Back when they were still working on railroading through the Hiawatha train, Metro Transit stated that the number of buses in operation could be doubled for $440 million. It's undoubtedly a little higher now, with inflation.
Imagine your wait for a bus being about half as long. Imagine a bus with perhaps 2/3 as many people (less crowded.) Imagine a faster ride. Imagine a more reliable schedule because there is less crowding at stops. All of these would happen in this scenario. Instead, they buy a train for about 2/3 MORE than that $440 million, to improve things on one route out of 200 in the metro area, and then the service is cut back on some of the other 199 because of budget issues. There will be more cuts in the future because of lrt. The claim was that the was enough money in the long range plan to fund combined bus and train operation with only one fare increase necessary in 2007 or so. We've already seen a couple of increases before the train even started rolling. Ramsey County wants to build lrt between the downtowns on University Avenue because it envies Minneapolis. Costing "only" $880 million for an even shorter length of track with no additional maintenance facility, it will vastly congest University to the point where the county projects that there will be only about 16 blocks along University between the Minneapolis/Saint Paul border and Regions Hospital that won't have one or two lanes of cars and trucks backed up during rush hour. The cumulative length of the backups with lrt is about 60% HIGHER than without. Lrt doesn't cut pollution or auto use enough (0.1%) to even be 1/10 of the model's margin of error. In the San Jose area, they have lrt and buses. They have a $6 billion budget problem over the next ten years, so they are cutting bus (and even lrt) service to meet the budget. That's so that they can build more rail service, so that they can cut bus service more in the future. In Los Angeles, they cut bus service to build lrt and a subway. They were successfully sued by the NAACP and the Bus Riders' Union and are under a consent decree to provide a certain level of bus service. The transit agency has publicly stated that when the consent decree expires in 2007, they plan to get rid of the extra buses that they had to add. A lot of train pushers point to Dallas as a success story. Depends on how you measure success. DART rail was supposed to pay 50% of its operating and maintenance costs with passenger fares. In 1985 it was 35%, in 2001 it was 12%. See the trend? Visit www.EffectiveTransit.org The Independent Unsubsidized Voice of Citizens for Effective Transit in the Twin Cities * lrt isn't a potato chip, you can stop at just one * Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
