MnLRT...Moving Minnesoootans Into the Next Century
MnLRT...Moving Minnesoootans Into the Next Century |
© Copyright 1998 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Commentary: Other cities fight for more light rail
By Richard Schumacher, April 11, 1998
Regarding comments on light-rail transit (LRT) by retired transportation planning engineer Perry C. Plank (Counterpoint: "LRT along Hiawatha won't pull its weight", March 21): Perhaps Plank envisions old-style trolleys trundling down the middle of Main Street, fighting automobile traffic and serving only pedestrians.
That image is quite out of touch with the reality of modern light-rail transit and is countered by the success of LRT systems in several cities. Modern light-rail lines serve as attractive high-capacity arteries for trips between suburban park-and-ride lots, apartments or hotels, and concentrated destinations, such as an airport or business and entertainment districts.
No single transport technology meets all the needs of a large modern city. Yet Plank's remarks about buses, bus lanes, park/ride lots and busways suggest that he would recommend buses for all corridors and lightrail for none.
Such a recommendation would ignore the experience of cities such as Dallas, Denver, Portland, San Diego and Saint Louis, in which light-rail lines are considerably more popular than the bus lines they replaced. Additional buses and freeway lanes are unattractive and expensive and often physically infeasible.
LRT service complements bus service. It diverts existing bus riders and attracts new transit riders, which reduces freeway crowding (effectively adding freeway capacity without building new lanes) and reduces pollution.
It's true that lightrail along Interstate Hwy. 35 or I-94 would serve more people than it would along Hiawatha Avenue. But those routes would also cost more to build, perhaps enough more that politicians and a public unfamiliar with lightrail could not muster the will to build them. This makes Hiawatha a good choice for a first step, as it would be a relatively inexpensive demonstration of the benefit of adding lightrail to the Twin Cities transit mix.
By contending that public-private sector cooperation is required to make an urban area more transit-friendly, Plank seems to have it backwards. In Dallas, LRT is making the areas it serves more development-friendly. Here, after a decade of dormancy, new office, hotel, retail and housing complexes are under construction downtown and in outlying areas served by lightrail.
According to the Dallas Morning News, in 1992 downtown Dallas had about 250 full-time residents. Today nearly 10,000 upscale apartment and condo units have either been opened or announced for completion within the next two years. Most of these are within walking distance of existing or planned light-rail lines. The public sector has provided a desirable piece of transit infrastructure and the private sector is responding exuberantly.
In contrast, developers in the Twin Cities never built more than a few vending machine kiosks at the park-and-ride lots of express bus lines.
LRT(DART) had many vocal critics and doubters in Dallas, too, before they saw it in operation. They're all quiet now, replaced by city neighborhoods and suburban governments clamoring for the next LRT system extensions.
If the Hiawatha Avenue corridor LRT is built, six years later Minneapolis suburbs will be doing the same, and everyone will have forgotten what 20 years of delay and oppositionwere all about.
-- Richard Schumacher, Dallas, Texas. Electrical engineer.
© Copyright 1998 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.