Lrt is being built because it is supposed to make a city "world class", like a pro sports palace and because the Highway 55 right-of-way was in hand. There isn't enough ridership there to justify it. The projected 20 year increase in ridership on lrt is about 2% of current daily trips on Metro Transit. The proposed doubling of the number of buses operated by MCTO projects a 41% increase in daily trips on the system for an expenditure of $440 million, which will be somewhere between 40% and 65% of the final cost of Hiawatha choo-choo. That's a 20-fold increase in ridership for much less money. 30 to 40 times the bang for the buck. People want more buses, more frequently, over longer hours. Instead, MCTO wants to raise the bus fare by a quarter. That's probably an early attempt to avoid the signed agreement that if property taxes have to be raised to pay for lrt operating expenses, that they only be raised in Hennepin County. The expected minimum loss in ridership due to the fare increase is greater than the projected increase of choo-choo ridership in twenty years. Just pretend that everybody in the suburbs wants to work downtown and shop downtown and you get the fantasy about lrt. Hard facts say that 69% of the jobs are outside of the two central cities as well as 75% of the people. Just look at the DOT TMC traffic info map during the afternoon rush. The usual biggest congested sections are I-494, Highway 169, and Highway 100 between 78th Street and I-394, as well as eastbound Highway 62 and eastbound I-494 heading up to I-35W. It's obvious that none of this traffic is coming from downtown. The Met Council did a Travel Behavior Inventory based on 1990 data. Conclusions (which would probably probably not be printed now, since they go against the Council's current ideology) include: Comparing 1970 and 1990 "Households own more cars than they once did, more people have become licensed drivers, and people are choosing to drive alone more and more. This is especially true of work trips. The work trip is repetitive, and most people make it as short as possible. Travellers wish to control their arrival time and not be dependent on others. This encourages people to take their own cars and guarantee themselves reliability and timeliness." "Given a major regional increase in travel, and the physical growth of the metropolitan area, it is surprising that average travel times have actually declined since 1970. As expected, average trip distances have increased because of large-scale suburban growth, which also spreads out points of travel origin and destination." As far as congestion goes, it reports that work-oriented trips are only a small part of the rush hour traffic (30% at 8am and 25% at 5pm). It doesn't break out school versus shopping versus other, but you can infer from other figures that shopping is about 25% of the 5pm traffic. So, all you need to do to reduce congestion is to ban shoppers and people driving for social purposes from the roads during those times. <grin> Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] Clark Griffith wrote: > Will someone explain why a city that is having problems with retail > sales is so ardently behind a light rail project that can only drain > consumers from its core. It makes no sense. To invest the money that > is being invested here, there should be a pressing, real problem that > needs to be dealt with. I drive from the city to the Airport and Mall > regulary, and it takes twenty minutes most of the time. There is no > problem, certainly not one that justifies a cost that is approaching > $1billion for a system that will require annual subsidies for its > lifetime. > > The only reasons that I have heard are: 1. There is availble land > (right of way) and light rail is cool, and 2. The light rail system will > link the two highest population centers in the state. (I'll let the > later reason sink in for a while, but it comes from a light rail > proponent). > > I was involved for a while with light rail in the mid-80s when the > plan was to link staple and Minneapolis with a line that ran through the > University. It made very good sense to link those centers, but I just > don't understand why the city of Minneapolis would want to make it easy > to get to the Mall of America, especially when we have spent os much on > the convention center so that visitors would fill our downtown stores, > hotels, restaurants and other facilities. _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
