities metro area, but one group is offering a solution to break up the congestion.

Some Minnesota freeways rank in the top 50 rankings for bottleneck congestion. While most drivers just deal with it, others are pushing to change the flow of traffic.

“The solution to congestion is more lanes,” said John Hinderaker, the president of a Twin Cities think tank called The Center for the American Experiment.

Twin Cities commuters, truckers and commercial drivers remain stuck in traffic congestion on average for more than one work week every year at an estimated $4 billion cost to Minnesota’s economy. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“We don’t have a million people living on a peninsula like San Francisco or Boston—there’s no reason we can’t have an adequate highway system,” said Hinderaker.

Hinderaker says too much state funding goes towards expanding Metro Transit and installing bike lanes rather than improving roads.

“These trains are not really about transportation they’re really about re-organizing the Twin Cities—so that lines are built and future development all takes place along the lines,” he said.

You can see the entire Fox 9 News video on our traffic congestion campaign at this link.