I much appreciate Terrell's reply. A couple of my own:
> From: "Terrell Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Andy Driscoll talks about transportation on this day when ground will be
> broken for an LRT line in Minneapolis:
>
>> [Driscoll] Mr. Chandler challenges information that has been known in the
>> transportation arena for decades. I-394 may > be poorly designed, but there
>> IS no good design if highways are built as relief valves for freeway parking
>> lots.
>>
>
> The problem with the Twin Cities transportation system is that the bias is to
> have people drive automobiles. We add 40 to 50,000 people to the metro area
> each year and probably at least half that many automobiles to the system.
> Look at what Maple Grove is doing: They are asking people NOT to ride the bus
> because they are providing a subsidy to the busses that leave Maple Grove for
> downtown Minneapolis. Somewhere in their infinite wisdom the city fathers and
> mothers in Maple Grove decided to opt out of the Metro Transit system and now
> they decide that they don't want to pay for a bus system. Are the southwest
> metro systems far behind?
>
> The good news is that transit ridership is somewhat increasing, not as much as
> it needs to, but some.
>
> We can point out things that could be done to better design highways all day,
> a more important question is how we move people out of their automobiles,
> especially at peak times.
[Driscoll2] Of course, one of the requirements here is that NO community be
allowed to opt out of the public transit system and spread the costs of
rapid transit operations across a much wider area. Maple Grove believes
they're being penalized, I presume, for opting in when they did. But Maple
grove has always thumbed its nose at the rest of the Metro Area - housing,
transit and many other issues take a bath from that fringe community.
The bias Twin Citians have for the single-occupancy automobile was born in
the wake of the concerted buyout of the Twin City Rapid Transit system in
the 1950's by General Motors, a sellout by none other than Carl Pohlad.
Fifty years later we find ourselves spending 25 times for some semblance of
transit alternatives to the incredible congestion the addiction to cars has
produced. That's 25 times the cost for what we would have had if the nation
hadn't been manipulated into using cars and other rubber-wheeled petroleum
drinkers by the oil and automobile industries.
>
>> [Driscoll] Build it and they will come. Don't build it and alternative
>> transit modes will be used.>>
>
> Build alternate transit modes and they will come too. We are starting to see
> that with the work that MTCO has done in the past few years to increase
> ridership. We even have some late night busses now, something unheard of in
> the past.
>
> Then we have a Governor who doesn't think we should tax automobiles which has
> lead to a decrease in money going to the highway fund. The solution, we hear,
> is to constitutionally dedicate some sales tax revenue to the highway fund.
> Dedicating tax revenues is a bad idea, it eliminates the discretion of our
> elected representatives to make good decisions based on the current
> circumstances.
>
> We need to get the Governor out of his Porsche and into a '91 Dodge and maybe
> his thinking will become a bit more rational.
>
>> [Driscoll]Why is it always the people on the right who want to enable more
>> pollution, more congestion, more cement, more clear-cutting of built homes,
>> etc.? It really is a curiosity.
>>
>
> Its fear, Andy. You have people who think my neighborhood in downtown
> Minneapolis is dangerous. They just "know" that if they get on a bus they will
> get mugged, that's if they don't get k-i-l-l-e-d. Sorry folks, the facts
> don't bear that out, downtown and the Loring Park neighborhood are safe, just
> take a look at the stats.
>
> The good news. If we close down the 35W/Crosstown junction for 3 or 4 years,
> people will learn to take a bus as that will be much better than a 2 hour
> drive in from Eden Prairie.
[Driscoll2] The amazing thing is that, while I believe the building of a
decent transit alternative will draw ridership, the turning off of ramp
meters proved one thing: an extraordinary percentage of citizens hereabouts
are so angered by controls of any kind, they actually admit to preferring a
freeway parking lot where they spend twice the time they do when the flow is
faster as long as the gummint isn't telling them what to do! By Gad.
I can see the fear element, but I think it's far more the business of
freedom to do as we damned well please with NO interference from anyone. The
libertarian anarchy runs rampant.
>
> Terrell Brown Loring Park (writing today from Denver, CO where they do have a
> LRT line and FREE bus service on the 16th Street Mall thru downtown)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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