Kurt Waltenbaugh's comments are followed by my response in larger text. I did not respond to every one of Kurt's comments. ---- Minneapolis is one a small handful of major North America (and probably global) cities to not have a decent mass transit system. This could only be true if you believe that the automobile is not a transit system. In addition, the existence of an LRT system is no measure of decency. There are no reports I've seen about transit alternatives that place rail and / or buses above the auto as the preferred transit choice. The auto is a life-style choice, along with your favorite beer, vacation choice, and spouse. Mpls and the metro area are wrestling with growing gridlock because political leaders failed to connect the basic truths about economic growth, freedom, and the ability to make a personal choice. ---- a poor system of buses-to-the-central-core that ignores major commuters We do need commuter tools, and our bus transit system has been egregiously slow to respond to changing demographics, which drive transportation choices and costs. We need more inter-suburban transit, and city neighborhood step van feeder systems. ---- commuter lanes are underutilized, and our answer (so far!) has been to add more lanes of freeway. The reason commuter lanes are underutilized is a result of the freedom of choice I noted above. Contrary to what you may believe, adding more lanes is the fastest, most cost effective, and least costly per passenger mile option known to all transportation planners. The trick is how you add lanes, which doesn't necessarily require more right-of-way land. If you're curious to know more, check the web for references to building out of congestion. ---- Immigration isn't slowing down. Isn't this a great country. ---- Want to know what that does to a growing city? Has anyone ever been to Los Angeles? Anthony Downs, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institute, searched for links between aspects of sprawl and urban decline. His team studied 162 urban areas and used nine sprawl indicators (such as housing density, transit availability, zoning practices, and such) and compared these to measures of crime and poverty rates. The conclusion: even if every metro area he studied had growth boundaries and development controls to force people to live closer in, central cities would have still been in trouble. Sprawl is not the cause of urban decline. Urban decline drives citizens out, fostering sprawl. Yes, our metro area is straining under the blessing and curse of growth. But there is no evidence anywhere that suggests that LRT can make a serious, and cost effective, dent in the traffic concerns brought about by vigorous growth. ---- Yes, LRT is expensive, but that is the price we have to pay for not investing in the city during an earlier decade. ---- The pain -- I call it the Detroit plan -- of lousy roads can be fixed faster, cheaper, and more effectively than any form of LRT. LRT will become a viable transit system, but much later in our maturity as a metro area. Pound-for-pound, mile-for-mile, dollar-for-dollar, energy therm-for-therm life cycle costs to manufacture,erect, operate, maintain, and improve rail systems dwarfs autos and roads. DOT statistics radically dispute the notion that rail systems will carry more passengers than highways. In the context of already performing rail systems --- the average new US LRT line will carry 80% less passenger volume than will two lanes of freeway (one lane operating in each direction). Compared to a suburban arterial roadway LRT lines will carry 50% less passenger volume. Local political leadership decided some 20 to 30 years ago that it was more fun to play with social programs than basic infrastructure. ---- Look at Portland (OR) for an example. ---- Did you know that Portland has the same sprawl characteristics as LA? Portland, who local planners point to as a model, is barely half as dense as LA. Flip this around, and you could say that Portland has consumed twice as much land as LA to house the same number of people. Denver is densifying at a rate about 2.5 times greater than Portland --- and that was before rail hit Denver. About two-thirds of Portland's 27,000 average weekday light rail riders in 1996 were former bus riders. In Portland, traffic volumes on metro freeways are up 70 percent since before light rail opened. Since the inception of rail in Portland, there has been a 35 percent drop in the number of people taking transit to work. Even with huge taxpayer expenditures to eliminate auto travel in Portland --- less than 2% of all travel in the 90s was via transit. The theory that densification will reduce congestion has backfired. In Portland, more cars than ever are crammed into a smaller metro highway system. Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon openly questioned urban growth boundaries and LRT as perhaps a series of policy tools that have wrought numerous and costly unintended consequences. As he put it in a 1998 speech -- "It seems that these [sprawl and growth concerns] are all situations that, 25 years ago, we had hoped to be able to avoid, and we haven't." ---- I am disappointed with Minneapolis and its failure to invest in basic services and infrastructure to support its position as a livable, vibrant metropolis. ---- we've got too much going for us in Minneapolis to think small. There is no evidence to support the theory that LRT is a requirement to being a vibrant and livable metropolis. The huge growth we've experienced in this nation has been in cities where there is no long history of transit -- places like Las Vegas, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta, Orlando, and LA. The downtown booms in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, San Francisco, New York, Des Moines, Kansas City, Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, and dozens of other big cities in the US has nothing to do with or can be correlated to the existence of rail, or lack of it. LRT is often touted as the catalyst for railside private investment, which is another measure of vibrancy. However, even with the opening of three rail lines since 1996, Dallas continues to have the nation's highest downtown vacancy rate, triple that of its suburbs and double that of non-railed Ft. Worth. 99.5% of job growth is outside the downtown area. Portland's central-city employment increased by 1,000 jobs between 1990 and 1994 --- while suburban Portland added 94,000. An Orange County California grand jury found that no rail systems built in the previous 18 years can honestly claim to have private investment occur railside without huge additional subsidies. Portland grants 10 year property tax forgiveness to qualifying railside projects because there has been virtually no high density development adjacent to the stations without it. If rail were driving regional development investment patterns --- as every rail proponent will tell you it does --- then core cities would be significantly more prosperous relative to their suburban counterparts. Consider that the subsidies for railside development will be the same no matter what the cost or effectiveness of LRT. In this context, you have to ask yourself --- is LRT the public investment tool needed to prime the pump? For kicks, let's presume that we decide to spend $750 million to improve the river corridor between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Craft TIF districts along the route. We could take leisurely boat rides for lunch. There would be an interpretive history center, and dozens of river-front eateries and hotels. We'd have our version of the San Antonio Riverwalk or Georgetown Canal. You'd have private investment clamoring for a spot inside those TIF districts. Local jobs and tax revenues increase. 1000's of people relocate to new housing along the river. Everyone wins. That $750 million might look cheap, in retrospect. And the frosting on the cake --- passenger ferries plying this scenic and idyllic floating commute will remove about the same number of cars from the roads as rail would have --- the "statistically insignificant" number that MnDOT quotes in its LRT studies. If rail is to be the catalyst for railside private investment, vibrancy, and livability, then don't try to pawn off LRT as a sprawl busting, congestion fighting, transit success story. Instead, compare the merits of LRT against other similarly large public investments and determine which will be most successful at attracting substantial private investments, which in turn keep big cities vibrant and livable. Transit subsidies have risen from near zero in 1970 to about $20 billion per year. Between 1970 and 1990 US population increased 20% and the workforce swelled by 50% --- yet transit use stayed the same. For decades federal officials have fantasized rail as the transit solution --- while cities buckle under the weight of skyrocketing automobile usage. Why isn't this widely known? Whatever the expenditure of taxpayer money is supposed to accomplish, shouldn't taxpayers expect it to do so at the least cost and more effectively than any other alternative? Federal, state, and local transit experts cannot honestly tell you that LRT fulfills these obligations. Terry Matula Hastings _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
