The Strib editorial board, learning a lesson or two from the street thugs they’ve been avoiding writing about for the past year, are circling their next victim – you.

Watch your wallet:

In June 2004 the Hiawatha light-rail line debuted to rave reviews from riders, applause from community leaders and a volume of passengers that far exceeded official projections.

And yet, even with the ridership numbers, 2/3 of the line’s revenue is from state appropiations. A little over 1/3 is from ridership and advertising – the stuff the Strib editorial board clucks over. “Rave reviews” and inflated ridership haven’t made the Ventura Trolley anything but a state-sponsored money pit.

The result? Minnesota won’t open its next light-rail line until … 2014.

Speaking as someone who lives six blocks off the next light rail line, there’s a term for that; reprieve.

That’s appalling. It’s not just a sign of ossified planning and a lingering love affair with the automobile, it’s a warning that state leaders haven’t grasped the truth about growing, prosperous cities — that an adequate transit network relieves road congestion, improves quality of life, conserves energy and triggers lively new forms of metropolitan economic development.

Of course, 1, 2 and 4 are backed by no emprical evidence, and 3 is doubtlful. But don’t stop ’em – they’re on a roll.

Accelerating the region’s transportation timetable — including light rail, commuter rail, road projects and dedicated bus lanes — is one of the most urgent tasks facing the 2007 Legislature. It would help restore Minnesota’s reputation for enlightened urban planning while burnishing the high quality of life that has long been a Twin Cities selling point in the national competition for economic talent.

I’m no transit hawk – I ignore most of the city-bashing endemic in most critiques of transit, because there is a place for transit, determined by the market. There is no market need for a train from downtown to the airport. There is market need for something – train, bus, whatever – to haul people from the cities, where they live, to the ‘burbs, where more and more of them work. And there are cases under which Northstar and Red Rocks (the commuter lines from Big Lake and Hastings, respectively) could be self-supporting – not right now, of course, but at some point when population in the far east and far west metro exceeds our capacity for building roads (which, despite the one-size-fits-all panaceamongering of the road-hawks is also going to happen; the very thing that makes rails so expensive, buying right-of-way, is going to smack roads upside the head, too), and assuming the Met Council doesn’t turn the lines into monuments to themselves (going easy on building stations, buying used rolling stock for starters), both lines could be self-supporting in the reasonable future.

But that’s not what the Strib is talking about.

Early next year a coalition of planners and business leaders, with wide support from mayors, will ask the Legislature to create some form of dedicated metro revenue stream, perhaps a half-cent regional sales tax, to get these projects on track. Such a tax would raise more than $200 million annually, cost the average local household less than $75 a year, and let the Twin Cities make a commitment now — rather than waiting a costly decade.

Here’s what they envision: The commuter from Eden Prairie could get to her Minneapolis office without wasting time on clogged freeways. The Vikings fan from Elk River could get to the Dome without downtown traffic jams [only to fly into a rage when they realize the same government that taxed them to build the transit system also put the Vikings up in Blaine or Anoka or Farmington…]. The Bach enthusiast from Edina could get to the Ordway without fretting about parking ramps. Suddenly, people would have new choices about where to live and how to get where they’re going.

I have a vision, too. She’s a gorgeous, 35 year old redhead. She has no psychological problems, is a cheap date, smart and articulate enough to replace half of the NARN on the air, has a thing for [censored for the early morning audience], and best of all she’s going to knock on my door in about ten minutes, without my having to so much as take out an ad on Match.com!
Really! That’s my vision!

I went to a presentation a few years back by former Saint Paul mayor Jim Scheibel – one of the most disastrous mayors this city has had. It was at a forum on affordable housing. He got up and spoke on the vision for affordable housing; liveable places, with enough of the amenities of modern life to make the resident feel like they’re not removed from society; enough room to put one’s family in; of course, in easy walking distance from good transit. Completely absent from the discussion; what those of us who have to find our own affordable housing have to pay for this. Try as I did, he never got around to that.

A vision of…well, the paper calls it “convenience” without a vision of the work that Minnesotans are going to put into the taxes to pay for it – and believe me, on top of everything else I pay for in this state, $75 to pay for this “vision” is too much – isn’t a vision so much as it is the petty tyranny of the petty bureaucrat.

This isn’t some planner’s fantasy. In Denver, transit has spurred a $1 billion cleanup of an old industrial brownfield;

Nice, but – at whose expense?

in Portland, it has created a leafy, walkable urban core;

Again, nice – but does the core necessarily follow the transit? Minneapolis has a “walkable urban core”.

in Washington, lively neighborhoods of cinemas, bookstores and condominiums have sprung up around Metro stations.

Benefitting DC’s yuppies immensely. No, I’ve been there, and the DC transit system is a wonder. And a money pit, too!

In fact, it’s the very concept embodied in the Metropolitan Council’s main planning documents. The problem is that Minnesota doesn’t have the money to carry out its own plan.

And where I come from, that’s called “a reason to get a new plan”.

There are plenty of details to negotiate in a regional transportation tax, some involving principle and some involving mechanics. But if lawmakers want to maintain the momentum of this vibrant metro area, they need to say, “All aboard.”

No. They need to say “let’s suspend our transit dogma and quit building visions, and start doing what Minnesotans really need.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 8:07 am and is filed under Minneapolis, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.