1. I ride the bus.

2. I ride from Stevens to and from the University
Sunday through Friday. On Saturdays, I ride all over,
from Downtown to Nordeast to the MOA to St. Paul
(occasionally.) I'm a life-long bus rider, and even
during my sojourn in Omaha, which has a bus system
that anyone from the Twin Cities would find laughable,
if not horrific, I depended on the bus for
transportation. 

It would be a huge benefit to this city if Metro
Transit were funded properly. Sadly, while most city
leaders don't seem to have a problem with this,
certain intransigent constituencies in the state
government have been doing their level best to
undermine our still-great public transit system.
Cutting routes and trips due to low funding and low
ridership is a vicious circle. As mentioned earlier,
the No. 2 bus is becoming almost useless -- late
nights, almost no one rides because it comes so
infrequently.

What's so hard for people to grasp about the fact that
to have a great metropolitan area, you must have great
transit? Who's going to go see local music if you make
virtual shut-ins of students on nights and weekends?
Who's going to patronize local businesses if you have
to wait 30 minutes in the cold for a bus to take you a
few miles when, in the same time, you could drive to a
big box retailer in the suburbs? Who's going to have
time to enjoy and support city amenities if they're
devoting a big chunk of their life to working to get
money to pay for their automobile?

Rosa Parks and the Los Angeles Bus Riders' Union
should be our examples: transit is a civil right that
we must fight to protect.

Niels Strandskov
A&E Editor, The Minnesota Daily
Stevens Square/Loring Heights

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/
REMINDERS:
1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
before continuing it on the list. 
2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.

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

Reply via email to