On Tuesday, April 6, 2004, at 07:35 AM, Bruce Gaarder wrote:
Chris Johnson has his number from the U.S. census, I have mine. Wonder why
the census bureau thought that my number was informative enough that it
bothered calculating it for all of those places... Maybe it has to do with
not counting places where nobody could easily live, which Chris mentions in
his last paragraph. In particular, urbanized areas are a good way to compare
transit, since there's not much point in running trains in aras that have
fewer than 1,000 people per square mile. His last number for the Twin Cities
is les than one person per acre.
The population density numbers are nearly useless- if an SMSA has a few counties in it with a lot of empty rural land (like ours does) it will throw the numbers way off.
Chris's data would seem to confirm that there's not much reason to have rail
transit it the Twin Cities, since the population density is 1/4 to 1/16 that
of New York. Maybe Apple Valley should have a subway like LA because it is
more densely populated. Or Brooklyn Center (45% more dense than Apple Valley.)
Columbia Heights (twice as dense as AV). Landfall (9,000 per square mile.)
Following this "logic" the Empire Builder should be running near empty and the commuter trains in the northeast corridor should be able to fund the entire railroad retirement system and wipe out much of the social security shortfall as well! It is well established that the trains running in the northeast (D.C.-Boston) corridor are always losing money. But consider that BNSF ran not one but two trains between the Empire Builder's endpoints until Amtrak took them over. Given than BNSF could have discontinued these trains any time they wanted, their continued operation says they were at least breaking even. Even today the Empire Builder consistently sells out. Further destroying the density= ridership argument is the fact that Williston, North Dakota with a population of less than 10,000 produces nearly as many passengers as Fargo with around 20 times the population. Other small to medium sized cities like St. Cloud and Winona also produce passenger boardings way out of proportions to their population- in fact their is now a regular shuttle van service between the Winona depot and Rochester.
Want to compare the density of the most densely populated precint in New
York to Mumbai? Go ahead. A couple of years ago, the Sierra Club web site
said that it thought that "efficient" urban density was at least twice as
dense as that.
The success of the Empire Builder bodes well for the Hiawatha line- with endpoints like downtown, the airport, and Mall of America, each of which would be respectable size Minnesota cities in their own right, the Hiawatha Line will not suffer for ridership.
* lrt isn't a potato chip, you can stop at just one *
A 2nd and further LRT lines are entirely separate issues. Your opposition to opening the Hiawatha line now that we've paid for it has about as much logic as the dittoheads who now picket Bill Clinton's presidential library in Harlem.
by Twin City Lines North Side Station in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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