Thirteen and three-quarter miles per hour. That’s the scheduled speed between Minneapolis and St. Paul on the Twin Cities new Green Line light rail (previously discussed here).
A test train on the Green Line passes through the University of Minnesota east bank campus. Wikimedia Commons photo by Runner1928.
“People are still learning the nature of light rail,” said Metro Transit’s John Siqveland. “We think a 48-minute schedule is a realistic schedule.” One of the reasons why people are “still learning” is because Metro deceived them before by claiming that the line would take just 40 minutes to go from Minneapolis to St. Paul, when it is now scheduled for 48 minutes.
The real nature of light rail is that it is very expensive–this line cost $957 million for 9 miles of new construction–more than $100 million per mile. The cost of each mile is enough to build ten freeway lane miles: the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, for example, is spending $200 million to build two new express lanes along 11 miles of Austin’s MoPac Freeway.
But the real goal of light rail is not to provide transportation, say its advocates; instead, it is economic development. But planners expected the Green Line to do so little for economic development that they spent $80 million subsidizing that development. The results are “so so,” according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which is usually a booster of Metro’s programs.
“Mixed results are raising concerns about whether the public investment will meet the goals of improving the economic bottom line for the cities and the quality of life for residents nearby.” To be sure, there has been new development along the line, but “much of that . . . likely would have gone up anyway,” says the paper.
Even the things that have been “successful,” such as the construction of “affordable housing,” are criticized by local experts. Such developments are going to “concentrate poverty,” says New Urbanist Myron Orfield, and “lead to more segregation in our communities” says St. Paul NAACP President Jeffry Martin.
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What the Hmong regarded as affordable, planners considered to be blight. Such planners are more interested in attracting the so-called “creative class” of yuppies who will want a Bohemian, café lifestyle. This will drive up rents and property values which will then increase tax revenues in order to justify the tax-increment financing needed to provide the $80 million in subsidies to new development. If planners succeed, construction of a few affordable housing units and subsidies to a few existing businesses will not allow the area to retain its previous nature as an affordable location for small-business start ups.
For the sake of the Twin Cities’ minority groups and other people wanting to start small businesses, we can only hope that planners’ efforts will fail. Of course, that will just lead planners to believe that the area is still blighted and they will respond by throwing more money at the area.
The Twin Cities isn’t the only place where transit-oriented developments are proving a myth. Tempe, Arizona spent $28.2 million on a transit center for its end of the Phoenix light-rail line. This included millions of dollars worth of private spaces for retail shops and restaurants.
According to the Arizona Republic, these private spaces have had “mixed success,” which apparently is Arizonese for “outright failure.” “Several suites have long been vacant,” says the story, while the ones that are occupied have been heavily subsidized.
The first tenant to move in was a bike shop that is paying rent based on a share of its revenues. After five years, the shop will have paid less than $8,000 in rent for 2,000 square feet of space. That’s 80 cents per square foot per year, which is a little bit less than the going rate of $23 per square foot for prime retail space in the area.
The second tenant occupies an office space on which the city spent $176,000 to set up for the tenant. After four years the city has received only $239,000 in rent; it expects another $120,000 before that lease expires. After subtracting the set-up cost, the city is making less than $7 per square foot per year.
Most recently, the city signed a ten-year lease with a restaurant that it hopes will bring in $790,000 in rent. To get that, the city had to spend $105,000 remodeling the space and offer the restaurant six months of free rent. That’s a respectable average of $23 a square foot after deducting the set-up costs. But the restaurant has yet to open, and how many restaurants survive for ten years anyway?
Somewhere in Tempe, there’s a private landlord who isn’t renting space to a bike shop because the city is renting one for practically nothing. Somewhere in Mesa, there is a private landlord whose tenant moved out to occupy the subsidized office space in Tempe. Meanwhile, even if the restaurant succeeds, at least one space in the transit center still remains vacant. All of which is further evidence that cities should not get into economic development, especially when economic development goals must compete with planners’ fantasies of non-automobile-oriented development.
