Friday, May 25, 2012
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Triangle Park Creative

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University Avenue Portion Needs to be UNDERGROUND!

If they put this train down the middle of the street it is really a net loss. New modes of transportation should add to the overall traffic capacity not compete with it. Having it take over lanes on University Avenue will only make a very heavy traffic situation each and every weekday worse during rush hours. Plus the industrial traffic of semi trucks is very high along University on the St. Paul side, and that cannot ride the train. So, in addition to killing already reeling small businesses on University in St. Paul (from 280 to Snelling) by doing away with virtually every parking spot, you'll be slowing up industrial traffic and possibly disrupting those businesses. I'm more pro-transit than I am pro business (I'm liberal to radical), but it just doesn't make sense to ram a train into all the traffic already existing on University Avenue, since most of it cannot be converted into train ridership. Seriously, it boggles me how we bungle this way. You know there are opponents to transit, so don't give them any new transit bungles to point at and help them slow the growth of transit in the future. And don't bungle simply because we'll pay so much more in the future to fix it forty years from now. Remember the Crosstown 62 bottleneck bungle with 35W? Took forty years, and its just now being fixed... and too late... what they're doing now won't add the capacity needed to keep up with population growth. What about the Hiawatha line? Don't get me wrong I'm glad its there and that it proved light rail can work here. But, everytime I drive down a road that could easily move quite quickly and efficiently, instead it takes me fifteen minutes to go about three miles because the trains screw up the road traffic every five minutes or more. You just can't deny this fact. Above all transit must function. So put it underground or overhead, but not at grade. The cost of tunnels and supposed ugliness of overhead are not reasons important enough to prevent them. Screwing up traffic and not gaining additional capacity is a huge reason to do either that should take priority. Let's get it right the first time for once!

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