Harold is a NorthStar skeptic. My feeling, light rail, good transit, is needed. However, there's presently no link, downtown-to-downtown, St. Paul to Minneapolis. A needed thing.
And NorthStar has the disturbing attached Crabgrass dimension - you make it easier to commute from Big Lake to downtown [ultimately, St. Cloud to downtown] and you foster the build-out of what is being built along the tracks in Ramsey - failures and halting starts and all - but it is just adding far more strain on the highways than NorthStar will ever alleviate. For that reason, is the tradeoff a lane vs. a train? Or are the stakes even higher? Also, I have not seen any firm lane-vs-train comparative figures from the Yantos or Tinklenberg consulting crowd. The Yantos crowd, they appear to have nice dinners together - all paid from tax money - but nothing firm about whether their pork-barrel for Developer interests rail proposal is anywhere near a payback, (at anticipated round-trip pricing), to meet its full and ever escalating cost - whatever hidden real figure that is or ultimately will be. Moreover, so far it's been the train dumping Ramsey; not Ramsey dumping the train. No stop planned in Ramsey - that continues unchanged as best as I can see from the news that gets reported. I am sure if there were a turnaround by the Yantos crowd on that - the City of Ramsey official website home page would feature that very prominently. No such feature. Hence, no such change.
**UPDATE** July 21 - Promptly after sending my inquiry email I learned from Brian Olson, Ramsey's head of engineering, that the inquiry was forwarded to him and he would be searching data and preparing a response. He indicated he appreciated my patience in the process, and I appreciate his taking the time to provide us all answers - which we eagerly await. If I do not post a response soon it is because I continue to await it; and again, the email address for others to pursue with their independent questions is:
commutercoach@commutercoach.org
So, any Ramsey Star Express issues, or related questions or ideas from Crabgrass readers will be promptly cleared and routed. ***
------ original post, below ------
You have to judge it like Town Center - without subsidy, is it a success in the marketplace, or does it require more cash in than cash flow produced out?
commutercoach.org and its parent bus opeeration has:
Great logo. Spiffy looking bus kiosks. Empty looking coach. Nobody getting in. Nobody getting out. I bet it's losing money but subsidized by Met Council tax money; possibly some City of Ramsey subsidization thrown in the pot too. So, I emailed, and will post any reply I receive on this message:
from eric zaetsch <---@gmail.com> 7:45 pm (0 minutes ago)
to commutercoach@commutercoach.org
date Jul 18, 2007 7:45 PM
subject RAMSEY STAR EXPRESS
mailed-by gmail.com
Dear Answer Person for commutercoach.org
Three questions: [1] What are the ridership statistics, Ramsey Town Center, on commuter usage? [2] Is this route making or losing money, from stopping in Ramsey - and how is that calculated? [3] As an overall operation, to-&-from downtown, as currently priced - is it making or losing money - daily, or on average?
I ask these things because it looks like pure hype to me, for Northstar, and my expectation is the thing is a losing-money bust, but kept up for show.
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Eric Zaetsch
_______________
I encourage each and every reader to send in a comparable question, perhaps asking as I neglected to, what levels of public subsidy money are going into keeping this sad sham running as a prelude for, and drumbeating effort for, commuter rail. And I will post and admit I am wrong if I get a credible reply showing it's not pure wasteful idiocy, but instead a true cash cow for its sponsorship.
Then we can ask that the per-trip price be lowered.