Metro Transit is holding meetings to get feedback on the proposed restructuring of routes that carry 55% of all transit trips in the area. Covers south Minneapolis, Bloomington, Richfield, Edina, and Saint Paul south of I-94 and west of downtown.
I suggest that you visit their site and provide feedback at a meeting, by surface mail, or e-mail. Meetings between today and February 4. www.metrocouncil.org/transit/sec5/index2.htm One thing worth pointing out is the fact that there will be service between Cedar and 4th only on Lake, 26th, and Franklin. The restructuring is claimed to yield a 13% increase in one-way bus trips. The charts are a little confusing because they don't include any ridership figures for the individual routes, just bus trips. There are many lines with substantial increases (some of which replace part or all of lines being dropped), a number (mostly those being cut) with substantial drops. Route 180, express along the Nicollet Mall to the Megamall with a stop at Lake and I-35 is one of the major drops, losing 36,800 annual one-way trips. The lrt is the replacement for those trips, though there is no figure given for the number of lrt trips a day. It seems to me that some of the routes which are classified as "no change" have changed, based on the maps having black for the existing route and red for the proposed route. If the route stays the same, red is printed on top of black. Confusing, no? Hard to read, yes? But the met council has long been pretty poor at using colors on maps. Six or seven shades of yellow that fade into white... I see a number of places where there are black lines without red on top, but it's called unchanged. See 552 and 553, for example. The appendices have the detail for each route. The claim is made that this can be done with the current budget and $13 million in CMAQ funds (including lrt operations). Of course, CMAQ funds are not a continuing source. The evolving local site of Citizens for Effective Transit in the Twin Cities has lots of pointers and will grow to include a complete analysis of the University Avenue central corridor lrt proposal. www.effectivetransit.org Comments specific to the Minneapolis impacts of this plan by Bill Foster are posted at www.effectivetransit.org under the sector 5 heading. Bill lives somewhere near the lrt tracks south of Lake. Don't remember more clearly where he lives. I also point you to this article in the L.A. Times, which reports on a study comissioned by Art Leahy's new agency on lrt and property values. It has the drawbacks of most meta-studies (survey of conclusions of other studies, without considering methodologies, the actual data studied, etc.). Note that commercial properties benefitted the most and that critics point out that residential values didn't rise much or dropped 5-10%. I haven't had time to see if the original of the study is on-line. www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-railstudy21jan21.story Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
