Reply #9: In Portland, I was comfortably car-free [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Even more so in Tokyo. I have been an ardent advocate of mass transit ever since living there.

In Minneapolis, I have to be car-lite, because the bus system doesn't run in the right places at the right time. It spends a lot of money running commuter buses to the exurban areas to serve people who probably don't ride them anyway, and it slights the urban areas.

The busline that runs past my building goes to some of the places I go often, but there are only three buses per hour, two per hour on weekends, and the transfers to other lines are rarely convenient.

One fellow Kucinich volunteer told me, "The MTC has contempt for its riders." I'm beginning to think he's right. For one thing, there's no master printed schedule available, so if you want to figure out how to transfer from one line to another, or want to figure out if it's even possible, you'd better have access to the Internet or be able to communicate your needs to the help line.

If I were transportation czarina for the Twin Cities, I would eliminate the exurban lines or have the affected communities run them, and concentrate on running buses every ten to fifteen minutes on all the through streets.

I think that part of the problem here is that the transit system is run by the Metropolitan Council, which, unlike Metro in the Portland area, is appointed by the governor. In other words, the transit system is run by people with no accountability to the public.