M.G. has again some good points and questions I left below. I do not use public transportation presently, but will go downtown, via LRT when it opens. Maybe take in a movie at the block E boondoggle, or do one of the many festivals that have interested me over the years. Parking and traffic suck during those things so I have tended to avoid them in the past.
I would love a passenger rail line from Mpls, thru the campus, past the Amtrak, and into StPaul. I would make use of that as well. I could take the train to the Amtrak and not have someone drive me. If there is an open rail bed leading to Minnetonka, then build a passenger rail line there if you like. Maybe then I would go to Minnetonka more often. There are other proposed passenger rail lines out there in the works, from Eden Prairie to Mpls for instance. The North star line going only to Big Lake is because the feds have changed their guidelines on what transit projects they would throw money at. If it gets build I will hope and pray that somehow MN gets it all the way to St Cloud. The potential for that rail line seems infinite to me, but I am not all knowing. Not sure if I would actually take a train to St Cloud, been there, done that, not much reason to do it again. I do have friends along that route that may very well give up their cars and take the train to work though. Diesel over electric trains. I prefer the electric, but if diesel is cleaner, great. I will not block its use. My personal preference for all these rail lines would be monorail. Gets it up and out of the way of commuters and pedestrians. I have a big question of the designers of the LRT though? Why the heck does it not go south of the river to help get all those persons downtown rather than taking their cars? At least Tim P is talking about a bus line to do that in conjunction with the North Star line. Maybe it would be better to build a Monorail down the center of 35W to Burnsville instead of the Access project. Ron Leurquin Nokomis East M.G. wrote: Twin Cities commuters suffered through more long waits and stop-and-go traffic today as a six-inch snowfall brought joy to snowplow drivers (overtime!) and body shop operators as well as northern resort owners (for some reason, there has to be snow here before folks will believe there is snow in northern Minnesota). However, our long-awaited, very expensive light rail trains will soon be carrying paying passengers. Those who commute from the Hiawatha Avenue areas of the city will now be able to ride downtown in comfort. This is expected to remove zero cars from the really congested areas of the city, at a cost around $800 million. <snip> What do we do now? There's the Northstar rail commuter line, which is now being scaled back in terms of area covered and passengers served (but not in cost). There is talk of the next light-rail line running from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul. If we do build that line, it's going to cost at least as much as the Hiawatha line, and it's not going to reduce congestion much (there's only so many folks who live in either downtown and who want to commute to the other) and will likely drive some University Avenue merchants out of business. Supporters say other businesses will eagerly take their place once the line is operating, and they may be right, but that's not much comfort to the folks who lose their livelihood in the meantime. What I want to know is: Why do supporters of light-rail transit insist on building lines where they won't help solve congestion problems? We (the public) own right-of-way from Minnetonka to downtown. It's an abandoned rail line currently used as a bike trail, I believe. Why not build a line along this corridor, where it could haul commuters from the western suburbs downtown? Even more startling: Don't make it an expensive to build, expensive to maintain electric line. Instead, use diesel-electric locomotives. Use the money saved to build another, or even another two lines elsewhere. Now I know environmental purists are filling the air with heavy coughing as they read this. Why, they would ask, would we fill the air with horrible hydrocarbon fumes when we could have non-polluting electric trains? The infrastructure required to power electric trains is very expensive, and very ugly. New-technology diesel motors are not only very fuel efficient, they're nearly non-polluting compared to the motors available just a few years ago. <snip> If we avoid the problems which pushed up the cost of the Hiawatha Line (electric motivation, airport tunnels) we can build a lot more miles of track and genuinely begin to solve some of our congestion problems. And if we are going to have more trains--or PRT's or whatever--we have to find a way to do it that costs less. Whether you like it or not, the suburbs are going to become more powerful politically. I don't see these folks backing another $50 million per mile train, especially when there is no visible benefit to their communities. <snip> REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? 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For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
