St. Cloud Times reports: No quick fix for busy I-94 through Central Minnesota : Is solution to congestion more lanes, user fees or improved transit?
. I am interviewed by Kirsti Marohn:

“Per capita, traffic levels are about where they were in the late 1990s, said David Levinson, a civil engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. And there’s no guarantee of growth in the next two decades, he said.

“It depends on where people want to live,” he said. Any population could be offset by the fact that people aren’t driving as much, Levinson said.

…

Levinson said there’s also research underway on mileage-based user fees, which charge people a fee for which roads they use according to the time of day. For example, a motorist might pay 10 cents a mile during peak hours, but 5 cents a mile during off-peak times.

Charging more during peak hours would mean people who didn’t have to travel during those times would find a different time to travel, Levinson said.

Internationally, a few large cities such as London and Stockholm have tried this approach. Many toll roads also have off-peak discounts to help spread out the demand, Levinson said.”

Lots of good graphics in the original article, worth the read.

This is a much more thorough article than one normally sees in the Star Tribune (which ran the abbreviated version from AP, without all the cool data visualizations).