[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: Details, Details

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
Details, Details
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1217738388.shtml


   The Central Corridor Light Rail project is supposedly obvious and
   essential to our overall transportation system. But for a project that
   will spend more that $1 billion to build and require maybe $25-50
   million in annual operating subsidies, there sure are a lot of major
   unanswered questions. The latest: parking along University Avenue.
   KTCA's Almanac program featured a segment with Steve Boland of the
   Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation and Robin Caufman,
   Central Corridor Project Manager.

     Erik Eskola: "Parking was a big issue during a public hearing on
     Monday. The math is simple. If you take up two lanes for rail and
     two lanes in each direction for cars and buses, that doesn't leave
     much room for on street parking and University Avenue businesses
     depend on that parking."
     Steve Boland (edited for clarity): "... we're looking at nearly a
     thousand spaces of surface parking being removed from community
     businesses [...] about 83 to 85 percent depending on which part of
     the Avenue you're looking at. It's almost all of the surface
     parking on the street. Now there's off-street parking options for
     some businesses, but [many of] the smaller businesses in the
     Frogtown neighborhoods are landlocked. They rely on the on-street
     parking in front of their business and we need to do something to
     restore some of that."
     Robin Caufman: (edited for clarity): "We did know that there was
     going to be some loss of on-street parking. What has happened over
     the last year or so is we've had a pretty extensive public
     involvement process and through that process we've learned that the
     community has concerns about safety and the ability to cross the
     street at every block. So as we've been going through the planning
     process we've added some amenities and some features that ended up
     in that additional loss of parking. So what has happened is that
     we've really listened to the community and this loss has actually
     been a result of the process and not the lack of a process."

   Now I'm not an attorney and this setting is not even a deposition, but
   I'd characterize this as a non-responsive answer. Boland further
   clarified that parking wasn't really brought up in all those
   briefings.
   It's a good interview that you should watch on the Internet, ending
   with this:

     Erik Eskola: "What's the goal of the [Central Corridor] Line
     itself? I realize it's getting people from point A to point B, but
     what is the integration with the neighbor and the businesses and
     the residents? What's the overall vision?"
     Robin Caufman: (edited for clarity): "The overall vision for the
     Corridor is that we will be projecting to have about 42,000 riders
     a day, that would be connecting some of the very popular
     destinations in the region, with the University of Minnesota, the
     Midtown area, the Capitol area and of course, the two downtowns.
     "Another thing we find is that there's a lot of social services in
     this Corridor. In our outreach efforts we've talked a lot to them
     and found out that they are really excited about this project
     because they see it as another opportunity for their clients, a lot
     of which don't have the option of driving. They can't drive or they
     don't drive or they can't afford to drive. And so in talking to
     some of those, like Goodwill and ARC of Minnesota and Model Cities,
     they are really excited about this opportunity for their clients."

   Again, this is non-responsive. That last point is pure jibberish. Any
   transportation service these clients will receive on the Central
   Corridor LRT is available now on the #16 bus, better service in fact
   for those who will now need to walk further to the LRT stations.
   Since Ms. Caufman had no answers, I'll give Mr. Boland the last word:

     "We think a good mix of off-street parking and transit solutions is
     important, but if you take street parking out of this mix
     completely and put big "No Parking" signs on University Avenue it
     becomes a thoroughfare. It's suddenly a place you go through, and
     not a place you go to, and we need people to stop and patronize and
     be part of this immigrant community."