2040 Comprehensive Plan: Envision Shakopee

ROADWAY ISSUES

Running Header Place Holder

258 Running Header Place Holder 2 1 3 4 6 7 8 Transportation 5 Running Header Place Holder Running Header Place Holder Running Header Place Holder Running Header Place Holder Running Header Place Holder

LONG COMMUTES DRIVEN BY REGIONAL HOUSING AND EMPLOYMENT PATTERNS The mobility needs of any community depends on how far residents must travel to access employment, schools, services and amenities. As a community on the outer ring of the south metro, it is to be expected that residents will need to travel farther to access daily needs than residents of more centrally located communities. However, Shakopee stands out among its outer-ring peers for being home to major centers of employment that draw on a workforce mostly living elsewhere in the region. The existing housing stock in Shakopee is skewed toward households with incomes greater than the prevailing wages of the workforce employed within Shakopee. As a result, Shakopee is simultaneously a bedroom community for professionals and a regional employment destination for hourly workers. This mismatch between housing and employment patterns often produces long commutes challenging to fulfill without driving. While average commute times are in the middle of the range for communities in the region, community members have expressed a desire for shorter commute times and housing closer to employment centers in order to improve their quality of life. CONGESTED RIVER CROSSINGS The U.S. Highway 169 bridge over the Minnesota River provides the primary lifeline between Shakopee and the rest of the metro area. Highways 101 and 41 provide the other two options for river crossings, and all three are expected to have traffic volumes greater than their daily capacity by 2040. Residents engaged through stakeholder

outreach expressed concern over the effects daily freeway congestion has on access to crucial resources. A misalignment between housing and employment patterns exacerbates the issue by increasing the number of people crossing these bridges to access work in both commuting directions. The travel demand forecasting information provided by Scott County also indicated that the currently planned 2040 improvements at the state and county level do not include additional river crossing capacity for motor vehicles, although MNDOT has selected a preferred site for a future TH-41 river crossing. Building our way out of this congestion is unlikely, and Shakopee will need to use other methods to address this roadway issue. SOME STREETS DETRACT FROM THE SENSE OF PLACE Streets are an integral part of the built environment, and every street should contribute to the sense of place in a community. However, the application of a conventional functional classification-based design template has resulted in overly-wide streets that result in high-speed traffic in some areas of Shakopee where high-speed traffic may not be appropriate. Instead of using a context sensitive approach that takes into consideration the adjacent land use, this type of planning focuses primarily on automobile traffic volumes. For example, the design of Highway 101 through Downtown emphasizes throughput of drivers instead of the adjacent businesses, residences and parks. These types of streets can become barriers and detract from the sense of place.

ENVISION SHAKOPEE | SECTION IV: BUILT ENVIRONMENT