Carol: As another Longfellowite, I don't think commuters should be driving their cars inside downtown. I'm strongly in favor of arrangements for commuters to downtown to park their cars near the periphery of downtown and then travel on people movers. We are still using very old models from when the car was less dominant and therefore cars in downtown were more manageable. We need to evolve forward from that. --- Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Given that over 40% of the people who work in > the downtown take transit, it > doen't seem out of line that there is one > street that is given over to > transit and that this street be central to the > downtown. Having one street > also allows easy transfer from one bus to > another, allowing Nicollet Mall to > act essentially as a central transit "hub" for > the whole region. Also, even > though the buses may not be going fast through > the downtown, I believe that > they are going faster than they would in mixed > traffic and that there really > is a limit of how fast you want buses to be > going through the downtown in > the first place. > > I think one of the biggest isssue with > balancing modes in the downtown is > that the City has taken a whole traffic lane > out of automobile service and > turned them into bike lanes on several major > streets, substantially reducing > the carrying capacity of the street system > overall. Fewer people can now > get in and out of the downtown because of this > change and this is adding > substantially to traffic problems in the > downtown. This, in turn, makes the > downtown less economically viable as a business > center when compared to > suburban locations. Accomodating all modes of > transportation is very > important but this tradeoff seems to have large > negative concequences. > > Carol Becker > Longfellow
===== Jim Mork Longfellow Neighborhood __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
