People And Place

Robb from Infinite Monkeys e-mails with thoughts on light rail:

Train-based commuter transit is plain STUPID in Phoenix ­-- and I'm a fan of it in the kinds of cities that warrant it. For example, I love using mass transit in San Francisco, Washington DC, and Chicago, and when I'm in those cities I'd gladly pay fares that were more commensurate with the actual cost of providing the service. But mass transit (including buses) is just idiotic in cities like Phoenix which, like Los Angeles, has neither a high enough population density (per square mile) nor a concentrated business district.

Look at the two cities where mass transit is not only useful but necessary: San Francisco and New York City are both located on PENINSULAS that effectively force the concentration of both population and places of work. Phoenix occupies an area that must be ten times the size of Manhattan and has a population that's about a fifth of the number of people that occupy Manhattan during the day. And "downtown" isn't where everybody works -- the jobs are as spread out as the population. You just can't build enough trains to effectively move people conveniently between their homes and offices.

To top it off, mass transit fans in Phoenix ignore two fundamental market realities. First, it isn't "painful" enough to drive. Sure, we've got a lot of traffic during rush hour, but if you live anywhere along the proposed train route, you can get to downtown in less than 30 minutes by car. What train will get you the same distance in less than twice that time? Second, unlike in NYC and SF, the availability of mass transit does not preclude the need for a vehicle, or even a second vehicle for couples, because the train doesn't take you to Wal-Mart, the grocery store, the mall, Home Depot, the movies, or any other place where normal Phoenicians go several times per week. So you're still making the stupid car payment, still making the insurance payment, and gas is cheaper than train fare. You'll save on parking, but it would be much cheaper for the city to build giant free parking garages than it will be to tear up the city and build this ridiculous light rail system.

A tangent, which I'm guessing is another parallel between Phoenix and Minneapolis: The shopping habits of Phoenicians is remarkably different from those of New Yorkers and San Franciscans. We don't "stop by the market on the way home and pick up some groceries." It's f'ing HOT here. Between May and October, we don't leave home unless we're forced to. We don't deviate from our travel route unless we're forced to. We shop once per week, and buy enough groceries to feed our giant WASP/Mormon/Catholic families and fill up the entire back end of our station wagon, minivan or Suburban. You can't bring two full shopping carts home with you on the train, and you can't cart around four kids on public transit.

Our Ridiculous Governor (a huge proponent of the Phoenix light rail system) isn't married, and has no children. Her Republican opponent in the last election, Matt Salmon, is a married Mormon with four children. He didn't just oppose light rail because he's a Republican -- he knew that it would be practically useless to the populations concentrated around its primary routes.

Robb is correct. Those of us who oppose light rail are often painted as greedy, short sighted haters of all public transit who would love nothing more than to pave paradise and put up an SUV dealership.

I don't own a SUV, nor do I particularly like SUVs. And I've enjoyed using public rail transportation in cities such as Boston, Washington D.C., Toronto, Vancouver, Munich, Berlin, and London. The question is not whether public rail transit can work in some cities. Clearly in the cities that Robb and I have mentioned it can. The question is whether it is the answer in cities like Minneapolis and Phoenix.

Robb points out that two key variables in public transportation are geography and population density. The geography of cities like Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, combined with the population densities of these cities, makes it necessary to have some sort of rail system for public transportation. In Minneapolis and, from what Robb says, Phoenix, this is simply not the case.

The only serious geographic barriers in the Twin Cites are rivers. There are enough bridges over the Mississippi to ameliorate the impact on traffic flow there. In the past the Minnesota River created difficulties for those living in the southern suburbs, but with the opening of a new bridge, impervious to flooding, the situation has improved dramatically. The Twin Cities are pretty much accessible from all directions without hindrance. Geography is a non-factor.

And unlike cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco there is not a concentrated downtown area for business and commerce in the Twin Cities. Sure, there are a lot of companies located in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. But most people who live in the Twin Cities area do not work in either downtown. And nobody shops downtown.

Most of the commuting being done in the Twin Cities is not from the suburbs into downtown. It's from one suburb to another. I live in St. Louis Park, a first ring suburb just west of Minneapolis. I work in Eden Prairie, an outlying southwestern 'burb. My wife works in Minnetonka, another western suburb. This is an extremely common circumstance in the Twin Cities.

And if we want to shop we rarely if ever travel to downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul. The shopping centers in the Twin Cities are in the various suburbs scattered throughout the metro area.

The fact of the matter is that you could build light rail lines leading from the suburbs into downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul from all directions at a cost of billions and billions of dollars and not have a significant impact on traffic congestion. There could a line running from the West into downtown Minneapolis just a few blocks from my house, and I still would have to drive my car to work and to shop.

The question is not whether or not light rail isn't a neat way to get around. It is. But is it the most efficient way for us to be spending our precious transportation dollars, given our geographic and demographic realities?

When it is completed, the Hiawatha Light Rail Line will cover all of twelve miles from the Warehouse District in downtown Minneapolis to the Mall of America in Bloomington (currently it only runs as far as Fort Snelling). Last time I checked the cost was somewhere around $850 million. That's a significant chunk of change.

A chunk of change that would probably be much better spent on our bus system. There's a bus stop at the end of our block. I could easily catch a ride downtown. But could I take the bus to work? Not unless I wanted to go downtown, transfer to another line, and spend two hours in the process to avoid a twenty minute drive. More buses. More bus routes.

And more roads. One of the arguments for light rail was that "you just can't keep building more roads". Obviously, there is some truth to that statement. At some time you will reach the point where it is physically impossible to add to your roadway infrastructure. I just don't think we're anywhere near that point yet in the Twin Cities.

When I travel to other cities I see new highways with four or even five lanes of traffic in each direction. The main artery around the Twin Cities, the 494/694 beltway, has two lanes in each direction in most places, with three in certain areas. There is construction underway to add a third lane in a few highly congested areas that currently have two. Why not four all the way 'round?

We CAN build more roads if we choose to. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the construction process can be lengthy and painful. But we're dropping close to a billion dollars for twelve miles of light rail line that will do little or nothing to reduce congestion. Is that really the best way to spend our transportation dollars?

In Minneapolis at least, given the realities on the ground, the answer appears to be no.