Minneapolis has big plans for transit, and Minneapolitans are part of them, whether they like it or not.
June 24, 2023 – 2:00 PM
In seven years, Minneapolis transportation planners want 60% of trips in the city taken on public transit, or made by biking, walking or rolling.
The effort to achieve that ambitious goal, which is laid out in the city’s Transportation Action Plan, began this month as the city partnered with marketing agency Vision Flourish to kick off the mode-shift campaign called “As You Go Minneapolis.”
“We want to shift people’s behavior and thinking about how to move about the city,” said Amy Barnstorff, a transportation planner in the city’s Public Works Department.
No word on how they plan to enforce compliance with this diktat.
It was about this time fifteen years ago that I was in the middle of my 11-month experiment at doing without a car.
Among my conclusions from that experiment:
I want to laugh when I see some of the lefties – especially the transit-oriented leftybloggers – yapping about running their lives on transit. I notice that not a single one of them seems to have kids; children are the big clinker in the “transit-oriented lifestyle”. If you have to get kids to an after-school event, it’s a major expedition; if you have to take one to urgent care, it’s either miserable (hauling sick kids on the bus is a rotten feeling, although I never had to do it) or expensive (cabs in the Twin Cities are nothing to write home about).
Just to run down the hunch, I checked out the transit planner featured in the article.
And sure enough, she punched all the expected tickets; her and her significant other apparently have a dog, but no children.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who can walk that particular walk without having a car for a backup.
Someone prove me wrong.
Decades ago, I knew a woman who left an abusive relationship with her three grade-school age children. She managed on the bus with them one whole winter – school, work, grocery store, doctor – until someone told her about Newgate Vocational (at that time, a rented garage on Dale Street) where students learned to fix donated cars later sold cheap to low income buyers.
She arranged to buy a 1971 Dodge Dart with 150,000 miles for $500 with money borrowed from her grandmother. I dropped her off at Newgate the day she picked it up. She cried when she got behind the wheel. It was a life-changing moment for her.
I suspect that woman would bitterly resent some yuppie planner taking away her freedom, forcing her back on the bus, in service of some grand idea of urban transportation planning. I suspect choice words would follow.
The goal is 60% alternative means of transportation, not 100%. The vision is not to eliminate automobiles, but reduce use. Obviously there are times a bike or bus will not work … ie trips to the gun range, hauling lumber or filling the propane tank etc…Overreaction is not helpful here.
I didn’t see 60% in the plan but maybe I missed it. I encourage everyone to click through the link to read the Transportation Plan itself. There are six goals which guide the plan: climate, safety, equity, prosperity, mobility and active partnerships.
The number one goal is to Save the Planet from Climate Change by stopping Minneapolis residents from driving cars. That sets the tone for the rest of the plan.
“Safety” means we reach ZERO traffic deaths within 4 years (plainly, the way to stop people from dying in car accidents is to get rid of the cars -same logic as stopping gun deaths – not by getting rid of criminals, but by getting rid of guns). “Equity” points out some people don’t have cars so allowing others to drive is UNFAIR. “Prosperity” hopes 60,000 new people will move to Minneapolis by 2040 but will not bring cars, they’ll ride transit instead. “Mobility” emphasizes ride-share, electric scooters and bicycles over cars.
It’s a classy website with beautiful photos of diverse people enjoying lovely Minnesota summer days. The woman I knew years ago? The single mother with three kids under age 10, bundled up in snow suits waiting at the bus stop at Target on University with bags of groceries in the early darkness of a blustery January day? I didn’t see her in any of the photos on the website.
Lovely – and those hub and spoke transit maps work great for all the jobs in the downtown office towers. Oops, scratch that.
The only possible way to make something like this work is to allow unregulated jitneys to operate throughout the cities on or inside the 494/694 ring. Odds of that happening are functionally zero.
Have have a goal to shoot 25 clays in my Trap League. I’m never disappointed that I’ll more than likely shoot 22/23..
Two years ago the elites shut the country down over covid and told people it was too dangerous to attend a funeral or to gather with loved ones for the holidays.
And now they are pushing mass transit & hi density housing again.
I have an ebike. I love it, it’s great.
But it is astounding how many people ride those things very fast (~20 mph) wearing, at most, a $20 walmart bike helmet. Short pants, thin, cotton t-shirt and tennis shoes.
You take a fall at 20 MPH wearing only that and you are going to be hurting, brother.
The Emery Collective has a “let them eat cake” moment.
Or clay. I guess.
Re: “elites”
As Thomas Jefferson put it, the government you elect is the government you deserve and the American people elected Donald Trump. Moreover there is every danger that they may elect him again.
Some things really are the fault of ordinary people.
“Have have a goal …”
Translation: rAT stumbled across a story while surfing the internet for kiddie porn, and thought “hey, that looks impressive…I must be an expert in that! Oh wait…I’m in a trap league, yeah, a league….that’s the ticket!”.
What Trap League are you in, rAT? lmao
Hey the internet is back up in Moscow, welcome back Swift! Got a bit spicy this weekend eh?
What Trap League are you in, rAT? Or didn’t you think far enough to look one up?
lmao
Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane, and remember all the shit rAT has claimed:
Made a fortune in the stock market; got out right before it crashed
Has a PhD in Chemistry
Got back in to the stock market; took more ProfITs, then back out, then back in
Takes a week off to train for the Birkie; shreds it every year
Has a “Ski ShAk” in Wisconsin
Lives in a fabulous lakefront estate (Prime property)
Travels Europe with his daughter
Shoots pro level scores at his private Trap Club
Let us recall also, that these claims come from a low IQ wretch that has been continually busted for plagiarizing shit; ie: He’s a proven liar although not a very good one.
This is a pattern of pathological behavior. rAT lives in a fantasy world.
BTW, rAT…”clays” refer to “sporting clays”. Skeet and Trap use ‘clay pigeons”.
“Clays” are significantly smaller than pigeons. Most old time Trap clubs (like the South St Paul Rod & Gun Club which I used to shoot at often) do not have the land it takes to lay out a sporting clay route.
If you’re gonna lie, at least take a minute to investigate your bullshit.
I’ve concluded the Emery Collective’s comment generator program cannot be truly random. There must be a screening program which filters comments before they are posted. I have yet to discover the criteria used for screening.
For example, a truly random comment generator might accidentally have posted “WHITE SUPREMACY” which would have been a tremendous faux pas in a post about Rich White Liberals in Minneapolis city government making pie-in-the-sky plans that only work for affluent YUPpies and DINKs, not so much for others.
Instead, the comment generated defaulted to “TRUMP” which is ridiculous as no Republican has had anything to do with Minneapolis city government for 50 years (Richard Erdall, who served one day as Mayor after Charlie Stenvig resigned on his last day in office to become police chief in 1973).
A human could not be so stupid, not even a collection of narcisisstic human teenagers; therefore, the comment generator must be automated. How it selects random shit to post remains a mystery.
Swift: stick with the St Petersburg troll farm —Internet Research Agency. You aren’t built for trolling SiTD….
What Trap League are you in, rAT?
Where did you get your JD?
Where is your FaBUloUS LaKEFroNt EStATE?
Take a minute to create some bullshit to cover your ass.
30+ years ago my Dad had a coworker that was wheelchair bound. They worked in an office building in downtown Minneapolis. My dad commuted from St. Paul, and probably paid more for parking every month than I did on my first studio apartment.
His coworker lived a in downtown Minneapolis and used the skyways to typically get around. It worked perfectly for him. He still had a car so he could go places that weren’t Minneapolis, or even within the city if it was late enough the skyways were closed.
It’s possible to create small, walkable communities with small, nearby stores. Product variety tends to be limited and costs tend to be higher than you’d get with big box stores and mega marts, but it’s possible. 1 key element of success for such a community is a zero tolerance for street crime. Minneapolis doesn’t have the will for zero tolerance.
Smith, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say your dads friend wasn’t negotiating a Minneapolis overrun with savage blacks.
Different time.
Still waiting on rAT’s update on his lux lifestyle and extensive real estate holdings…
Waiting…
Waiting…
Waiting…
rAT…I’m resting my balls on your chin…do something!
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One thing to note here is that the average efficiency of a standard city bus is about 25 passenger miles per gallon of diesel. That’s about the same as putting every commuter in a Suburban or half ton pickup.
Just sayin’.
When urban planners replace streets with trains and bike paths . . .
You will go Where we want you to go.
You will go When we want you to go.
You will pay What we want you to pay.
If that means you must move from your home to a hive to gain access to transportation, then you will Live where we want you to live.
Unless your social index is too low. Then facial recognition scanners at the train stops will trigger an alert, barring entry to the train and summoning security to remove you.
Travel is a privilege, not a right.
Emery on June 26, 2023 at 10:49 am said: I’M A LOATHSOME TWIT!
Just one question: In God’s name, WHY???
There is NO “Climate crisis” or emergency, nor ANY reason whatsoever for this radical change, so why??
I have sometimes tried to ride transit, and per what our host, “Bigman” and others have noted, there is simply a lot of difficulty trying to get from one place to the other if you’re not going on the preferred routes–generally outskirts to downtown in the morning, vice versa in the evening. I generally found that it would change a ten or twenty minute drive (or half hour bike ride) into a two hour ordeal. Yuck.
Plus the sanitation there….or lack thereof.
Just one question: In God’s name, WHY???
There is NO “Climate crisis” or emergency, nor ANY reason whatsoever for this radical change, so why??
J. Ewing: Read Bigman’s 7:38am comment 2 above yours. THIS is exactly the end goal of all of this.
And yet we have a mass transit expert at the U who says this: “When you can get people where they want to go, when they want to go, and for less cost than driving, they will quit driving.” And not before. And I’m curious– are 60% of all trips taken in good weather? No rain or snow or dark of night?