Question 3: To what extent do you intend to support investment in maintaining Minnesota’s highway system and expanding its mass transit system given the age of the state’s highway system, population and business growth, and the mass transit needs of an aging and dispersed population?

HUMPHREY Response to Question 3

Minnesota can’t put off making needed transportation investments any longer. We have got to stop patching when we need to rebuild. We have to make our bridges and highways safe. We have to get serious about mass transit. We cannot, in good conscience, keep trying to hand the tab over to the next generation to fix it and pay for it.

Minnesota needs to put long-term transportation investments on a firm financial footing. That means both more revenue and reduced costs. We need to explore a gas tax increase, but we also must seriously explore the regional .5 cent sales tax or rededication of the sales tax on motor vehicles, particularly for mass transit needs. At the same time, we need to examine every option to keep costs under control:

"super twos" instead of 4 lanes, "smart" highways instead of just more highways, telecommuting and procurement reform.

We need to make a paradigm shift (great leap forward) when it comes to mass transit. We must consider land use, taxation, and development policies steered toward compact, transit-oriented development. By 2010 if we don’t have a working hub and spoke system of dedicated transitways in the metro area and significant progress toward stemming the increase in single occupancy vehicle miles, our long-term prospects will not be bright.

Our vision must be bigger than ever before. Our corridor thinking must not just be metro; it must embrace the regional diagonal from south of Rochester to west of St. Cloud and the other high use transportation corridors of our state. We must think and act anew if we are to not only build a bridge to the 21^st century, but be able to drive and ride over it.