Low-income residents of the Twin Cities can rest easy, as planners at the Metropolitan Council, the area’s regional planning agency, are proposing a regional transit equity plan. According to the Metropolitan Council’s press release, this equity plan consists of:
- Building 75 bus shelters and rebuilding 75 existing shelters “in areas of racially concentrated poverty”; and
- “Strengthen[ing] the transit service framework serving racially concentrated areas of poverty” by building bus-rapid transit and light-rail lines to the region’s wealthy suburbs.
The blue line, the yellow line to St. Cloud, and the green line between the Minneapolis interchange and St. Paul Union Depot are open; the next priority is the green line from the interchange and Eden Prairie.
Bus shelters for the poor, light rail for the rich: that sounds equitable! Of course, the poor will be allowed to ride those light-rail trains (for example, if they travel to the suburbs to work as servants), just as the well-to-do will be allowed to use the bus shelters. But for the most part, the light rail is for the middle class.
As with most American urban areas, Twin Cities poverty is concentrated in the core cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul have less than a quarter of the region’s population but more than half of the poor and more than 60 percent of the poor blacks. On average, 23 percent of residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul are in poverty, compared with just 7 percent of their suburbs.
The Twin Cities’ first light-rail line went to Bloomington, where less than 10 percent of people are considered poor. The next light-rail line connected Minneapolis and St. Paul, but it goes from downtown to downtown through the University of Minnesota and a neighborhood that planners hope to convert into a mixed-use, New Urban community complete with creative-class yuppies, fancy restaurants, and organic supermarkets.
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After that will be lines to Lakeland and Lakeville, which have 4 percent poverty rates, mean per capita incomes six times the poverty threshold, and just 340 poor blacks. All the other proposed lines on the map go to suburbs with low poverty rates and high incomes.
Perhaps the only one that comes close to serving many low-income people is the proposed line going northwest from Minneapolis to an area unnamed on the map but which is actually Brooklyn Park. Brooklyn Park’s poverty rate is 11.5 percent including 3,200 poor blacks–more than any other suburb that would be served by the proposed rail or BRT lines but less than 7 percent as many as live in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
According to the 2012 American Community Survey, 13 percent of Twin Cities commuters whose incomes are below the poverty level take transit to work, while 61 percent drive alone and 14 percent carpool. Only 3 percent of Twin Cities workers live in households with no cars, and 39 percent of those drive to work (most of them driving alone, presumably in borrowed cars) compared with 37 percent taking transit. Transit clearly isn’t working for low-income people today, and it’s hard to see how a few bus shelters plus trains to the suburbs will help.
Many if not most Twin Cities suburbs are already served by express buses that are probably faster than the light-rail lines the council wants to build. On the other hand, inner-city neighborhoods tend to be served by local buses that stop frequently and therefore have low average speeds.
Let’s say bus service to the suburbs averages 20 mph and light rail can increase this average to 24 mph. By comparison, bus service in inner cities averages 10 mph and improvements can increase this to 12 mph. Which would save people the most time? Increasing speeds from 20 to 24 mph would cut one-half minute off the time it takes to go one mile, but increasing speeds from 10 to 12 mph would cut a full minute off the time to go a mile. What this means is that, to really improve transit service, transit agencies should concentrate on increasing the speeds of their slowest transit services, not ones that are already fast.
If the Metropolitan Council truly wanted to help low-income people, it would concentrate on improving bus service rather than building light-rail to the suburbs. But the council is apparently more interested in getting federal funds for rail transit than helping the poor. By calling this “transit equity,” it hopes that no one notices how inequitable it actually is.
Milwaukee keeps trying to build a 2.1-mile streetcar at a cost of $65M+. I keep pointing out that there’s a bus route that drives on nearly the exact same streets and runs much more frequently. Given that the route starts by a bunch of luxury condominiums and ends near a bunch of tall buildings with things like law firms and banks in them, I keep pointing out that the streetcar is nothing but a huge taxpayer subsidy for rich people too snobby to take a bus.
If we got rid of boondoggles like the Milwaukee streetcar at a staggering cost of over $65M, we could use the money to pay for common-sense, inexpensive car-oriented projects like the $1.2B expansion of Interstate 94 through the city:
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/07/09/moving-cars-vs-investing-in-places-the-struggle-for-american-cities/
To the sociopathic, lying planner, spending $65 million (really more like $100 million after the cost overruns) on a worthless project that will benefit no one but the corrupt crony contractors building it, is a excellent use of money. But spending even one cent on any highway project that will carry thousands of cars an hour is the biggest waste of money in the world.
That is how the mind of a mentally ill government planner works.
At this time the next rail line after the Southwest LRT, assuming it’s built, would be the Bottineau LRT ( http://www.bottineautransitway.org/ ). It’s an extension of the blue line north. It would serve the southern portion of Brooklyn Park. That part of the city has almost all of the oldest housing stock. In too many ways that section is very similar to Brooklyn Center, an old inner ring suburb.
Note that other than Southwest LRT they aren’t planning any transitways for areas that Metro Transit doesn’t serve. If this is about expanding opportunities they need to improve access to job growth in large, fast growing job centers like Shakopee ( Scott County ).
If planners really cared about poor people, would they waste money on extravagant bike lanes costing hundreds of dollars in paint, that poor people won’t even use? Why not use that money for highways instead?
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5883823/its-not-just-hipsters-on-bikes-cycling-is-most-popular-for-poor-people
The Gateway Corridor catches my attention. I didn’t realize they had plans to go beyond Woodbury. I should have since, in this case, what is meant by “plans” is someone has drawn a dotted line on a map.
Being familiar with the area, I would urge Mr. O’Toole to take a more nuanced approach in evaluating these plans. If Gateway BRT is built, it may improve service for the east side of St. Paul which in many ways is, to be crude and imprecise, becoming one big ghetto. That would be what the Met Council is doing, improving service for the poor.
I think you touch what really matters, how much of a difference does it really make? From using online tools, it looks just as arduous today today as it was 20 years ago. I lived in St. Paul and commuted to a data entry job near 3M center. It took me an hour and half each way. I didn’t mind since I was young, dumb and saving every penny I had for a 3 month trip to Europe and Asia. It would’ve been impossible to have a family though.
It’s not clear that BRT would change that problem very much. Much of that time was eatin’ up in transfers and walking from 3M center to the office, things BRT wouldn’t solve. Only the current terminus at Manning has undeveloped land. The rest would require large redevelopment projects to add more jobs near the proposed stations.
Mr. O’Toole, I present you with a gift. How much do these planers know? Well, according the below claims pretty much bupkis.
There are small things, like saying that Imation is served by the gateway corridor. It may be since it’s a 3M spin-off ( aka all the money losing divisions jettisoned ). But that was 15-20 something years ago. I would think by now they’d be out of 3M center. They built a HQ off of MN 5 + 694 which is _not_ served by Gateway.
More concerning is their I94 paragraph. Maybe in St. Paul itself it took a new route. But the unfinished section was US 12. When they rebuilt it when I was a kid, it followed the exact same path. It takes a seriously delusioned bout of mental gymnastics to say it’s a half mile off of where US12 was. Even if it technically reaches that at a pointit’s an oddt thing to say.
If you don’t have a copy of the book Rails To THe North Star, Mr. O’Toole you should let me send you one as a gift. It has all of MN’s railroad history in great detail. There was never a railroad on this corridor. They bizarrely state that the TCRT bought the STPL & DUluth. The Northern Pacific bought that. That became the now defunct Minnesota Zephyr dinner train. It’s way up by MN 36 and now a bike trail. It’s clearly no where near the Gateway Corridor.
If they can make a hash of something so simple, what else are they screwing up?
http://thegatewaycorridor.com/html/about-gateway-corridor.php#
History of Transportation Innovations
In 1869, the Gateway Corridor was utilized by the Saint Paul and Duluth Railroad, which crossed central Washington County. The railroad line prompted new activity and settlement patterns that led to the growth and development of cities and townships within the corridor. In later years, the Saint Paul and Duluth Railroad began running trips from St. Paul to the St. Croix River and was renamed the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company.
As the automobile became more popular, work began to build a stretch of highway that would connect communities from the St. Croix River to Saint Paul and Minneapolis. For almost 30 years, Minnesota policymakers grappled with the route and construction of a new interstate highway. After considerable debate, two alternatives were finally brought forward. The first option, would have reconstructed the existing highway to interstate highway standards. The second option moved the interstate one-half mile north of its current alignment.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) selected the current interstate highway route that is used today and sought federal approval to construct this as one of the last pieces of the Interstate 94 freeway system. In 1985, the final stretch of Interstate 94 was finished and quickly became one of the most heavily used and traveled corridors in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
Today, the corridor provides an important link to some of the Twin Cities’ largest employers, including 3M, The Hartford, Imation and Securian Financial. As a result of recent population growth, the I-94 corridor today moves more than 150,000 vehicles per day into St. Paul.
prk166, thanks for the link. What do you think of the $1.2 Billion plan to expand I95 through a densely populated neighborhood in Milwaukee?
http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/07/09/moving-cars-vs-investing-in-places-the-struggle-for-american-cities/
Odd that the anti-planner hasn’t mentioned it, given how much it costs compared to the light rail projects he criticizes so much.
@metrosucks
“a mentally ill government planner” – But you repeat yourself.
@Fred Z – government planners are ill! They make their living perpetuating poverty, and forcing people to compromise their hopes and ambitions, and their incomes for the mediocre welfare state.
It’s a very widespread and valid concern that transit dollars are increasingly being used to provide unnecessarily extravagant projects designed to serve suburbs where virtually everyone has a car. I’m afraid that these projects are the price that has to be paid to find enough regional political acceptance to do anything.
Houston Metro and MARTA in Atlanta were blessed in disguise by having such limited regional participation in their organization to the result that rail improvements in both cities actually go where the poor people live. In Minneapolis, I think you’ll find that the Green Line will be very successful. Few people will travel the full corridor.
I believe a recent push by the city of Seattle to have a city-specific tax to fund only city bus routes could be the start of a positive new trend. While I hate to see any region-wide connectivity sacrificed as a result of these city-specific funding mechanisms, I hate more to see unnecessary transit infrastructure being built and operated because a particular low-density area “deserves it” or “it’s their turn”.
I hate to admit it, but the more I read the Antiplanner the more I am open to his viewpoints.
Transitboy said:
I hate to admit it, but the more I read the Antiplanner the more I am open to his viewpoints.
In my view, I can agree with The Antiplanner in very limited circumstances.
Of course, there is the problem that The Antiplanner hates ANY and every new rail transit proposal, no matter how sensible from a “reasonable” person’s standpoint.
But like the batsh– crazy right wing teabagging extremists that give the Republicans a bad name, there are also “liberals” who give the word liberal a bad name and believe us liberals have to accept any half-baked proposal from “our side” such as the currently ill-conceived, grossly overpriced California high speed rail proposal with its various dog-legs designed to satisfy Richard Blum and his developer friends–e.g., such as Democratic party hacks like Robert Cruickshank at his CA HSR Blog (http://www.cahsrblog.com/) which parrots anything and everything put out by the CA HSR authority.
At least my associate Demery and I have at least come up with estimates where rail starts to become more cost effective than buses, e.g., roughly 5,000 daily passenger miles per route mile, which anyone bothering to read our papers on this topic would find out that this figure has been confirmed by independent researchers in both Europe and Japan.
As the mentally-ill Metrosucky and Fred_Z who like to project their right-wing syndrome on transit advocates may be shocked to find out, I am skeptical about the 3rd LRT proposal for the Twin Cities. The projected cost seems way too high compared to the likely ridership, particularly compared to the two current LRT lines.
On the other hand, the potentially relatively cost-effective option establishing frequent, ALL DAY regional rail service on existing railroad tracks probably has been poisioned in the Twin Cities region by the fumbling of the North Star commuter train. There is of course a relatively cheap technical fix: convert the North Star line to all-day half hour frequencies that is actually useful to the majority of local residents, using modern DMUs such as (a href=”http://www.stadlerrail.com/en/vehicles/gtw/”>http://www.stadlerrail.com/en/vehicles/gtw/ and ditching the too-costly to operate for the market served locomotive-hauled trains.
To some extent, this might require spending additional funds for an exclusive passenger track in the very heavy BNSF freight train North Star corridor, but a few hundred million that potentially could save a billion or more in new corridors, e.g., for the current estimate for the Southwest LRT corridor, 3-4 regional rail corridors can be implemented. But my expectations that regional decision-makers will “get ” this point is non-existent.
In closing, one frustration in arguing with rail opponents is Ithat people like Wendell Cox have conceded that the New York Subways certainly make senses, and that BART may now make sense, given the heavy ridership that exceed the original BART estimates by 2/3 or more (400,000+ daily now vs. the original 260,000/day estimates). And a long time ago, Tom Rubin hinted that rail might make sense with very heavy ridership. But of course, even when challenged they’ve never wanted to talk about situations where rail might be better than buses, I’m speculating because knee-jerk opposition is much easier.
Randal, is there any way to restore the previous widget for editing posts? I’m not sure what happened the link above.
As the mentally-ill Metrosucky and Fred_Z who like to project their right-wing syndrome on transit advocates may be shocked to find out
That’s why you rail lusting thugs will never get anywhere in the long run, because instead of patiently explaining the benefits of your proposed projects and defending them on their merits, you turn to innuendo, lies, attacking the opposition, and so on and so forth.
Of course, that assumes these projects have any merits, which they do not. Rail ANYWHERE outside of New York should simply not be built, period. Even the vaunted NEC stumbles to support itself, which is why any proposal to build any high speed rail in California is hysterically laughable, regardless of how badly msetty wants it.
“Rail ANYWHERE outside of New York should simply not be built, period”
Why make an exception for New York? When the New York subway was built, the population and density of the city was less than many other cities that have built rail or are thinking of building rail.
The truth is that the New York subway system is a wasteful boondoggle that has never made money. It should be replaced by a program to buy used cars for all poor New Yorkers.
The population of Manhattan in 1900 was 1.8 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_New_York_City#Manhattan). This is smaller than the population of present-day Houston. Just like now, New York was plagued by the same type officious planners who thought they knew what was best for the city – and who wanted to pack people into tiny apartments and keep them in poverty. And so the New York subway was built. It’s long past time to shut it down and institute a program to buy cars for everyone instead.
“The truth is that the New York subway system is a wasteful boondoggle that has never made money. It should be replaced by a program to buy used cars for all poor New Yorkers.”
One needs a nuanced understanding of the sociopathic government planner mind to see what gilfoil is really doing here. He is not, of course, promoting the destruction of the New York subway. He is aping and exaggerating arguments that are applicable to wasteful suburban rail boondoggles in other parts of the country. Manhattan is a special case of high density and lower car usage that can’t, and won’t, be ever replicated anywhere else in the US, no matter how much money planners throw at it and no matter how much they spew invectives against low density.
Randal has never advocated for tearing down the NYC rail system. Uniquely among US cities, NYC’s rail transit system is arguably vital to the operation of Manhattan. But everywhere else save for maybe San Francisco and Boston, the local rail transit system is not an integral part of the transportation infrastructure.
We must also note the difference between a private entity like Walmart, and a sociopathic entity like gilfoil, a government planner. When consumers demand different products or levels of service, Walmart immediately responds to those demands without denigrating their customers or claiming to know better. They recognize that the customer is the boss and must be treated as such.
When government’s “customers” (sic) demand a difference in operation, government thugs openly denigrate their “constituents”, claim the voters have no ability to change the way government is working, ignore the will of the voters, or construct bogeyman to destroy the credibility of voter initiatives.
In other words, in the private sector, the business recognizes the sovereignty of the customer and adapts his business model to those demands, and in the government sector, the government thugs view themselves as the lords of the land, with voters the feudal vassals who have no say in their own lives.
At this time the next rail line after the Southwest LRT, assuming it’s built, would be the Bottineau LRT ( http://www.bottineautransitway.org/ ). It’s an extension of the blue line north. It would serve the southern portion of Brooklyn Park. That part of the city has almost all of the oldest housing stock.
Yes, and it recently came to light that the planners’ preferred alignment would require the condemnation and demolition of about two dozens homes in one of the lower-income parts of the city. Latter-day urban renewal. The funny thing about this (for me, at least) is hearing people defend this project by saying it is needed for congestion relief, because ‘there isn’t enough land to just to keep expanding freeways without taking more houses’. Nevermind that there are no freeways paralleling this line anyway. Or that there are no plans to add capacity to the existing network. Or that the Met Council is simultaneously telling us that travel demand is leveling off and funding advocacy ‘studies’ like the one Randal highlighted last week in support of its central city-focused ‘Thrive’ plan.
Being familiar with the area, I would urge Mr. O’Toole to take a more nuanced approach in evaluating these plans. If Gateway BRT is built, it may improve service for the east side of St. Paul which in many ways is, to be crude and imprecise, becoming one big ghetto. That would be what the Met Council is doing, improving service for the poor.
Not really. If you take a closer look at the East Side, the proposed alignments follow I-94 and don’t venture anywhere near the actual neighborhoods. Those places are already directly served by buses (on 3rd St. and 7th St.). There is no real north-south transit service there to connect to the proposed stations. Like most of the other built or proposed transitway projects, this one is designed on a radial axis oriented around the downtowns. It’s bad enough that it doesn’t directly serve many residents, but there aren’t really any destinations out there, either. Sun Ray is a dying strip mall. 3M’s campus is spread out over a large area and is difficult to serve directly, even with conventional bus service. Forget about a fixed guideway system which only offers a single stop.
It’s not clear that BRT would change that problem very much. Much of that time was eatin’ up in transfers and walking from 3M center to the office, things BRT wouldn’t solve. Only the current terminus at Manning has undeveloped land. The rest would require large redevelopment projects to add more jobs near the proposed stations.
None of the proposed options will solve that problem. They are fundamentally incapable of it. The land out near the line’s eastern terminus is unlikely to be developed at any kind of increased density. The neighbors to the north and east are not interested.
This is why it’s so important to nip these transit projects in the bud – before they turn our cities into high density, crime ridden, poverty-stricken hell holes like Manhattan. All because they allowed a subway to be built.
Again, I point out the petulant behavior of government planner scum like gilfoil. It is throwing a tantrum now because people happen to disagree with its philosophy.
If planners really cared about poor people, would they waste money on extravagant bike lanes costing hundreds of dollars in paint, that poor people won’t even use? Why not use that money for highways instead
Golly gee, another Vox ‘analysis’. Had Sadbeard bothered to look at the available census data on bike travel, he would have known that the poor were always overrepresented among bicyclists. It wasn’t until the self-entitled hipsters took up the cause that local governments started getting demands for bike trails/lanes/bike sharing. The poor were riding all along. Why? Because they had no real alternative. Even biking is comparable to, if not faster than, most transit service. And if your destination is not near downtown then the decision is pretty much made for you.
Again, if they cared about the poor, they would give them money so that they could take advantage of the full range of choices most of the rest of us have. After all, choices are good, right?
if they cared about the poor, they would give them money
MJ, that’s what I’ve advocated many times. Giving poor people money. Give them money and let them decide how to spend it. Rent, bikes, cars, transit..can’t they decide for themselves?
“Randal has never advocated for tearing down the NYC rail system. Uniquely among US cities, NYC’s rail transit system is arguably vital to the operation of Manhattan. But everywhere else save for maybe San Francisco and Boston, the local rail transit system is not an integral part of the transportation infrastructure. ”
You see, you start making special cases like NYC, and then people start talking about San Francisco, and Boston..and next thing you know, Houston is building light rail. That’s why it’s so important to shut down the NYC subway. Public transit is a virus – you have to kill it at the source, or it will infect the rest of the country.
Metrosucks: Even the vaunted NEC stumbles to support itself
THWM: Sidewalks aren’t profitable, but you’re not against them.
Oh wait you’re against rail, because it’s rail! :$
“Sidewalks aren’t profitable, but you’re not against them.”
I’m against them. They are boondoggles that have never yet paid for themselves. Try to find a single sidewalk that has broke even, much less earned a profit. Interesting how the “Smart Growth” planners love them, along with Beer Pubs and Coffee Shops.
gilfoil – your argument illustrates your ignorance, or most likely you just have the life experience, to understand that when you tinker with people lives, with promises that turn out to be lies, they resent it. Go to east Portland, where the entire infill development goal for the city was accomplished over the last 30 years, and you will find no sidewalks, limited access to public transit, and no road improvements since annexation in 1985. Planners promised 6,000 additional jobs, unfortunately none were added and 6,000 left the area after infill. Now the money paid in property taxes by those living in east Portland, have paid for Light Rail, Streetcar, Urban Renewal Downtown 12 miles away, but they never seem to get what they were promised – sidewalks, road improvements, jobs and access to transit, but you know promises were never followed through with because residents checkbooks don’t seem to reach the threshold required by planning advocates to warrant attention.
Sociopathic planners are so obsessed with coffee shops and pubs. It’s the new factory of the psychotic urban planner. Back when smart growth was being drummed out in its birthplace, Soviet Russia, every wise government planner (TR) thought that non-government planners would take the rail from their apartment buildings to the factory, do whatever work a government planner decided they ought to do, on the way home stop by the breadline (oops I meant grocery store) to receive your New Soviet Man rations, and go back to your apartment building to gaze lovingly upon the portrait of the Dear Leader.
Oddly enough, planners are not responsible for coffee shops and pubs springing up, and have never been successful at attracting them to any particular place they desire them.