Quote Originally Posted by Junjie View Post
Excellent points. This is a great opportunity to break up some of the "moat" around downtown while at the same time saving money compared to a full rebuild.

The I-94 expansion, on the other hand, calls to mind this graph of US DOT vehicle-miles traveled projections compared to reality [[black line). I'd imagine MDOT has a similar record:



http://www.ssti.us/2013/12/new-trave...ate-this-time/
I hope my comment isn't so generic to be of little value:

My guess is that the Great Recession might have accounted for some fraction, say 1/2, of the under utilization [[below projection).

As a general rule, I would be VERY, VERY careful about using any statistics from the period of say 2008 - 2010. Folks, for political reasons, were extrapolating data from that period and extending it 5, 10 or 20 years.

That might have been more nefarious than even silly.

One can not postulate a rule based on the exception to the rule [[The Great Recession).

The two 'exceptions to the rule' for the last 20 years have been the 'boom times' of the 1990 [[with a federal budget surplus to boot) and the Great Recession.

May not see either for a long, long time.