Category: Planes Trains and Automobiles
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It’s Transit Memorial Day
Today is the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning, or re-beginning, of light rail transit in the Twin Cities. So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and in most cases unwittingly – to further Minnesota’s political class’s obsession with…
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Democrat Female Leader Math
Katie Porter, former congresswoman from Orange County, is onto something – and, presumably, smoking some of the same ditch weed the DFLers who funded the Southwest Light Rail were into: San Francisco to Oakland is 12 miles. Even driving an SUV and paying Californnia’s absurd gas prices, that’s half the price of the train. And…
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Just In Time To Start Another Audit
An audit of the Southwest Light Rail project – which is years late, and running at well over double the original projected cost, and (this is my longtime prediction) will end up over $3 Billion when it finally lurches to completion, got a hearing at the Legislature earlier this week. A years-long audit of the construction…
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Mercy Killing
There’s a move afoot to kill off the Northstar Commuter Rail line… Well, no. There’s a move to finish the job that a misbegotten concept, government bloat and Covid started: The funny – as in “weird”, not “ha ha” for the most part – thing is, commuter rail was the kind of rail service that…
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Bugs
“Mitch, why are you so ambivalent about self-driving cars?” Because I work with software engineers, and I know how screamingly unreliable and charmlessly quirky anything to do with software is until the technology has years or decades to mature? Which is annoying enough when you’re trying to make a grocery list or listen to a…
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That Spark Of Remorse
Electric Vehicle (EV) owners are not especially satisfied customers: The consulting firm surveyed consumers in multiple countries: the U.S., China, Germany, Norway, Australia, France, Italy, Japan and Brazil. Between all of those countries, 29% of electric car owners want to return to driving internal combustion cars, with 46% of surveyed American electric car owners wanting…
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It’s Transit Memorial Day
UPDATED 6/24 – I miscounted. Today is the 19th anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning, or re-beginning, of light rail transit in the Twin Cities. So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and in most cases unwittingly – to further…
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The Real Problem
Metro Transit and the Strib have put out a “climate conscious newcomers guide to using Metro Transit”. It’s tempting to snark “they figure out who the real problem is”: Familiarize yourself with Metro Transit’s code of conduct, a lengthy and often-ignored rule book that mandates such things as keeping non-service animals in carriers, one seat…
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One Of The Definitions Of Insanity…
…is, reportedly, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If at first you build a $500 Million train and it comes in closer to $700M, so you build a “$1.4 Billion” train that comes in over $2 Billion, so you build a $2 Bllion dollar train that’s going to…
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For Want Of A Strongly-Worded Sign
SCENE 1: It is Constantinople, 1453. The Ottoman forces under SULEIMAN THE GREAT have breached the inner wall of defenses, on their way toward changing the city’s name to Istanbul. SULEIMAN and GENERAL KARAKÜL are standing in the breach, as troops stream past, on their way to loot, rape and pillage. KARAKÜL: “Go forth and…
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Let Them Eat Paint
Overdoses. Public solicitation and delivery of prostitution. Open drug dealing. Gang activity. Robberies. Muggings. Assaults No, I’m not talking about the House DFL Caucus offices. I’m talking about the big Metro Transit stations in Minneapolis. And what’s the remedy? According to Metro Transit and its big government stakeholders: murals. Metro Transit is turning to murals…
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Their Best Interests
A friend of the blog emails: North Minneapolis residents have voiced concern frequently about the Blue Line extension, which is supposed to “benefit them” per the elites who would never be caught dead on public transit, but in actuality will likely drive residents out to some new location so the elites have a new hipster…
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Remembering The CFL
No – not the Canadian Football League. That still exists, believe it or not. No – does a nyone out there remember the “compact fluorescent light”, or CFL?It seems like just yesterday when the green mafia wheedled the government into mandating the replacement of the incandescent bulb with the CFL – a miniature fluorescent tube…
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Seven Year Plan
Minneapolis has big plans for transit, and Minneapolitans are part of them, whether they like it or not. June 24, 2023 – 2:00 PM In seven years, Minneapolis transportation planners want 60% of trips in the city taken on public transit, or made by biking, walking or rolling. The effort to achieve that ambitious goal,…
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It’s Transit Memorial Day
Today is the 18th anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning, or re-beginning, of light rail transit in the Twin Cities. So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and in most cases unwittingly – to further Minnesota’s political class’s obsession with…
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Learning From Failure?
A friend of the blog emails: The tides seem to be changing. I remember when a similar editorial was written about downtown Minneapolis and the man who wrote it was basically canceled. And the Star Tribune took it down.It’s interesting to note how the writer says, “I don’t raise these opinions in certain rooms, because…
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Metaphor Alert
A billion dollar train with nobody on it runs a stop signal and rams a car that had the right of way pinning it between it and another LRT train. Is there a more perfect bunch of parallels for government in the Twin Cities these days?
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Sartre Was So Close
“Hell is other people”, said the French existentialist philosopher. Close, but no cigar. Hell is, however, most things “public”. Like the behavior in public waiting rooms on public transit lines by certain members of the public. Metro Transit is shutting down the indoor waiting area at the Hennepin Avenue transit station due to what I’m…
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Urban Progressive Privilege: Alone
To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan,From: Mitch Berg, Irascible PeasantRe: Glad You’ve Discovered Light Rail Crime! Of all the people who’ve been beaten, robbed and murdered on Twin Cities light rail platforms, it’s good to know you’ve paid attention to one of them, finally: But clearly, you do not ride the light rail. I suspect you hitch…
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Body Count
Two people murdered at downtown Saint Paul’s Central Avenue transit station on Monday night: Officers responded about 8:30 p.m. to the corner of Fifth and Cedar streets, where they found two people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the stairway/elevator structure that connects the skyway to the Green Line Central Station light rail stop, according…
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Buried
Releasing a story the Friday before the Labor Day weekend? Wow. This must be a real disaster: The southwest light rail, the biggest civil engineering project in state history, is shaping up to be an epic disaster. And if, after all the terrible news of this last year, they’re still doing their news dumps before…
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The Mother Of All Debacles
Watching the ongoing slow dripping failure of the Southwest Light Rail line, it’s temping to remember a time when American could actually accomplish big public infrastructure projects. Forget for a moment the breezy authoritarianism that went behind such projects as “Urban Renewal” and driving interstates through neighborhoods with less clout than their neighbors – that’s…
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It’s Transit Memorial Day
Today is the 18th anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning (or re-beginning) of light rail transit in the Twin Cities. So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and in most cases unwittingly – to further Minnesota’s political class’s obsession with…
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The Only Way To Win Is Not To Play
I come neither to praise nor “improve” the Southwest Light Rail. I come to bury it. Bill Lindeke – “urban geographer” and transitphile – is more or less the opposite. He wrote a critique of the troubled (doomed?)( project in the MInnPost a few weeks ago – fascinating on some levels, and a complete howler…
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A slow boat to (or from) China
I didn’t intend to make this “China Week”, it just sorta worked out that way as things caught my eye 🙂 That said, this interesting article from Prospect highlighted something that has probably flown under the radar as we go about our daily lives and wonder why our favorite Acme Widget isn’t on the shelf…