At 2:18 PM -0600 11/9/04, Andy Driscoll wrote:
Let me correct this base assumption right off the top. The core cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul were, in fact, designed for and using trolley transportation from about 1870-on - after William (?) Lowry built Archbishop John Ireland's Grand Avenue streetcar line all the way out to the farm fields near the river where St. Thomas College was built and expanding even then. Lowry had a lock on the public transit system in the cities - what became the Twin Cities Street Railway system, the Twin Cities Rapid Transit.
One line doesn't change the fact that 99% of the roads didn't have Rapid Transit. Nor that
Long before there was any sort of Rail service into the cities, there were streets with horses and buggies on them.
See you also fail to mention that back in 1870 Minneapolis was a long trip away, the space between DT St Paul and DT Mpls was forest and farmlands, with some small developments as the century changed and we moved forward (and the property was sold off to people by these very individuals that built the rail line you talk about, so it was more in their economic interest than any community interest to put in this spar lines). These developments came along the railroad that did at that time run between Mpls and St Paul on it's way west to OR, and the spar lines developed along the route. Hence Merriam Park and a few others, but it was more like AMTRACK passenger service than it was anything like what we would now consider commuter transportation.
We have a long way to go, and I see today that they must be conducting some sort of test as there is a Limited Stop Express Bus running down W7th St, DT to the Airport and Mall of America. But nah I heard they would never test that to see if it works would they :-)
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Sincerely,
John Birrenbach
W 7th Neighborhood, St Paul MN
=== Political & Business Consulting ===
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