Carol Becker looks at how hard it is to reverse commute (city to suburb)
on Metro Transit and bemoans the lack of what she thinks would be adequate
funding.
If she feels that way, she should be fighting the Hiawatha lrt line, which
is now a documented $95-99 million above the official, "we won't spend more
than", $548.6 million budget. The Met council's dream of doubling the number
of buses by 2020 was projected at only $440 million. So the area is well
on its way to spending 50% more on replacing buses with rail when it could
do so much more.
Interestingly, the recently released report on the possibility of improving
transit in the Riverview corridor in Saint Paul refers to the 2020 expansion
plan and assumes that it will be implemented, then projects that the number
of transit boardings in 2020 will only be about 40% higher than the 1995
figure. The 1999 results were already about 15% above the 1999 numbers, so
that 2020 figure would only be about 21% above today's numbers.
You need to go farther than the council's quoting of our area's rank in per-
capita funding of transit because such a comparison includes areas like
Portland which is way above the median expenditure nationally and throws off
comparisons. What is know in statistics as an outlying data point.
Bruce Gaarder
Highland Park Saint Paul
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
