Access Across the Bridge

In the case of the St. Croix crossing, roadway infrastructure was the starting point in the cycle. Mapping accessibility change before and after the bridge opening in fall 2017 reveals important details about the results of this infrastructure (Figure 1.4):

• The overwhelming access benefit of the project accrued to places in Wisconsin (to the east), concentrated along the corridor leading to the new bridge
• There was little to no accessibility benefit to places in Minnesota (to the west) along the corridors leading to the new bridge, and most places saw higher access before the bridge opened.

This summary of the impact of this large project reflects two facts:

• The vast majority of regional destinations are located on the Minnesota side
• The vast majority of the regional population is located on the Minnesota side

While not quite a “bridge to nowhere,” the St. Croix project at first glance appears to concentrate its benefit in places few people lived, in only one of the two states involved. It may have served to facilitate long-distance, rather than daily regional travel, which certainly suits those heading from the Twin Cities to a weekend lake home in northern Wisconsin. But is alleviating congestion for a few summer Fridays truly the main impact of this massive piece of infrastructure? 

Looking beyond opening day to long-term impacts, consider the transportation impact on land use decisions. Specifically, since the largest hotspots of accessibility are in places with few people, we would expect that developers and residents would seek to take advantage of those locations as origins which now have much greater potential to reach destinations easily. A first question is whether the resulting increase in accessibility shows up in the value of the land which experiences it. In two ways, it becomes clear that this investment in a river crossing had tremendous finacnial benefit for individual land holders and the tax rolls of towns in Wisconsin. Examining parcel data which include annual tax assessment values from 2016-2020, we estimate a valuation elasticity of 0.35 overall, meaning each 10% increase in accessibility adds 3.5% to the value of parcels experiencing it, all other things constant. And some communities were experiencing more than double that increase in accessibility following bridge opening (Figure 1.4).

Second, examining permits issued for residential development, we move to the municipal level, where relative change in access thanks to the bridge is notable across the northern tier of the study area. For this evaluation we divide St. Croix County into two halves, the North corridor along State Hwy 64 and the South corridor along Interstate 94. Those areas seeing increases in access to destinations by auto, are exactly the places where housing permits increased the most from 2015 to 2021 (Figure 1.5).

There are most definitely new residences, and new residents, following the access that was created by the bridge. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune profiled some of the new residents, wondering whether they had arrived “by happenstance or by design.” But perhaps most interestingly, residents described themselves as “still Minnesotan” with the author noting the divisive cultural marker of Minnesota Vikings football pennants flying in Wisconsin. This feeling arises because the destinations they associate with being Minnesotan, with places they frequented while living in Minnesota, are still highly accessible from the far side of the bridge. Roadway infrastructure changes accessibility, which changes the value and use of land.