If Roadguy were a more tech-savvy blogger, he’d have the strains of “Yesterday” or “Those Were the Days” wistfully and automatically playing on your computer as you read this post. Why? Because it seems like only yesterday that motorists were rejoicing over the new lanes on Hwy. 100. When the project was finished last fall, alert reader Molly even made use of her exclamation-point key:

I’m so delighted with the results of this construction project. Traffic flow both north- and southbound is so much better! Yay MN-DOT!

But in the world of traffic congestion, seldom is heard an encouraging word, and this front-page story in today’s Strib describes how the new lanes have attracted thousands more motorists, causing slowdowns and erasing the gains that many commuters had made. “If you build it, they will come,” says the mayor of St. Louis Park, and come they have. But they also come if you don’t build (Crosstown, anyone?), so the search for solutions is complicated.

Today Roadguy wants to hear about you and your bottleneck (or former bottleneck), whether it’s the I-94 or 35E bridges over the Mississippi, the widened stretch of 694 in the northwest suburbs, the tight spots on Cedar Avenue, the former narrows in front of 3M, or just little old Hwy. 100. How have things changed in recent years? Does traffic always expand to fill the space allowed? What are your bottleneck driving strategies? Post your free-flowing comments below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.