Category: Planes Trains and Automobiles
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The Racket Swings Into Action
Good old Saint Paul. The business economy just continues to spiral down the vortex; it’s schools are a disaster for African-Americans and other minority students; it’s choking on traffic, and obsessed with choking it further. But apparently none of that is so serious that the city, in its infinite wisdom, isn’t going to try to socialize… Garbage collection. And…
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Clunked
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: There will be no Social Security increase in 2016 because there is no inflation, according to the government. But I notice that prices in the POS market are not slumping: 2004 Saturn L300. 133,000 miles. $2,750 or best offer. 2004 Ford Ranger. 65,500 miles.$9,500 OBO. 2000 Lexus ES300. 141K…
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If You’re Taller Than 5’7…
…and ever, ever, ever have to fly, then you just knew that this was inevitable. Bonus question: If this plane had to set down in the Hudson River, how do you think the evacuation would go?
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Calculation
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: My brother claims the reason I hate light rail has nothing to do with public transportation, and everything to do with Junior High math. See the problem is, I want to meet my buddy for beer after work, but if my train leaves Saint Paul at 5:00 and his…
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Autonomy And Its Victims
Back in the storied history of this blog, there was a liberal blogger who fancied himself a transit advocate – indeed, was alleged to have taken money from light rail interests to attack, using his various sock-puppet blogs, not only opponents of light rail, but proponents of any competing type of transit. Among some of his many…
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You Had One Freaking Job
From the beginning of the planning for the useless monument to the “wisdom” of our sitting government that the Met Council is pleased to call the Green Line, I accepted a few things as givens. I accepted that the traffic, never pleasant on University Avenue, was going to turn into a Sisyphean ordeal. I accepted that businesses more than…
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Usability
I predicted in June, 2014 that the “Green Line” – the light-rail between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul – would kill three people and account for a dozen vehicle accidents in its first year. It turned out to be two dead, I’m not sure how many vehicle accidents – and even more injured pedestrians…
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Transit Is Painless
SCENE: Mitch BERG is mowing his lawn. Avery LIBRELLE, fresh from a trip on the Green Line ,ambles up the sidewalk. LIBRELLE: Hey, Merg! Societies that impose punitive taxes on cars, like Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, all have higher qualities of life than the US does! BERG: OK. So? LIBRELLE: So we could…
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Grounded
It was 112 years ago this December that mankind conquered heavier than air flight. Air transportation, as a viable industry, followed within about 30 years. And today, just shy of the hundredth anniversary of commercial air transportation, we may be on the brink of making air travel extinct. If this idea goes into effect, I mean.
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Day Late, A Couple Billion Short
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: NOW they get interested in transit from downtown St. Paul to the airport, AFTER we destroyed University Avenue for a train that goes nowhere and nobody rides. http://riverviewcorridor.com/ So there’s only one bus line to the airport. Do they need more? How many people ride the bus…
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Greasy
The Strib reports on the weekends “tar sands resistance” protests. Thousands of progressives swarmed the streets, and DFL scientific and economic illiteracy was on full display… … But I repeat myself: Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, said many frame pipelines as a safer alternative to oil-carrying trains but that it shouldn’t be a choice between the…
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Jeopardy, 2024AD
TREBEK: And you have the board. CONTESTANT 1: I’ll take “Things Mitch Berg will never set foot in for 500” TREBEK: These vehicles… (CONTESTANT 3 rings bell) TREBEK: Yes? CONTESTANT 3: What is “any self-driving car, ever?” TREBEK: Correct, and you control the board…
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Not That There Was Much Chance…
…I was going to buy a GM car any time soon (over overall vehicle quality, not to mention the bailout)… …but this adds wood screws to all the nails in the coffin.
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Like A Train, Without Tracks
I’ve been saying it for 25 years; The free market will develop a hydrogen powered car, at a network of fuel stations to support them, decades and generations before government can build rail networks capable of adequately serving the needs of people in large, dynamic cities. Assuming they could afford to do it, which they…
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“World Ends: Blacks And Women Most Affected”
Back in 2008, I went without a car for ten months, opting to save gas money and walk, bike, or (as a last resort) use transit to get around. After ten months, I was in the best shape I’d been since college (thanks, biking!) – and agog at the amount of time I’d wasted waiting…
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Stand Aside “Progress” Yelling “Stop!”
The automobile is one of the great inventions of all time. And they’re about to completely screw it up.
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Coal To Newcastle
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Reading this article, even I want to visit thriving, exciting, beautiful Saint Paul . . . on the train, no less. And I live here! Now that’s some darn fine travel writing. Joe Doakes Advertising is the fine art of making a weasel believe it’s a mink.
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Two Billion Ways To Die
In three years, the price estimate for the Southwest LRT, from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie, has jumped from 1.5-ish billion to, as of yesterday, two billion dollars. And in a move that smacks of “giving the DFL political cover” (or, if you feel really cynical, responding to the NIMBY responses of his Kenwood…
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Converts
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Winter is ending, Minnesota’s other season is beginning. The Wabasha Street bridge will be closed starting April 1st. That’s the route I usually take to work but in the spirit of enlightened progressiveness, I’m considering public transportation as an alternative. The Metro Transit Trip Planner website says my ordinary…
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Expectations
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Police reassured citizens that downtown St. Paul is Safe, despite a string of violent attacks on innocents by groups of yutes wearing gang colors. You keep using that word . . . . Joe Doakes According to the SPPD and it’s statistics, in 2014 the Downtown district had 14…
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Naming Committee
It’s called “The Green Line”. But I’m going to refer to it as “The Practice Railroad”. Like a train line a bunch of kids would build after they saw another light rail line.
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To Heirloom Cars
Bob Collins at MPR notes that with falling gas prices, the mathematics of hybrid cars works out a lot more slowly: According to the Associated Press, if energy prices don’t move much — and, yes, we know they will — then the payback period now is longer than the life expectancy of the car. AP…
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Golf Clap
The House GOP caucus is making some encouraging noises these days; speaker of the house Kurt Daudt is putting the kibosh, for the session, on funding for the Southwest light rail pork train: Daudt said the 16 mile light rail line is not a priority for House Republicans . “We are not interested in moving…
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Every Other Problem Is Clearly Solved
Those worried about the plague of having too many transportation options independent of Government controlled monopolies can rest just a tiny bit easier today; the city of St. Paul, responding to the demands of the taxicab industry that donates so much money to their campaigns, is about to fix all that. Emphasis added by me:…
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Priorities
Our schools are failing, and every snowfall turns our streets into Bolivian goat paths. But they’re talking about putting a “cap” on 35W from Washington down to 5th Street. It’s a noise-abatement thing: Across the country, cities are covering loud highway trenches with lids, or caps, that block out noise, restore old neighborhood connections and…