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We'll hear a lot of voices speaking about transportation funding in Minnesota this year as lawmakers make this debate a priority at the Capitol. 

But Chuck Marohn still thinks a big facet is missing from the transportation debate: reforming the way we think about how to spend any money already raised.

"When we're talking about transportation, we often treat it in one dimension: It's just roads and bridges and transit," he said on The Daily Circuit Tuesday. "Transportation investments are economic developments; they are community development. They have a social implication, a cultural implication, political implications, but we just fund them out of one silo. We miss all of that nuance."

 of the group he founded, Strong Towns. While transportation officials cite the town of Baxter as a classic case of transportation helping a town, Marohn said he thinks it actually showcases everything wrong with current funding: a Ponzi scheme where new roads create strips of big-box national chains that bring instant gratification and long-term pain:

Marohn said we need to have a third option on the table:

Strong Towns' Charles Marohn on how to reform MN transportation by MPR News

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Tom Weber

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Charles Marohn

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Emily Kaiser

Chuck Marohn thinks Minnesota towns are pulled into Ponzi schemes where new roads create strips of big-box national chains that bring instant gratification and long-term pain.

What's missing from the Minnesota transportation debate

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