Serious congestion invaded the Twin Cities in the 1990s, interrupting about 40 years when we could think about traffic the way people in Arizona think about snow -- as someone else's problem.

But with a million more people likely to live here within 30 years, today's traffic is going to seem like the good old days. Over the next two decades travel delays will double. The worst bottlenecks, mostly in the suburbs, will go begging for relief because funding exists to tackle only a third of them.

People wonder how this problem got to this level and what to do. The short explanation is that we grew and got more affluent. Roaring from 17th place in U.S. household income to fifth, we used growing wealth to buy new, larger homes on spacious lots, farther from the metropolitan center. We drive more miles.

How best to respond is the subject of a report just published by the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies. The report finally cuts through the fog of competing explanations and points to one big policy mistake of the past and two policy changes that hold the most promise for the future.

First, the past. Today's congestion is the most visible symptom of state and regional policies in which land use and transportation decisions were made separately. It's a system that put employment centers and shopping and homes in different zones and made automobiles necessary to get from one place to another. The region spread out, consuming more land. Governments chased (sometimes induced) development with new roads and schools. Retail and businesses followed. People, as it's said, drove until they qualified for the house of their dreams.

But this system, which seemed to work well enough for most metro residents, has reached its limits and now imposes costs beyond what people seem willing to pay. Just maintaining today's larger road system will soon consume most anticipated revenues. The region is rising on the EPA's bad-air charts, and there's concern about Minnesota's most treasured natural resource: clean, available water.

What to do? Our studies point to better use of market tools as the most promising path. Government is certainly not going to tell people whether or when to drive cars or where to buy homes. All policymakers can do is retool the system so that people have more choices than they do today and pay honest prices for their decisions.

More choices

Most of us prefer the flexibility and privacy of cars. But why have a system with no other choices? Research shows the most effective means of producing choices: Start with land use policies that encourage the development of activity-rich destinations. Where jobs are mixed with retail shops, restaurants, entertainment and education, clinics and civic spaces, more people, whether they live near or far away, will use transit to get there and walk from place to place.

Most of today's transit riders are headed toward these activity centers, such as the two downtowns and the university district, but there's potential for more. Town centers with broad sidewalks, restaurants, shops and offices are making a comeback from Burnsville to Hopkins to Maple Grove, and housing is just a step behind. Future transit systems, including walking and biking, could accommodate these popular destinations, which are also becoming housing magnets for young professionals, newly arrived immigrants and lifestyle-shifting boomers.

Fair pricing

Another overdue market tool is pricing. Back in the mid-1990s the public rejected tolls on Hwys. 394 and 212 in the western suburbs. But 70 percent of the publicly paid costs of the automobile system are tucked away, hidden from view in a complex system of property taxes and state aids. In an era of unlikely increases in taxes, policymakers should consider making these costs more transparent by requiring users to pay more directly.

Research suggests a similar dose of market reality for new housing and commercial development, where hidden subsidies often mask costs. Honest prices would restore real market effects. Decisions about both development and transportation would make more efficient use of scarce resources.

More choices and fair pricing would get better results than the paranoia and propaganda that now poison transportation politics. So, if the problem is that our current development pattern has reached its limit, then the challenge would seem to be one of rebalancing policy back toward a market of more choices and fair prices. After a generation of rhetoric-rich but research-poor debate, now we have facts to face.

Copyright 2003 Star Tribune. Republished here with the permission of the Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written consent of the Star Tribune.