Andy Driscoll talks about transportation on this day
when ground will be broken for an LRT line in
Minneapolis:
> Mr. Chandler challenges information that has been
known in the transportation arena for decades. I-394
may > be poorly designed, but there IS no good design
if highways are built as relief valves for freeway
parking
> lots.
The problem with the Twin Cities transportation system
is that the bias is to have people drive automobiles.
We add 40 to 50,000 people to the metro area each year
and probably at least half that many automobiles to
the system. Look at what Maple Grove is doing: They
are asking people NOT to ride the bus because they are
providing a subsidy to the busses that leave Maple
Grove for downtown Minneapolis. Somewhere in their
infinite wisdom the city fathers and mothers in Maple
Grove decided to opt out of the Metro Transit system
and now they decide that they don't want to pay for a
bus system. Are the southwest metro systems far
behind?
The good news is that transit ridership is somewhat
increasing, not as much as it needs to, but some.
We can point out things that could be done to better
design highways all day, a more important question is
how we move people out of their automobiles,
especially at peak times.
> Build it and they will come. Don't build it and
alternative transit modes will be used.
Build alternate transit modes and they will come to.
We are starting to see that with the work that MTCO
has done in the past few years to increase ridership.
We even have some late night busses now, something
unheard of in the past.
Then we have a Governor who doesn't think we should
tax automobiles which has lead to a decrease in money
going to the highway fund. The solution, we hear, is
to constitutionally dedicate some sales tax revenue to
the highway fund. Dedicating tax revenues is a bad
idea, it eliminates the discretion of our elected
representatives to make good decisions based on the
current circumstances.
We need to get the Governor out of his Porsche and
into a '91 Dodge and maybe his thinking will become a
bit more rational.
> Why is it always the people on the right who want to
enable more pollution, more congestion, more cement,
> more clear-cutting of built homes, etc.? It really
is a curiosity.
Its fear, Andy. You have people who think my
neighborhood in downtown Minneapolis is dangerous.
They just "know" that if they get on a bus they will
get mugged, that's if they don't get k-i-l-l-e-d.
Sorry folks, the facts don't bear that out, downtown
and the Loring Park neighborhood are safe, just take a
look at the stats.
The good news. If we close down the 35W/Crosstown
junction for 3 or 4 years, people will learn to take a
bus as that will be much better than a 2 hour drive in
from Eden Prairie.
Terrell Brown
Loring Park (writing today from Denver, CO where they
do have a LRT line and FREE bus service on the 16th
Street Mall thru downtown)
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