Steve might have further added that it was the incomparable John Derus who
perpetually touted light rail to the point of tedium, and credit for
engineering the partnerships that inevitably produced the Hiawatha Line
should go to him.
Ed Felien
Powderhorn
Good point, Ed. I did. See below:
Paper: STAR TRIBUNE (Mpls.-St. Paul) Newspaper of the Twin Cities
Headline: Derus' drive helped put light rail on the map // Working at the
county level, he set the stage for today's Hiawatha groundbreaking.
Date: 01/17/01
Section: NEWS
Page: 01A
Edition: METRO
Byline: Steve Brandt; Staff Writer
Graphic: PHOTO
Length: 18.0
Subject: article;history;government;mass transit;building;profile
Keys: john derus
Slug: LRT17X
When the speeches are made today to mark the groundbreaking of
the Twin Cities area's first light-rail project, John Derus doesn't
plan to be there. Nobody invited him. But it's arguable that no other public
official did more in the
long run to put urban rail transit on the radar of policymakers and
the populace. Derus' efforts started when he became a Minneapolis alderman in
1971 and continued informally even after he left the Hennepin
County Board 21 1/2 years later. He'd speak three or four times in
some weeks to service clubs like the Kiwanis, extolling the virtues
of rail transit. Walk into his office during the heyday of the county's
light-rail
planning, and he'd peddle it like a kid beseeching Santa for an
electric train. If there was a map handy, he'd extemporize routes
through the metro area and beyond, with trains linking Duluth and
Mankato or St. Cloud and Rochester. He and his County Board allies forced the
issue onto the metro
agenda, lobbying with rural counties for a 1981 law that allowed
counties to preserve abandoned rail lines. Hennepin County snapped
up such lines, leading other metro counties into a lobbying effort
that metro and state officials had to co-opt to control. The irony is that
Derus won the war even though he lost his
biggest battle. Light-rail transit is getting built. But counties
are no longer in the driver's seat. Counties by themselves couldn't
persuade the Legislature to appropriate the money. Some legislators said the
obstacle was Derus himself. He had
statewide political ambitions, and he made no secret of his scorn
for those he viewed as too small-minded to see rail's virtues. Some
legislators opposed rail as long as Derus was its prime force. "Some people
would manipulate the law," he said recently. "They'd
say you need another feasibility study, another
environmental-impact statement." The tide began to turn five years years
after Derus left office
in 1993. First, Curt Johnson, a longtime rail skeptic who was then
Metropolitan Council chairman, reversed his position. Then Gov.
Arne Carlson softened his stance. And Carlson's successor, Jesse
Ventura, became a cheerleader for running light-rail through his
old south Minneapolis neighborhood. . A long interest The love affair
between Derus and urban rail transit began early.
During World War II, with men overseas, his mother, Josephine,
became one of the first "motorettes," women who drove streetcars
for the Twin City Rapid Transit Co. When her baby-sitters fell
through, she'd tote along preschooler John and his siblings to ride
with her. The smell of coal burning in the potbellied stoves that
heated streetcars, the whoosh of the cars' air doors and the hours
with his mother loom large in Derus' memory. Later, she helped him find work
at a diner near the northeast
Minneapolis streetcar barn. Starting at 4 a.m., he mopped floors
and served eye-opening coffee to his mother and her fellow drivers
before he headed off to school. Years later, when Gov. Rudy Perpich signed a
light-rail bill at
the Lake Harriet streetcar, Derus made sure his mother was on hand.
She gave Perpich lessons in driving a streetcar. "He almost put us
through the window," Derus recalled. The rail system that will be built won't
have the downtown
Minneapolis tunnel Derus long sought as a means of making it
faster. But the imminent driving of spikes for his cherished
public-works project, one he describes as "an idea that's come and
gone and come again," makes him a happy man. "A lot of people have
worked hard on it," he said. And he has no hard feelings about not being
invited today. "I'm
not in that loop anymore," he said.
Steve Brandt
Star Tribune
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