[Mpls] Lake St traffic

[Anderson, Mark V(GE Infrastructure)]

David Greene wrote:
26th and 28th streets are very underutilized.  When I don't drive
on Lake Street, I take these streets.  There is almost no traffic
on them, even during rush hour.

Why widen when additional express and local transit service will
take cars off the road _and_ reduce parking needs?

Honestly, there is no reason to widen Lake Street.  If any time
gains are to be had at all, they will be in the seconds range.

Mark Anderson responds:
I do not drive on 26th, 28th or Lake at rush hour, but I do drive them quite frequently on the weekend.  I am quite surprised at David's comments, because I cannot remember driving any of those streets when there was almost no traffic.  Do all the cars clear out at rush hour?  It is true that I've never found 26th or 28th to have stop-and-go traffic, but there's always plenty of cars around me.  I suspect it'd take only about a 20-30% increase in traffic to create stop-and-go traffic, with the resulting increase in idling car fumes.  And my experience with Lake is that it's almost always stop-and-go.  Keeping Lake Street in its current state of gridlock is pretty good if you like fumes and traffic accidents, but otherwise it might be nice to speed up the traffic a bit.  A five lane Lake sounds really good to me.  It's the left turners that create much of the stoppage.

Mark V Anderson