Are the Greens Really "Green"? Green Politicians Opposition to Light Rail Transit

[Avidor]

Green Party candidate for MN 61B (where I live) Farheen Hakeem was quoted in a KSTP story about the the MN House 61B election:

"People are going green in their lifestyle in the way the work and the way they think and now they're starting to vote green, too."

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S304681.shtml?cat=89

When you vote for the Green Party are you voting for an environmental candidate?

Not necessarily.

When it comes to Light Rail Transit, Minneapolis Green Party politicians have taken positions closer to the far-right, "no-choo-choo-trains" wing of the MN GOP such as Phil Krinkie, Michele Bachmann and Rep. Mark Olson.

Dave Bicking, a candidate for Mpls City Council opposes LRT. This is from an invitation posted by Dave Bicking on David Shove's Progressive Calendar (David Shove is also and outspoken opponent of LRT):

I wish to make it clear that I am NOT speaking on behalf of the Green Party at this debate. I will be speaking as a strong advocate for more and better public transportation.

However, I believe that Light Rail, as currently operating and as proposed in the Twin Cities, is an outrageously expensive boondoggle that
undermines our ability to fund much more extensive and desperately needed improvements to our transit system (primarily buses). Light rail has some
nice benefits and amenities (I use it frequently myself), and it has been shown to attract those who would otherwise drive. It also has some
drawbacks, in addition to the cost. It is inflexible - the route can not be easily adapted to conform to future land uses, it can not detour around
temporary obstacles or construction, and it can not allow express service on the same route, because trains can not pass one another. It also exacerbates traffic congestion, rather than reducing it - thus causing more, rather than less, energy use and pollution. Come to the debate to hear me expand on these themes and provide documentation.

One fundamental issue, for me, is that - while drawing people out of their cars is important - our FIRST priority must be to provide better public
transportation for those who are transit dependent. This includes children, the elderly, the disabled, and those too poor to afford a car
(or a second car for a two-adult household). It also includes those who have chosen to give up their car to rely totally on transit!

The Green Party takes a strong stand in favor of public transportation funding. However, within the Party, there are strong differences of
opinion on the particular technology of Light Rail. Certainly, an argument on either side could be compatible with our Ten Key Values.
Currently, our State Platform says, "We advocate light rail transit as an essential part of the public transit system in the metro area." The last
two or more state gatherings have considered changes to that part of the platform. Attempts have been made to include other alternatives (bus, bus rapid transit, PRT) along with light rail, or to omit mention of particular technologies and instead list our criteria for what we desire
in a public transportation system. My sense is that there has been considerable, probably majority, support for a change; but it has been
difficult to fashion a consensus for a particular change, and efforts have failed largely due to lack of time.

Please come to the debate if you are interested in the issue - perhaps it will help inform both sides of the issue. And remember that there is an opportunity for audience members to speak!

Dave Bicking

http://lists.cohousing.org/pipermail/mn-prog-events/msg00686.html

Other Green party politicians say they support LRT, but have reservations.

From Farheen Hakeem's website:

I have publicly pledged many times to make community input be the forefront of all policy pertaining to transportation. For example, when the Hiawatha line was built, community input was largely ignored, leaving many people mistrusting of some aspects of local government. While I am enthusiastic about expanding this exceptionally popular transportation alternative, we cannot afford to repeat the mistake of alienating residents.
As a proven leader in community input, and an energetic organizer, I have the skills and the enthusiasm to develop plans with authentic community input. This is unlike current practice where plans are drawn in a closed board room, and then a presentation given so few concerns or questions are addressed.

http://farheenhakeem.org/node/9

I find it interesting that Farheen Hakeem finds fault with the citizen advisory process of the Hiawatha Line, but has nothing to say about the public process in the 35W Access Project and Lake Street. Former Minneapolis Councilman Dean Zimmermann (who also opposed LRT) stated on his 2005 campaign website that he was "ambivalent" about the 35W Access Project. I have asked Farheen Hakeem for her views on the 35W Access Project, but she has not replied.

I also find it interesting that the former manager of the citizen advisory process for the 35W and the Lake Street redesign Tom Johnson is managing the public process for the Park Board's Grand Rounds Missing Link project. I've recently heard Mpls Councilman Cam Gordon (who wants to see the Central Corridor LRT in a tunnel) say that he supports the Park Board's Grand Rounds project. Here are two videos showing Tom Johnson "facilitating" a Grand Rounds meeting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1SGpDKHHro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTNdWISdKrk

More about the Green Party here:

http://greenpartygonebad.blogspot.com/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Portland has shown that it's possible BOTH to build light rail and fund

better bus service.

At present, Portland has the following light rail lines:

Downtown east to Gresham (think Woodbury)
Downtown west to Hillsboro (think Wayzata)
Downtown to airport
Downtown north to the Columbia River (think Brooklyn Center)
Planned construction includes an east suburban line that parallels I-205 (the bus running that route is the busiest in the system) and an extension of the north line to the southern suburb of Milwaukie (think Eagan).

and a streetcar loop that covers the downtown area, Portland State University, and the Pearl District and Northwest residential/commercial areas

There are also plans for a commuter rail line from Wilsonville (think Apple Valley).

At the same time, Tri-Met is gradually improving its bus service, with the eventual goal of buses running at least every 15 minutes on all arterial streets, seven days a week.

Why can Portland do it, and the Twin Cities, larger and wealthier, can't?

The reason is governance.

In Portland, Tri-Met is an agency of the Metro Council, but unlike here, the Metro Council is elected by the residents of the three-county area on a geographical basis. Each councilors domain includes both a slice of the city and a slice of the suburbs. Portland voters consistently vote 2 to 1 for councilors who favor improved transit, so that's what happens. Councilors who displease the voters can be and are unseated. Just before I left, an old pol type was displaced by a bicycle transportation activist who was funded by donations averaging $50. Yet councilors who are doing a good job can stay on indefinitely, which makes for continuity.

Furthermore, transit has a dedicated funding source: an income tax surcharge on all holders of business licenses in the three-county area.

Here in Minnesota, the Metro Council is appointed by the governor, which means that potentially, its ideological make-up can change drastically every four years. Add to that the lack of a dedicated funding source, and you have the recipe for a mess, with advocates for the various kinds of transit fighting over a tiny pie.

The lack of continuity means that no one has a long-term view. Why should they, when the next Metro Council might undo everything in four years?

A further problem is that the bus system is a patched-together mess I can see the outlines of the old streetcar system in some of the central bus routes, but the streetcar tracks were laid when the area south of 50th Street in Minneapolis was open countryside. As the metro area has grown, Metro Transit has just slapped new rush hour lines onto the existing ones.

Even the maps produced by transit advocates show a patched-together system that concentrates on rush hour commuter rail.

As of this month, you can commute from Forest Lake by bus, but if you live in Minneapolis and want to attend a concert at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul, you'd better drive, because the lack of coordination among bus lines means that the trip will take two hours or more.

The Twin Cities system works fine for getting people downtown and back during rush hours. That seems to be the question that the transit planners are asking: How can we get people to work and back, five days a week?

(By contrast, the Portland planners seem to be asking the question: How can we make it easy to live here without a car?)

As one of my friends pointed out, it's absurd that the one street that runs the entire length of Minneapolis north-south, Lyndale Avenue, doesn't have one bus line running from one end to the other. In fact, you can't even travel south of 50th Street on Lyndale unless it's rush hour. Meanwhile, you cannot cross town on 50th street on a single bus, so that a person who lives in Edina cannot take the bus to Minnehaha Park without first going downtown and catching the Hiawatha Line.

Ideally (and in my dreams!) the Twin Cities transit system would have to be completely redesigned. The first step would be to hire the designers and take away their cars for a year. They would be required to live their entire lives, from work to shopping to doctor's appointments to recreation without a car.

Then they would be given a blank map of the Twin Cities and instructed to draw in the new bus lines. Just for a start, I'd propose frequent service on all arterials, whether north-south or east-west, and a simplification of the confusing numbering system, where each numbered route forks a couple of times, potentially leaving inexperienced riders miles from their destination.

I'd also extend the Hiawatha Line to northeast Minneapolis, run the Central Corridor Line east to Stillwater and west to Wayzata, and build a ring line of light rail that passed through the old downtowns of each inner-ring suburb.

That kind of system would make it EASY to live in Minneapolis/St. Paul without a car.

[Avidor]

2. Great points, Lydia.

There is a great deal of popular support for transit... so where is the opposition coming from?

It's interesting that the anti-LRT Greens like Dave Bicking ignore traditional environmental and transit advocacy groups like Transit for Livable Communities or the Sierra Club North Star.

Where does  Bicking get his anti-LRT talking points? Probably from anti-transit, pro-highway think tanks ( the same that Krinkie and Rep. Mark Olson get their arguments).

Wendell Cox, the Reason Institute, Randall O'Toole's Thoreau Institute etc.

Read all about all the anti- LRT myths (and the people who are paid to invent the myths) about LRT at Light Rail Now:

http://www.lightrailnow.org/myths.htm

Next time you hear someone say that buses are better than LRT, ask them if they ride buses regularly.

But you really know when that Dave Bicking's argument that LRT is a boondoggle is bogus when he promotes a genuine boondoggle called Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). 

Back in 2004, Rep Mark Olson had a bill that would have prevented "subsidized" transit  from "competing" with PRT. Zimmermann, Bachmann and Olson claimed that PRT would be market-based, "private" transit that would require no subsidies... never mind that they were also asking taxpayers to pay millions to develop and build PRT... that bill was a  sneaky monkey wrench to stop LRT. 

As for whether anti-LRT Greens and anti-LRT Republicans have worked together to monkey-wrench LRT with PRT, you can see that for yourself. 

Zimmermann and Olson at the Capitol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwA6oSdEahs

Here's Zimmermann and Rep. Mark Olson:

[qb]

3. Thanks for the information and links.

I don't live near the Hiawatha Line but I use it a lot to park & ride to events downtown. The kids love it. I wish they would hurry up with the expansion. You are right about the buses. Unless you're riding an express from the burbs to downtown, it can be a miserable experience... packed the aisle in like sardines, often late, bad connections...

[dpbrown]

4. A transportation system that doesn't free itself from roads is doomed

One of the biggest problems with the Hiawatha Line is that it both obstructs traffic and is speed-restricted on its route parallel to Hiawatha.

It's a mutant cross between a streetcar and a subway and it fails on both accords.

There is a role for streetcars, buses and a subway (or elevated) in a city's comprehensive plan, but the way the twin cities have implemented it, it's probably going to end up a fantastically expensive mess that aggravates instead of alleviates the transit problem.