[Mpls] Buses

[Jason C Stone]

What's your take on prt, Bruce?

Jason Stone
Diamond Lake

--- Bruce Gaarder <gaarder at Encompasserve.org> wrote:
> Back when they were still working on railroading through the Hiawatha
> train, Metro Transit stated that the number of buses in operation could be
> doubled for $440 million.  It's undoubtedly a little higher now, with
> inflation.
> 
> Imagine your wait for a bus being about half as long.  Imagine a bus with
> perhaps 2/3 as many people (less crowded.)  Imagine a faster ride.  Imagine
> a more reliable schedule because there is less crowding at stops.
> 
> All of these would happen in this scenario.  Instead, they buy a train for
> about 2/3 MORE than that $440 million, to improve things on one route out
> of 200 in the metro area, and then the service is cut back on some of the
> other 199 because of budget issues.  There will be more cuts in the future
> because of lrt.  The claim was that the was enough money in the long range
> plan to fund combined bus and train operation with only one fare increase
> necessary in 2007 or so.  We've already seen a couple of increases before
> the train even started rolling.
> 
> Ramsey County wants to build lrt between the downtowns on University
> Avenue because it envies Minneapolis.  Costing "only" $880 million for
> an even shorter length of track with no additional maintenance facility,
> it will vastly congest University to the point where the county projects
> that there will be only about 16 blocks along University between the
> Minneapolis/Saint Paul border and Regions Hospital that won't have one or
> two lanes of cars and trucks backed up during rush hour.  The cumulative
> length of the backups with lrt is about 60% HIGHER than without.
> 
> Lrt doesn't cut pollution or auto use enough (0.1%) to even be 1/10 of
> the model's margin of error.
> 
> In the San Jose area, they have lrt and buses.  They have a $6 billion
> budget problem over the next ten years, so they are cutting bus (and even
> lrt) service to meet the budget.  That's so that they can build more rail
> service, so that they can cut bus service more in the future.
> 
> In Los Angeles, they cut bus service to build lrt and a subway.  They were
> successfully sued by the NAACP and the Bus Riders' Union and are under a
> consent decree to provide a certain level of bus service.  The transit
> agency has publicly stated that when the consent decree expires in 2007,
> they plan to get rid of the extra buses that they had to add.
> 
> A lot of train pushers point to Dallas as a success story.  Depends on how
> you measure success.  DART rail was supposed to pay 50% of its operating
> and maintenance costs with passenger fares.  In 1985 it was 35%, in 2001
> it was 12%.  See the trend?
> 
> 
> Visit www.EffectiveTransit.org
> 
> The Independent Unsubsidized Voice of
> 
> Citizens for Effective Transit in the Twin Cities
> 
> * lrt isn't a potato chip, you can stop at just one *
> 
> Bruce Gaarder
> Highland Park
> Saint Paul
> bruce_gaarder at acm.org
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