As we speak, they’re taking suggestions for where the light rail’s southwest line should go. This comes as news to those who had no idea there was a southwest line planned. Oh, sure, they’d talked about it, but they talk about a manned mission to Mars, too. You’re starting to suspect they had this whole metro-wide system in their minds when they asked for the first line.
Yes, I know: paranoid nut talk! Well, a metro-wide system is what we’ll get, in the end, and presumably the light-rail will be able to go places mere buses cannot. Bogs, mountains, that sort of thing. If they connect with the commuter rail destined to serve the northwestern exurbs – something I think is a good idea, by the way; anything to take the ghastly pressure off 94 and 10 is jake by me, and if I lived up there I’d rather take the train than boil and seethe in traffic twice a day – then we’ll have a system that delivers people from Elk River to Eden Prairie. What they do when they get there is up to them, of course. Lunch, perhaps. There’s a Puck’s on the road outside the mall; great pizza. Or so I hear.
Still, it’s a surprise, as we say when we haven’t been paying attention. The University Av. Line hasn’t begun construction, but we know that’s a dead-cert, so apparently it seemed safe to announce the next extension. Two weeks after we see the final design for the Eden Prairie stops, we’ll be asked our opinion on the next line – it’ll be St. Paul’s turn then. Minneapolis can’t have all the fun.
Here are some of the proposed routes. I like the idea of putting it under Nicollet Avenue, because subways are cool. Everyone feels good ‘n’ urban when you’re underground shooting through a tunnel. But that’s providing we can pay for it with leaves, bark and pelts of small animals, of course; otherwise, forget it. But they can't go above ground on Nicollet without eliminating cars or parking or boulevards and trees - yet the other two routes don’t go through Uptown, and that seems a critical stop. I had this problem in Sim City, which is why I built all the train lines before I laid out the rest of the city. Think ahead, people!
It’ll be a 14-mile route, and cost about a billion dollars a mile. Now your host’s home base will be flanked by two lines, equally unusable for the commute downtown. Time to move to the suburbs!
Just kidding. Now, to repeat the point often made here, with tiresome regularity: what’s the matter with better buses? Seriously: If we’d kept the old streetcar system, maintained all the cars and updated them with A/C and comfy seats, our system would be renowned nationwide as a model for all. If we’d converted the trolleys to diesel, taken down the unsightly wires but kept the old cars looking exactly as they did in their glory days, it would still be revered as a model of inter-urban mass transit, because it ran on rails. Is that all it takes? Rails? Do they impart some particular magic?
Yes, I know, it’s the dedicated light-rail corridors that make them move with speed and efficiency, unlike the old trolleys. (Which were great!) And buses simply lack the cachet, the je ne sais quoi of a bus. Out-of-towners love to take the light rail; visitors are a bit suspicious of buses, which for all they know will dump them off 46 blocks from their stop with no way back. (This happened to my wife in Orlando last week; she was headed for a mall the bus driver said did not exist, and when it showed up big as life, he was still doubtful – and let her off in a field on the other side of two highways.) But what if we made buses that looked like light-rail trains? Wouldn’t that help?
I should really just shut up and learn to live with it, shouldn’t I. The argument’s over and I lost.
Wait! I know! How about elevated tracks with double-decker buses?
How about I just drop it?
The Sim City Quagmire
The version of Sim City I played the most was for the Super Nintendo system. Great Game. I came to find that the greatest urban density with the greatest level of citizen satisfaction (read: "mayoral approval rating") used a grid with absolutely no roads. None. Just rails and buildings (and presumably sidewalks but the game's graffics were not that good as to actually show them). It bothered me a bit that I was forcing all my people to ride trains… But hey — it's just a game right?
It's seems I was wrong. My little brother would badger the heck out of me (read: "razz me") about it everytime he saw me playing. Calling me things like "orwelleist", "commie (insert slang words for a container of female cleanser here)", "yootopian overloard", and things of that nature.
Hmmm… Still not sure who was right on that one…