Mayor Rybak makes some excellent points about the
bus strike and the importance of transit.
It is very important to tell the stories of all the
thousands of people hurt by the strike. Here is my
personal but boring story: I walked to work on
Thursday but I stayed home on Friday because of the
snowstorm.
How many people will lose their jobs because of the
strike? How many more injuries to pedestrians and
bicylists will there be? Some routes aren't safe for
people on foot or bicycles.
Will domestic assaults increase? It seems to me
that stressed out people will be snapping and lashing
out in all directions.
Thank you Mayor Rybak!
Send the Mayor your stories!
Ed Fesler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minneapolis
Corcoran
--- "Rybak, R.T." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Minnesota Taxpayers League President David Strom had
> a remarkable
> statement this morning: "Transit just isn't that
> important to the smooth
> functioning of the Twin Cities transportation
> system"...."there just
> doesn't seem to be much difference in traffic when
> buses are running and
> when buses are not.
> The bus strike shows decisively that proponents of
> transit are simply
> not telling the truth when they say that transit
> ridership reduces
> congestion."
>
> This ignores a couple things that happened in
> Minneapolis, at least.
> First, scores of city employees and business people
> took extra steps in
> planning, coordinating car pools, etc. to make those
> first days a little
> smoother. This included the city spending additional
> money to put new
> traffic control officers on duty, something that is
> clearly not
> sustainable long term.
>
> Second, and more important, the past two days have
> seen hundreds of
> people go through real suffering. I talked to one
> man who works
> maintenance downtown who day rode his bike from
> Hopkins the second
> day...in the snow. We have been getting many other
> calls from people
> going through other real challenges because the
> buses aren't running,
> and it's important right now to tell those stories.
>
> Toward that end I could use your help. Could
> people, either on list or
> direct to me, tell stories they have heard about
> what people have had to
> go through with the buses not running.....My goal is
> to have enough of
> these that I can get them into the media when they
> are trying to
> determine whether Strom is right or not. Much of
> the discussion has
> centered about those coming in and out of downtown,
> which is important,
> but I am especially interested in those whose
> experience and stories may
> fall through the cracks in other parts of town.
>
> On a related topic, there was a very good letter in
> the paper this
> morning by John Akre that leaders of Minneapolis and
> St. Paul need to
> help the Metropolitan Council develop a broader
> consensus for transit in
> the region. I told John this morning that he's
> right and there is at
> least the beginning of some good news on this front:
>
> I was at the Met Council Monday for a meeting of
> Chair Bell,
> representatives of metropolitan chambers of commerce
> (including Twin
> West, Minneapolis and St. Paul) and several mayors
> (including me and the
> Mayors of Bloomington and Minnetonka). The goal was
> for the chambers
> and the Mayors to work together on moving a
> multimodel transportation
> system. This is good news to have the business
> community helping
> aggressively on this, which I believe is what is
> needed to oppose those
> in the Legislature who have been so anti transit.
>
> There are a couple other business/government
> coalitions that are growing
> around this, too. Mayor Kelly and I successfully
> got The Itasca Group,
> a coalition of ceos of corporations, to take on
> transit as one of their
> key initiatives. I also spoke to Charlie Weaver,
> head of the Business
> Partnership, yesterday and he, too, seems to be
> willing to play a role
> in moving transit issues forward.
>
> Another coalition that has been moved forward by
> Rep. Frank Hornstein
> and Sen. Scott Dibble is a group of mayors along
> 35W...We are
> collectively pushing the idea of bus rapid transit
> on 35. Also CM
> Schiff is working on streetcar options and CM
> Zimmerman is working on
> PRT
>
> It's important for Minneapolis officials keep
> pushing transit
> forward....but I'm especially hopeful that these
> business-government
> partnerships are what is needed to get around the
> flat earth society
> that doesn't see the gridlock that is growing around
> them.
>
> Anyway, that's a long way of asking for help in
> getting the stories of
> people who are had to make sacrifices during the bus
> strike.
>
> R.T.Rybak
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For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html
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________________________________
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