When I read this story yesterday, I nearly punched my monitor. It made me that angry. Why? I'll tell you why.
My wife and I were in Washington DC a month ago celebrating our anniversary. Neither of us had used the subway in DC before, but all of our travel books said that it was cheap and easy to use. And the books were right. The station was four blocks from our hotel, and was located in the George Washington University area. You would take and esclator down, and the first thing you notice is farecard machines. Guess what? They are in ENGLISH!!!! All the maps? ENGLISH! Anyway, you would stick your money in the machine, press a button for a farecard and the machine would spit it out. And typed on the card is the value. Then you walk to the gates that lead to the platforms. You take your farecard stick in into a slot in the front of the gate, and it reads your card and spits it out through the top, and the gate opens. You get on the train, and once you arrive at you destination station, you have to use the gates again. Why? Fares are based on how far you have gone from your original destination. So you stick your card in again, just like before, and if you have enough value on your card, it comes out the top and the gate opens. It's very cheap, considering a cab from our hotel was 10 bucks, the subway was 2.20. Why this all ties into our LRT is the story in yesterdays paper. Feeling like I have some knowledge now of how this form of transportation works, I just couldn't believe my eyes. All fares are going to be based on the honor system? HELLO!!!!! This thing is not going to make a dime. It won't even be able to pay for itself. What kills me is you have the machines and instructions in different languages, and the way you enforce the fares is by using police officers?? I guess we better get officers that speak Hmong, Spanish, Somailian, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, French, Ect.. I can see the stories now... "Blacks sick of be profiled on LRT." "Somali community upset that officers held fare busters that cannot understand English." It just goes to show that as an American society, we all need to be able to communicate in one lanaguage. English. Period. End of Story. Stephen Jester McKinley _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
