Dann allows his love of streetcars to get ahead of the facts. Spend $715 million on trains to "increase" daily ridership by 5,000.
Or spend $440 million to double the number of buses operated by Metro Transit, possibly increasing daily ridership by 100,000. It's an obvious choice to Dann. Equally obvious to me. Apparently Dann wants to replace all bus lines with trains at more than $50 million a mile. Here's a pointer to a current article discussing Dann's fear of having no gas. By the way, how is it that all of the buses will be propelled if there is no oil? The same way cars could be? http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0622/p25s02-wogi.html I recommend an article in Ramsey County History magazine, Spring 200, by John Diers. He was a streetcar rider, worked for Metro Transit for more than 25 years, and is coauthor of "The Streetcar Era in the Twin Cities", to be published in 2006. It covers horsecars in the 1880s through streetcars in the first half of the 1900s. It is very good. There are things or emphases that I don't agree with, like saying that streetcar "ridership had been in a steady decline throughout the 1920s" when it fell 47,600 between 1920 and 1928, but fell 67,800 between 1928 and 1932. Read the portion headed "A Great Conspiracy?". Towards the end of that section, he writes "But if there was a conspiracy, then everyone who bought an automobile in the Twin Cities between 1920 and 1950 can be indicted as a co-conspirator. Those who profited dishonestly from the conversion were opportunists. As for GM, it saw an opportunity to sell more buses and it did." 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 MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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
