Mark Anderson's analysis is flawed. His assumption that since more miles are logged by automobile users that transit users, we must then assume that roads deserve the largest share of transportation investment.
Sadly, for most Minneapolitans as well as the rest of the people living in the Twin Cities metro, there are no practical transit options so people have to use the automobile. For the first have of the twentieth century, Minneapolis enjoyed a superior public transit system using streetcars. That was destroyed 50 years ago and since then, the development in the Twin Cities has focused on roads rather than streetcar lines. The bus system that replaced the streetcar is unreliable, the routes unfathomable, and for more than 90% of metro area households, simply not an option. The current congestion problem can not be solved by building more roads. There is no large city in the U.S. where road building has solved congestion. In fact and ironically, building more roads only creates more congestion. Cities like Dallas and Los Angeles which have aggressively built more roads but have not been able to build their way out of congestion. It may be too late for us. For the last 50 years, metro area growth has assumed automobiles as the primary mode of transportation and development has proceeded accordingly. As developers built their residential/commercial complexes there was almost no thought given to providing public transit to these new sites - except for roads. It is no longer unusual for people to build or buy in Maple Grove and commute to jobs in Rosemount and Prior Lake. LRT has proven to be a huge success at getting people out of cars and into efficient, reliable, usable transit. Gov. Ventura saw it as the first line in a complete system but there is no public will now to complete that system. Unless we are willing to re-engineer the metro area and to invest (hugely)in it, we are doomed to more congestion. All the models that I have seen project more people and more autos into the foreseeable future. Jim Bernstein Fulton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anderson & Turpin Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Mpls] Freeway Woes Chuck Holtman wrote: My original posting was based on the pragmatic belief that we aren't going to try to approximate the free market for transportation anytime soon. I like your plan, but it's not going to happen. Therefore, we need to talk about the respective costs and benefits of various plans, and use them to debate how to spend our government funds. The Met council web site says there are about 200,000 bus trips each weekday. My guess is 5 miles per trip, which yields 1 million people miles. Add that to the 193,000 daily miles for the LRT, and compare to the 39.7 million miles by auto, and it appears that about 3% of total miles are by mass transit. It seems to me that autos are taking people where they want to go. If we should spend significantly more on mass transit (or even continue spending as much as we do currently), I think we need to see a plan that shows how it can move people as efficiently as autos. I've only heard rhetoric about how we're behind all these other cities, no numbers showing the superiority of mass transit. The arguments sound kind of like those of the stadium proponents. Mark V Anderson Bancroft REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact 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 Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.4.1 - Release Date: 6/2/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.4.1 - Release Date: 6/2/2005 REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact 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 Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
