Friday, June 30, 2006

Ed Felein's Anti-LRT Article Part 2

Over at the Minneapolis forum, David Greene fisks Felein's anti-LRT article.

Some highlights:

Felein: There has been no public discussion or debate over the alternatives to that route.

Greene: False. This Corridor has been discussed _ad_nauseum_. It's been on the planning table literally for decades. There were many public meetings and hearings about it over the last couple of years. I know because I attended them.

Felein: It will probably kill people. The Hiawatha line killed two people its first year of operation...

Greene: Both accidents were just that: accidents. In both cases the people ignored warning signals and crossed the tracks illegally. Certainly these were tragedies but to say that we should halt rail transit on University because of them is irresponsible.

Felein: Ask any motorist trying to cross Hiawatha Avenue if LRT has sped up their traffic.

Greene: ...transit corridors are not meant to speed up traffic, reduce congestion or improve the driving experience in any way whatsoever. They are meant to provide transportation options for people.


Felein, Zimmermann and others in the Green Party have taken positions on transportation that are opposite of the mainstream transit and environmental groups like the Sierra Club North Star and Transit for Livable Communities, both of which support the Central Corridor LRT.

When it comest to transportation policy, Felein and other Zimmermann supporters in the Green Party are not "green".

2 comments:

Hydra said...

"transit corridors are not meant to speed up traffic, reduce congestion or improve the driving experience in any way whatsoever. They are meant to provide transportation options for people."


Exactly the point. Yet when it comes to selling these transportation options the claim is frquently made that they will reduce traffic congestion. They won't. DC and London have epic congestion problems in spite of the best transit systems around.

What transit does do is offer options. It allows more people to travel to central locations than can conveniently arrive there by car. Therefore, transit is a marginal addition to the traffic flow, and its costs and benefits should be judged on the margin as well.

If we had to judge the costs of transit only against its benefits over and above what autos and trucks provide, would we still do it? Transit frequently has a lower actual load factor than autos, and its actual efficiency is no where near the hypothetical efficiency that is touted when the system is being sold.

Autos and highways are frequently berated because they are seen to enjoy huge subsidies. But the fact is that auto drivers pay a higher proportion of their own true expenses than transit riders do.

I don't happen to believe that one is better than the other. But let the users of each pay their full allocated costs and then watch what happens.

Avidor said...

Auto drivers don't pay full costs of what automobiles do.

Just a few examples of costs not paid directly by motorists:

700+ people killed in Minnesota by cars every year.

40,000+ injured by cars in Minnesota every year.

Non-point water pollution from roads and parking lots.

Oil spills

Gas tank leakage.

Traffic enforcement.

Air Pollution.

Global Warming.

Wars for oil.