Our love affair with the car is much more firmly entrenched
in Minnesota than it has been anywhere else where I've lived
where there was anything like public transit to rely on.
I've got a real low tollerance of driving a long distance to
work. I live 5 minutes from my job. I love driving big
equipment and playing in the traffic because somehow being
paid $17 or $18 an hour to play in the traffic with a 50,000
lb. bus is fun. (Picking up passengers is another matter.)
I think people live out from the city because it's newer, it
has big yards, commercial endeavors are mostly confined to
"centers" keeping residential streets very residential, and
a belief that their kids will be better educated--in some
cases they are right. It's going to be very difficult to
lure those folks out of their cars if they perceive they'll
be giving up something important to them. I'm not willing
to give up my car until the day I die or the state says I'm
too blind or too deaf to be driving anymore and the 21 lines
goes past my house right outside the dining room window
every seven minutes in the day time, every 20 minutes in the
evening, and every hour through the night and early morning.
My neighbor was accosed last week, beaten with a lead pipe.
He has lost hearing in one ear and may lose the sight in one
eye. These unseen vicious people took $5,500 from the till
of his business. I'm not scared on the bus, I'm scared in
the spaces between my front door and the bus.
I do agree that adding lanes won't cut it though--and I
seldom use the freeway, I hate that thing. When the oil
gets low, most people will not be able to afford gas for
cars. The wealthy and powerful will mostly have the freeways
to themselves, they won't need 17 lanes and I don't want to
give up the coheasion city folks have recrafted and are
recrafting since the freeways were put in. Then too, they're
ugly buggers, they hurt your eyes just looking at them.
Wizard Marks, Central
Barbara Lickness wrote:
> I lived in San Francisco for a year in the late 80's.
> I believe at that time the population in the city was
> around 350,000. However, 3.5 million commuters came to
> and from the city every day to work.
>
> Driving to and from the city was an absolute nite mare
> and often times people had 2 1/2 hour commutes one
> way. There were two types of rail transit plus the bus
> and cable car system. And all were packed with riders.
>
> Parking at that time in downtown San Francisco cost
> about $8 for 20 minutes. Definitely an incentive not
> to drive.
>
> I also lived in Toronto Ontario during the rush from
> Montreal to Toronto during the first French
> successionery movement in Quebec during the late 70's.
> Toronto grew extremely quickly. Hi-rises with 2
> story condos popped up all along transit lines.
> Toronto had a great freeway system and a great public
> transportation system. The city was really sprawled
> out quite a ways and continues to sprawl. But the
> public transportation is still convenient and used
> very heavily.
>
> Public transit in these cities is a way of life and
> has been for a very long time. We act like it's an
> experiment here.
>
> I guess the point I am trying to make in this is that
> until driving to and from the city becomes so painful
> that people find public transportation a relief, and
> until we get over our car mentality and create a
> variety of transit options to and from this city that
> are easy to access, we are going to continue to have
> severe traffic problems.
>
> Continuing to add lanes of freeway is only going to
> serve to make Minneapolis look like a giant cement
> ribbon and will continue to gut large swaths of good
> tax paying property in the process.
>
> The population is expected to grow dramatically in
> this region in the next ten years and they can't all
> drive so we all better get together and figure
> something out.
>
> I apologize for my condemnation of suburban drivers,
> but, the Whittier, Stevens Square, and Phillips
> neighborhoods have been the sacrificial lambs for the
> "add a lane" philosophy for a long time and no one
> ever seems to care about the damage it does to these
> historic neighborhoods.
>
> Barb Lickness
> Whittier
> Ward 6
>
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