Wednesday, August 12, 2009

LRT Meeting August 13

This isn't one of my regular blog posts, as I've been very busy lately and haven't had much (any) free time, but the LRT meeting tomorrow, August 13, is too important to let slip by without comment. I'll write a post soon about my comments about the importance of the 3C Southwest Corridor, but in the meantime there are several blogs and websites that do a great job of laying out some of the issues:

Connect Uptown: Want LRT through Uptown? The Connect Uptown website helps keep you informed on developments and how to go about making sure your voice gets heard.

The Transport Politic: This blog post has been getting a lot of attention lately, in part due to the blogger's extremely useful maps showing the proposed routes in context with neighborhood density.

Minnescraper: Minnescraper's forum has an entire thread devoted to the Southwest Corridor. Read the latest posts for comments and details relating to the most current developments.

Choosing a route that leaves out Uptown is short-sighted, and bad for the city, the neighborhood, and the region. The current bias is against the 3C route (based on part on arguably faulty numbers), so now is the time to show overwhelming public support for the Uptown alignment. You can do so tomorrow, August 13: the meeting will be at the Central Library at 11:30.

2 comments:

  1. People say the numbers are arguably faulty, and maybe they're off a bit, but it doesn't really seem arguable to me that a tunnel under Nicollet (or somewhere near Nicollet) would be a significant expense that could easily push the project above the CEI number needed to get approval. Especially seeing as the tunnel on the Central Corridor line needed to be scrapped to make it work. I don't think any amount of community pressure will make a proposal a reality if the numbers don't work, but good luck to those seeking their preferred alternative.

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  2. 3C just doesn't work with the scale of the neighborhood. But more importantly is who 3A will service: the transit-dependent residents of north Minneapolis. 3A is absolutely vital to the sustainability of our city. If folks on the north side continue to be cut off from the job growth in the southwest suburbs, what's the prognosis of our whole city?

    Remember, Minneapolis is much more than Uptown. Uptown is barely significant in the grand scheme of things. We need a transit solution that actually opens up new opportunity to people, not one that just duplicates existing Uptown transit service that is the best in the entire state.

    I live in the Wedge and have worked on transit issues for over six years. It's very clear to me that 3A is the far superior alignment, both from an equity perspective and from an integrated transportation system perspective.

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