business

Increasing transportation options sound good. However, there will need to be a corresponding increase in Transit Police. The criminal classes will flock to this transportation line like sharks to a sinking ship. Strong security measures can limit this.

Street cars are cheaper than LRT and should have been used on the Central Corridor instead of LRT! 1 mile of track for LRT is $100 million, while 1 mile of street car track is $50 million if that!

Amazing things can't be zone for high density, mixed use in the middle of core cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul. Sioux Falls, SD is darn near bigger than St. Paul these days! I'd love to see the paths along the transit corridors densely populated with mix use owner occupied condos and rental units. Right now, it's too expensive to live in the city, but if there were more housing the price would go down and so would my commute!

The "criminal classes" flocking to a streetcar line...? Not a worry. The increased development and business growth this project would spur would be a boon, increase safety because more people are out and about and visible, and it would employ people who turn to crime when there are no other opportunities. This project is a major win-win!

A transit improvement that isn't a transit improvement? Let me guess: they're also looking to the feds to pick up most of the tab.

"...until it was displaced by the automobile." No, the old streetcar network was displaced by corrupt officials bribed to buy a bunch of buses.

Why can't they just use the existing buses? These people just can't spend our money fast enough.

there are aleady busses there, how about you just make a bus look like a street car and all the people can pretend and save billions of dollars for education

Shall we just get this over and go back to the horse and buggy? It seems the trend is to regress further and further back when it comes to transportation. We can also go back to shipping everything via lakes/streams/rivers. Bring back the riverboat days.

Look no further than the failures of the Jacksonville Skyway people-mover or the Tampa Trolley to see the folly of the proposed Mpls streetcar line between downtown and NE. The puny ridership of the Jacksonville Skyway requires a $4 million annual subsidy by the city's Transportation Authority. Over the next 25 years, Jacksonville can expect to pay $100 million to subsidize 1,900 daily trips. The Tampa Trolley, orginally funded by a settlement from another failed downtown circulator line (which should have told people something), is expected to attract just 330,000 trips annually, a 50% drop from its original opening. Tampa residents avoid the Trolley, which is used primarily by tourists as an amusement-park type ride to slowly see the city.