All of you glass half empty types lighten up...the
Vikes have 8 games a year (add acouple for
playoffs)...the 240 two-car capacity is more than
enough to handle the 80+ each Twins home game gets!
jon kelland
bryant
--- David Brauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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> A few days ago, I referenced a story on the limited
> carrying capacity of
> light-rail. The PiPress� Rachel Stassen-Berger
> generously forwarded me the
> original piece, below:
>
> LIGHT RAIL WON'T TAME TRAFFIC AFTER VIKINGS GAMES
> Published on 08/16/1999
>
> If you were hoping the new $548 million light-rail
> line slated to stop at
> the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis would ease
> traffic after a Vikings
> game, expect your hopes to be dashed.
>
> The one line - which is planned to run from downtown
> Minneapolis out of the
> city and along Hiawatha Avenue to the Mall of
> America in Bloomington - won't
> help much in shuttling folks from Dome events. The
> line can only handle
> about 3,000 people over the course of an hour - and
> that's only if every
> single rail car works and is filled to capacity.
>
> ``I don't want people saying light rail will empty
> the stadium,'' said
> William G. Stead, of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade &
> Douglas Inc. in
> Minneapolis, a project consultant on the Hiawatha
> Light Rail line slated to
> be open by the year 2003.
> Only 120 people, at most, can fit in each light-rail
> car. Currently,
> planners have budgeted to run two-car trains instead
> of three-car trains
> along the light-rail line as a cost-cutting measure.
> That means every three
> to seven minutes, 240 people - at most - can board
> the trains.
>
> Compare that 240 to the more than 60,000 people who
> pour from the Metrodome
> after most Vikings events, and the future of transit
> looks very much like
> the present.
>
> ``Washington Avenue is at a standstill for quite a
> while'' after Vikings
> games, said Sharon Lubinski, inspector of the
> Minneapolis Police
> Department's Downtown Command. ``It happens, and I
> think folks expect that
> .. Minnesotans don't use mass transit. They use
> cars.''
>
> In the post-light rail world, cars will continue to
> dominate the post-game
> traffic.
>
> ``Light rail is not the answer to clearing out
> everybody that is the
> Metrodome because there is a limited capacity,''
> said Bob Winter, light rail
> planner for the Minnesota Department of
> Transportation.
>
> But every little bit of traffic diverted onto mass
> transit helps, said
> transit planners.
>
> ``It will give another alternative, obviously, to
> anyone that wants to use
> that alternative,'' Winter said.
>
> If 3,000 people use light rail after a game, that
> means about 1,500 fewer
> cars rushing onto the roads after dome events.
> ``That's going to help ... I don't want to
> over-promise what light rail can
> do or under-promise either,'' said Stead. In Boston
> or New York City, where
> Stead has worked on mass-transit projects, multiple
> lines in several
> directions have made a major difference to traffic
> congestion, he said. That
> possibility doesn't exist with just one line.
>
> To make light rail more accessible to Metrodome
> attendees, there also is
> talk, in the Minneapolis Department of Public Works,
> of building an
> additional ``events only'' platform on the north
> side of the dome with a
> pedestrian bridge to the stadium. However, an extra
> platform won't guarantee
> that people will want to ride the light rail trains.
>
> Planners have images of the mass transit of the
> future - with several lines
> criss-crossing the Twin Cities - but that will not
> happen for at least a
> decade, said Winter, in the most optimistic
> estimates. Until then, the Twin
> Cities will only have one choice.
> ``Since we have one line that goes off in one
> direction, everyone who leaves
> the Metrodome is not going to want to go in that
> direction,'' Winter said.
>
> --Forwarded by David Brauer, King Field � Ward 10
>
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