Can Light Rail Be an Engine of Opportunity? The Twin Cities Story

[KamaAina]

http://www.policylink.org/focus-areas/equitable-economy/at/can-light-rail-be-an-engine-of-opportunity

Transportation projects should connect communities to opportunity, but too often new roads and rail lines have isolated low-income people and devastated the economic prospects of neighborhoods of color. That's why diverse communities in the Twin Cities fought tenaciously to make sure the new $1 billion Green Line creates jobs and business opportunities for residents, links low-income neighborhoods of color to employment centers, and strengthens local businesses along the route....

Like light rail projects from Baltimore to Seattle, the Green Line traverses some of the lowest-income and most diverse communities in its region. These include large Somali and Hmong communities and Rondo, the historic heart of St. Paul's African American community. Rondo is a place emblematic of the economic and social fractures caused by inequitable infrastructure investments. The last major transportation project in the city — I-94, built in the 1960s — cut through the neighborhood, demolishing hundreds of homes and businesses, displacing thousands of residents into a discriminatory housing market, and hurting economic growth to this day....

"People wanted the train to actually stop for them in their neighborhoods and they wanted to use it as a catalyst for economic development," Vanhala said. Community-organizing efforts led to public meetings, packed hearings, a civil rights complaint, and a lawsuit. After three years, the coalition won the stations — and more....

The campaign, which brought together the historic African American community and the newer Asian immigrant communities, also created a model for alliance building across neighborhoods, race, and ethnicity. "We had to build trust among ourselves and the only way we could do that was to talk explicitly about race and the inherent racism within our built environment," Vanhala said.

[kickysnana]

1. The lite rail along Univ Ave takes 48+ minutes. Express bus took about 28.

They are trying to keep the oil/freight trains from coopting the track but if they get Republicans in again that could happen. that is impacting commuter trains already in place.

The bus that runs .25 miles from me runs ~ every half hour but not on Sundays, not overnight. I would really really like to have bus service everywhere every 15 minutes and every half hour overnight 7 days a week or none of this is any use to me. The money spent whould have allowed that.

I have mobility, stamina and temperature problems the long waits everywhere I go are just not doable if I were trying to to it for a job and often medical is not doable either.

Buses can go around crashes, disasters etc, not so trains, street cars. I rode a street car when I was 3. There was a reason most places went with buses. Besides all that overhead is U.G.L.Y 24/7.

I loved the one guy who thought that someone "had given our leaders street car heroin" because they seem to get totally hooked on it to the exclusion of common sense.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. When I took the trip, most people didn't ride it all the way from downtown to downtown

In my car, I was the only person who stayed on the train from beginning to end. Most people got on and off at places like the University of Minnesota, University and Snelling, or the State Capitol.

[Jenoch]

2. This article has a factual error.

It says the last major transportation project in St. Paul was I-94. It was not. I-35E was done many years after 94.

[kickysnana]

4. Part of that was engineering stability of the swamps I35 ran on, North out of St Paul.

A family friend had a cousin who married into the Chicago Italian mobs and she claimed that a missing mobster was dumped in the pilings on the approach between the Capital and the Cathedral while they were building I94. Monumental changes during that time here.