Light Rain / 64° F
Light rail trip proves interesting
Published 12:00pm Friday, August 24, 2007It has not been a good summer for passengers on the major United States airlines. Over-scheduling, over-booking, pilot shortages, cancellations…
The list of travelers’ woes goes on and on.
My own luck has been pretty good, the worst case being an unwelcome four-hour delay in Minneapolis that opened up when a months-old itinerary ran afoul of a flight cancellation. My teen-age daughter and I were on our way east and, while we didn’t relish our extra time in the Minneapolis airport, we decided to make the best of it. As it turned out, we were well-rewarded for making the effort.
We had heard, a few weeks earlier, about an interesting café on Riverside Avenue in the West Bank neighborhood. We didn’t know exactly where it was, but we were stuck at the airport at 7 a.m. and we were hungry. So we wandered down to the Hiawatha Line light rail station at the Lindbergh terminal.
We have been on rail lines in several cities, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the automated ticketing system or the train schedule: One arrives at the airport every 15 minutes bound for downtown. In the opposite direction, trains run to the mall of America.
I made the mistake of sticking a $20 bill in the machine for our $2 tickets, and got $16 worth of dollar coins in change. I hadn’t even known we had a dollar coin in circulation, so that was one interesting surprise before we even got out of the station.
The train itself was nearly empty when it arrived at the airport station and we grabbed seats as the doors closed and the electric motors propelled us toward downtown and the Riverside Ave. stop.
It was early, but I was surprised by how few people were riding the rail. There were perhaps a half-dozen stations between the airport and Riverside Ave., but the car we were in never filled up; I would have expected plenty of commuters, heading into work early on an August Friday so that they could escape early for the weekend.
The ride was pleasant, and about 15 minutes long, in each direction. We felt safe, the cars were clean and it was easy to tell when it was time to get off.
It was a fine adventure for the small price of $4. The fare system is a bit odd; no one ever checked our tickets. I planned to buy return tickets on the way back to the airport, but my daughter pointed out that our outbound tickets said something like, “Valid for 1.5 hours.” We were within the time limit, so we didn’t buy new ones.
The return ride was a little busier, but the train was not full. We looked out the windows at the cars streaming into the city and I thought about how much nicer it was to be on the train.
Yet the Hiawatha, so quick and easy compared to driving, is the only light rail line in the Twin Cities, one of the most congested commuter cities in the country. There has been progress on a line from the St. Cloud area down to Minneapolis, but it is not yet ready to ride. Meanwhile, the governor vetoed funding for a Central Corridor line in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Why does it matter? For outstate residents, there’s the horrible inconvenience of trying to drive around, through or to the metro area, due to traffic congestion. Light rail would ease that problem.
More importantly, it’s an environmental issue. In 2003, one study found that Twin Cities drivers lose, on average, $722 per year worth of time and gas while they are crawling their cars along clogged streets. That’s a lot of fuel being poured out to no good purpose. Many of those people could be at work faster — and much cleaner — aboard a train or bus.
Light rail works. If a couple of outstaters like my daughter and I can figure it out and make a productive trip, it just can’t be that hard to use. Certainly it’s not unpleasant. Although “build it and they will come” is a dangerous mind-set, this is a case where we may just need to invest in building a good commuter system for the Cities. Because the bigger and better the system, the more likely it is to actually be convenient and useful.
This may sound like an idea just for the metro area, but the reality is that saving energy and wisely investing transportation dollars would benefit all Minnesotans.
Journal publisher Dave Churchill’s column runs on Fridays.
