{"id":19587,"date":"2011-04-27T11:10:28","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T17:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19587"},"modified":"2011-10-20T10:31:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T15:31:03","slug":"central-corridor-picking-the-winners-telling-the-fairy-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19587","title":{"rendered":"Central Corridor: Picking The Winners, Telling The Fairy Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your tax dollars at work:\u00a0 the Feds signed on to paying half the cost<\/a> of the Central Corridor at a lavishly-covered pep rally yesterday, featuring…<\/p>\n

…bureaucrats.\u00a0 Like FTA administrator Peter Rogoff, who spoke at the rally yesterday:<\/p>\n

“This project truly embodies the president’s vision for winning the future through infrastructure investment…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Gotta destroy the city to save it”, I guess.<\/p>\n

It will create thousands of construction jobs now while paving the way for many thousands of jobs that will come to the Twin Cities through the economic development successes surrounding the new rail line,” [Rogoff] told an enthusiastic gathering of…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…of who?<\/p>\n

…more than 100 local, state and federal officials…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure that some University Avenue businesspeople will show up in the story eventually.\u00a0 Just positive.<\/p>\n

By 2030, weekday ridership – projected to exceed 40,000 – will top Hiawatha LRT ridership as people gain new access to nearly 300,000 jobs in the two downtowns, at the University of Minnesota and in the neighborhoods in between.<\/p>\n

“Central Corridor represents an historic economic opportunity to connect St. Paul residents to jobs, businesses, services and educational opportunities throughout the region,” said Mayor Chris Coleman. “At the same time, it’ll transform one of St. Paul’s most iconic streets and strengthen the communities that surround it.”…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…provided that those “jobs” decide to align themselves along a corridor where already-lavish mass-transit and freeway development hasn’t drawn them after fifty years of trying.\u00a0 It’s a simple fact – cities aren’t developing the way they did fifty years ago.\u00a0 The urban rim – the third-tier suburbs and exurbs, the Maple Groves and Woodburies and Elkos – are where the people, and the jobs, are going.\u00a0 If you don’t believe me, believe Joel Kotkin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or believe neither of us; just try to find an example of a light rail development in the Twin Cities area that promised vast economic benefits, and delivered only slightly-altered patterns of decay.\u00a0 That’s right – the Hiawatha Light Rail line.\u00a0 Been on that route lately?\u00a0 The brief spurt of condo development along the route deflated quickly when the housing bubble burst; the only real “development” anywhere along the route has been among bars (catering to the hordes of people who ride the train from the Mall to Twins and Vikes games, as well as the Hiawatha’s bar-hopping crowd) and some developments along East Lake that are more driven by changing demographics and lavish city investment than the light rail line, unless you want to claim there’s a surge of people riding the train to and from the East Lake Target Store or Pineda Burritos.<\/p>\n

Anyway – let’s scan the list of other notables and see if there are any University Avenue business people (emphasis added by me):<\/p>\n

“On this day that is 30 years in the making, we must recommit to making Central Corridor all that it can be: to heal the wound that a freeway opened in the West Bank decades ago, to fully integrate light rail with every mode of transit, and to connect transit-dependent communities to every opportunity,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak<\/strong>…<\/p>\n

…”We are turning into reality our vision of a network of interconnected transitways,” said Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hm.\u00a0 Just more bureaucrats, so far.<\/p>\n

We’ll keep looking:<\/p>\n

The Central Corridor light-rail line will revitalize University Avenue as a lifeline between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Streetcars operated on University Avenue continuously from December 1890 to Oct. 31, 1953. With a streetcar operating as often as every three minutes, there was an energy and vibrancy to the street life along the avenue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Supporters expect Central Corridor line will rekindle that same kind of energy and enthusiasm as neighbors meet neighbors, students meet professors and business people meet customers aboard busy trains and at busy rail stops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A reference to the glory days of the streetcar.\u00a0 Let’s come back to that.<\/p>\n

Let’s keep looking for businesspeople:<\/p>\n

“When completed, this project will bring the community together in a way not seen since the age of the street car, but also in a manner modern and contemporary,” said Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McDonought is – I’ll be kind – trafficking in fantasy.\u00a0 For starters, streetcars were simple little rattletraps, mechanically even simpler than buses, that stopped every block or two, more or less like buses.\u00a0 Light Rail is big, heavy, “fast”, like little trains rather than buses on tracks.\u00a0 Light Rail doesn’t bind communities.\u00a0 It gets people through them in a hurry<\/em> .<\/p>\n

And that’s even if “communities” were the same as they were during the glory years of the streetcar, which they’re not. Urban development has changed in the past fifty years.\u00a0 The big cities – all of them, not just Minneapolis and Saint Paul – developed at a time when the Big City was where the factories, bureaucracies and banks were; where the capital got invested.\u00a0 Transit – the fabled streetcars – brought them from the “suburbs” (which, back then, were places like “50th and Bryant” and “Battle Creek”, not Wayzata) to jobs at Ford, Honeywell, the mills along the riverfront, the big banks downtown…<\/p>\n

…all of which are now gone, or have radically realigned, taking the need for a big, centralized city with them.<\/p>\n

“The federal grant commitment of $478 million is the largest federal grant ever received in Minnesota for a transportation project,” said Metropolitan Council Chair Sue Haigh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

…Rep. Betty McCollum<\/strong>, whose district includes the rail line, collaborated with state and local officials to secure federal funding for Central Corridor as a member of the House Appropriations Committee.”Today’s federal commitment to the Central Corridor represents a great achievement for Minnesota,” McCollum said. “The Central Corridor is an investment in infrastructure that will help meet the demands of our growing community and create new economic opportunities for generations to come.”<\/p>\n

“With this commitment, the federal government has recognized that the Central Corridor is not only an important part of an efficient transportation system in Minnesota, but also a vital piece of our efforts to ensure economic vitality in the Twin Cities and beyond,” Sen. Al Franken <\/strong>said. “This new rail line will offer a critical transportation alternative for commuters and create badly needed jobs in our region.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not a single University Avenue businessperson.\u00a0 I wonder why?<\/p>\n

It’s simple – the Central Corridor is going to be <\/span>a disaster for businesses in the Midway.\u00a0 That’s s given; even CCLRT supporters are saying so, now, after years of denying it, accompanied with that “you gotta break eggs to make an omelet” sneer and the same patronizing “change is scary to some people” <\/em>you get from junior managers trying to make a budget cut turd seem like pat\u00e9. \u00a0 The death toll is rising every week; rumors have it the newly-remodeled Rainbow on Uni at Snelling will close, at least for the duration of the project; others are dropping, week by week.<\/p>\n

Beyond that?\u00a0 Even when (and if – remember the Hiawatha Corridor?\u00a0 We’ve been waiting seven years for that dog to hunt; it’s still lying on the porch) the economic development takes off, it’ll be in the form of gentrification around the small number of stops on the line.\u00a0 There, property values and rents will drive out the few businesses that survive the construction.\u00a0 Chains, with their national and international capital depth, will move in; local businesses will get squeezed out.<\/p>\n

Eggs will be broken.<\/p>\n

Government is picking winners and losers – and trying to tell you it’s for everyone’s good, because soon we’ll go back to the fifties, the golden age of the lunchpail job and the bedroom community and the trade union, and everything will be all right.<\/p>\n

And you know how fairy tales turn out, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your tax dollars at work:\u00a0 the Feds signed on to paying half the cost of the Central Corridor at a lavishly-covered pep rally yesterday, featuring… …bureaucrats.\u00a0 Like FTA administrator Peter Rogoff, who spoke at the rally yesterday: “This project truly embodies the president’s vision for winning the future through infrastructure investment…” “Gotta destroy the city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,28],"tags":[163],"class_list":["post-19587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trains-and-automobiles","category-st-paul","tag-mn-cd4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19587"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23811,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19587\/revisions\/23811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}