The day after saying that a passenger rail line from Minneapolis to Duluth could cost $1 billion, the state transportation official who talked about that price tag was shocked by what he heard at a public meeting in Cambridge:
"Just get it done."
"People told me they didn't care what it cost," said Dave Christianson of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), who oversees all state rail projects and has attended environmental assessment open houses in four cities along the proposed line.
So says Strib, and more, read the entire thing here.
Of interest to those feeling as I do, this from the same item:
"When we did a cost-benefit analysis, we talked about gaining more freeway capacity as a good tradeoff," Christianson said. "But if the price of gas doubles, we're going to have enough passengers to fill this train no matter what the tickets cost."
Citizens will learn more about the line when MnDOT presents some of its state rail plan findings and asks for public input on its website, www.dot.state.mn.us, before Christmas.
"When building a railroad, you can figure out what things are going to cost and be off by 50 percent, depending on assumptions," Christianson said of the line that NLX officials hope will open in 2012 or 2013. "More important, we have to start determining what a good system looks like, who it will benefit and how we can make it happen.
"You can't say, 'Build it and they will come,'" Christianson said.
That last sentence. Isn't that exactly how they handled Northstar? Tell me it's not so. Then prove it. I think Dan Erhart put his cronies into the transit authority positions and they ponyed up a bunch of numbers, at some posh restaurant, using the back of a napkin, then leaving a 30% tip since it was on the county's account.
The "freeway capacity" thing to me says they biased the cost-benefit analysis via creating a speculative "benefit" and then tied some invented number to it and said, "Gee. That's something." It sure is. That's the point they are missing. Something that could be entirely phony.
Then, the big item some website opportunity to say, "STUPID, STUPID, STUPID." And then, "WHO WANTS IT? WHO WANTS IT? WHO WANTS IT?"
And say, "LET TINY TOWNS PAY. LET TINY TOWNS PAY. LET THE CASINO PAY. LET THE CASINO PAY."
It will not do any good they only care about their opinions, but do it anyway.