Metro Transit

"You're either on the bus, or off the bus..."

 

Ken Kesey

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

I live in a quiet burb, not that far north of the metro area. I moved out here 30 years ago, and have watched the area grow up around me. When we first moved out here, I worked in Bloomington - it was a 40 mile drive one way. There was no public transportation option available to me - anywhere. Thirty years later, the town has grown and matured. It has most everything I need. However, it still does not have any public transportation available to me - anywhere.

The central planners would like to have us all living vertical in Minneapolis and taking light rail and buses everywhere. News flash - that ain't gonna happen. That is not the way our DNA is wired. We like our cars. Anyhow, most people don't work downtown anymore. They drive from suburb (home), to another suburb (office). For the most part, no public transit is available.

Now, the choo-choo train crowd is groaning because the Southwest Light Rail has developed more problems than Carter's Pills. It will cost over $1B to take people into a town that fewer and fewer people work in. My guess is it will never happen. And if it did happen, the taxpayers would subsidize every ride like we do on the Northstar.

So that leaves us global warming deniers only one choice - drive our cars or trucks to work or errands. In case anyone has not yet noticed, our roads are a mess. The winter of our discontent has left our roads looking like exploded mine fields. Now the Democrats want to raise our gas tax another 5%. Why? To pay for better roads (we hope). If we did not have so much of our transportation funding being siphoned off for boondoggles like bike trails and trains, our road funding might be just fine.

So who in the world could be responsible for this mess? Who is responsible for my town still not having bus service? Who is responsible for pushing trains down our throats? Who is this group, this unelected group that has more power than the Roman Empire? You guessed it - the evil and power hungry Met Council. The group most of us right wingers love to hate. Why? They are opposed to freedom. They are autocratic. They are unelected. They are just short of tyrannical.

So today I will continue my fundraising, attempting to navigate through the thousands and thousands of pot holes and sink holes. If I did not have a car, I would be dead in the water. No fundraising, no grocery shopping, no anything. Some day, we will be able to elect governors and representatives that have the stones to do away with the Met Council and accept the fact we like our cars and we like to drive on well maintained, non-congested roads. It really is just that simple.