Light Rail

[pegkerr]

The girls and I went to the grand opening of the Light Rail line on Saturday (which Fiona, despite being corrected innumerable times, still tends to call the Monorail). We had to wait about an hour to get on and stand up on the ride downtown. They said that about 30,000 people rode it the first day. I think I might try it at lunch time today to hop between downtown stops.

I'm still ticked at the city for ripping up all the street car lines in the 1950s. We had hundreds of miles of lines. And they were all destroyed and the cars burned. What a short-sighted waste.

Comments

Short-sighted waste...

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

More like graft, corruption, and waste. I seem to remember reading about some bus companies being mixed up in there someplace..

[aome.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I used to pronounce "freight" trains as "fright" trains for a REALLY long time. :D

And ... agreed about the wasted lines. What I wouldn't give for a good commuter train to Philly from here.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I'm oddly glad to know that it wasn't just L.A. that experienced this sort of thing.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've heard that our street cars are still on the rails in New Jersey and in Mexico. I don't know if it is true,

Plus, some of the streetcar lines are now rails-to-trails bike paths, aren't they? I'm not sure what was converted to trails: street cars or freight rights-of-way.

K.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

While doing research into the old Streetcars I came across this little bit of information, which sums up what happen. I'm sorry I can't remember who or where this came from.

"Their (streetcars)loss remains one the great travesties foisted on this metro area, and the man primarily responsible for it was Carl Pohlad, who worked to privatize the public transit system (Twin City Rapid Transit), bought the system, then sold it for a huge profit to General Motors who was buying up all the local rail systems they could get their hands on, then scrapping streetcars for the rubber-wheeled, gas-guzzling buses they manufactured and still do."

I recently read that the last of the old Minneapolis streetcars in New Jersey was finally retired, but several of them still run down in Mexico.

Only one car survives in Minneapolis. The Como-Harriet Streetcar line which runs from Lake Calhoun to Lake Harriet.