Transit Envy? Thoughts on Light Rail
A colleague just e-mailed me:
My response: Not an issue for me anymore. We now live in Roseville - which presents commuting issues of its own.
And then I kind of got carried away.
I'm not a big supporter of light rail. Now that we built it I hope it generates the ridership necessary to make it worthwhile, but I don't see how tearing up streets and putting down rail line at a cost of billions is a better transit solution that busses. One reason they got rid of the trains in the first place was because they were inflexible. If you want to try a new route, or the old route wasn't generating ridership, you couldn’t tear up the old ones or lay down new tracks easily. With buses you could try a route and if it didn’t work you could change it. Busses should be a much more flexible transit solution. In fact, up in Roseville the Metro Transit folks run small buses that carry folks around the Rosedale shopping area and down into St. Paul. Sure as hell wouldn't do that if trains were our only transit solution.
Trains hold a romantic place in many people's hearts - they recall a bygone era when many residents relied heavily on mass transit. Not everyone owned a car or needed to since most everyone lived in the cities proper and the suburbs didn't exist - at least not to the extent we see now. As the metro area grew it would have been too expensive to lay light rail out to the hinterland, but busses could work. Also more and more families purchased cars (as well as a second car) so the need to rely on public transportation was reduced.
There is another weird strain running through the whole light rail discussion. I call it "transit envy" - the notion that a train somehow makes us a "real city" like New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. Do we need a train to make us a real city? Aren't we already a real city"? We have millions of people living in a multi-county area, an international airport; many Fortune 500 companies are located here. Don't we already have professional sports, great theater, an enlightened citizenry, relatively easy-to-navigate roads (compared to the "real cities"), plus relatively cheap parking downtown?
Don't mean to sound too negative, and I hope it works since we will be footing the bill for years to come.
So any effects on your commute inflicted by the new Choo-choo? Have you ridden it yet?
My response: Not an issue for me anymore. We now live in Roseville - which presents commuting issues of its own.
And then I kind of got carried away.
I'm not a big supporter of light rail. Now that we built it I hope it generates the ridership necessary to make it worthwhile, but I don't see how tearing up streets and putting down rail line at a cost of billions is a better transit solution that busses. One reason they got rid of the trains in the first place was because they were inflexible. If you want to try a new route, or the old route wasn't generating ridership, you couldn’t tear up the old ones or lay down new tracks easily. With buses you could try a route and if it didn’t work you could change it. Busses should be a much more flexible transit solution. In fact, up in Roseville the Metro Transit folks run small buses that carry folks around the Rosedale shopping area and down into St. Paul. Sure as hell wouldn't do that if trains were our only transit solution.
Trains hold a romantic place in many people's hearts - they recall a bygone era when many residents relied heavily on mass transit. Not everyone owned a car or needed to since most everyone lived in the cities proper and the suburbs didn't exist - at least not to the extent we see now. As the metro area grew it would have been too expensive to lay light rail out to the hinterland, but busses could work. Also more and more families purchased cars (as well as a second car) so the need to rely on public transportation was reduced.
There is another weird strain running through the whole light rail discussion. I call it "transit envy" - the notion that a train somehow makes us a "real city" like New York, Boston, Chicago, etc. Do we need a train to make us a real city? Aren't we already a real city"? We have millions of people living in a multi-county area, an international airport; many Fortune 500 companies are located here. Don't we already have professional sports, great theater, an enlightened citizenry, relatively easy-to-navigate roads (compared to the "real cities"), plus relatively cheap parking downtown?
Don't mean to sound too negative, and I hope it works since we will be footing the bill for years to come.
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