Comments on: Dakota County BRT: Lying, Stealing for Will Branning

By: Dakota County’s Land Acquisition Problems | Bill Roehl

Dakota County’s Land Acquisition Problems | Bill Roehl — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:33:05 +0000

[...] According to an article which appeared in Thisweek, Dakota County has run into serious budget overruns due to the high cost of negotiating with landowners surrounding the CR-70 and I-35 bridge upgrade. One of the County Commissioners wondered if those same problems would come up again with all the land they plan to steal from residents along Cedar Ave for BRT. [...]

By: Tony Sullivan

Tony Sullivan — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:16:12 +0000

I took a look at the attached PDF files, and didn’t realize how close to home this could’ve hit. I used to live in a house where the backyard was right against Cedar Avenue. My parents and I moved out of that house in, go figure, 2001.

Now I see it’s one of those houses affected by the “noise mitigation”. Odds are, if we were still there, we may have lost the row of trees my dad planted in the backyard about 15 years ago with the intent of helping drown out the road noise.

By: John

John — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:47:00 +0000

I went off my open space land preservation tangent in my last comment and never made a comment on BRT. My comment about there being better budget items to go after was referring to the land preservation program (replying to Mikeh)

Anyway…My opinion on BRT is that Cedar ave is just flat out screwed and that we are throwing money away with a severe half ass fix. I’m guessing that the real fix for this road will happen about 10-12 years from now at about 10 to 15 times the current price. At some point it will get so bad that there will no longer be a choice for AV and the other clowns to admit that yes…it really should be a frickin highway. Until then we can all just enjoy the cool buses with those high speed wheel covers.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:55:43 +0000

Oh come on, like a $20+ million parking ramp with an unnecessary skyway wasn’t a good idea?

By: TCM

TCM — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:52:49 +0000

Should’ve added this in the last comment…

The 35W Lakeville Express bus is going to be run by Metro Transit, because Lakeville doesn’t want to be a part of the MVTA because of their poor decisions. (like building a new Apple Valley Transit station instead of turning the existing facility into a parking ramp.)

By: TCM

TCM — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:49:50 +0000

If it ever comes to that I would hope that the Met Council/Metro Transit take over the MVTA. The south metro politicians don’t really care how their decisions affect the residents.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:23:33 +0000

TCM wrote:

As far as I know the express service to downtown wonâ€™t be canceled. However I donâ€™t think that the Cedar BRT will be that successful.

Problem here is that Will Branning wants BRT to be successful and the only way that is going to happen is if people use it. If they keep express service to Minneapolis, there is no way that there will be enough ridership to justify keeping BRT running. So it is my opinion that Will Branning is going to push the MVTA to limit the number of express buses running to Minneapolis (if not eliminate them all together) so that it appears that BRT is a success.

By: TCM

TCM — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:17:55 +0000

As far as I know the express service to downtown won’t be canceled. However I don’t think that the Cedar BRT will be that successful. Nobody really lives on Cedar Ave, and increasing the frequency and hours of the local buses (and adding more routes) would be more useful to people who don’t drive to the transit centers. The Cedar BRT tries to connect a suburban center (MOA) to the suburbs and local bus ridership is too low to justify such a level of investment. The new report on the Cedar BRT service and stations should be out shortly so we will know soon.

I also don’t see why the lanes for the BRT aren’t going to be built in the median. They’re going to rebuild the entire road anyways, so it wouldn’t cost anything extra, but it would provide a faster trip for BRT riders.

The comment about making Dakota County walkable is such a joke. Who the hell is going to walk somewhere in the suburbs if they don’t have to. Apple Valley would need to redevelop into a denser, more pedestrian-friendly area if they want people to actually use the BRT. It would be nice to see better designed developments, however building high density office and residential developments in Apple Valley would be irresponsible in a regional focus. High-density developments belong in the central and first-ring areas not in the fourth-ring.

Good luck trying to get people out of their cars!

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:42:07 +0000

John,

BRT, as explained by the County/MVTA, will not fucking work. Why? Because people do not want to lose express service to downtown just so it can be filled with buses only going to the MoA.

BRT will be great if it’s left to run on off-hours and off-days (like late nights and weekends) but because of the way the budgeting works and the fact that they want BRT to “succeed”, they’re going to drop express service to Minneapolis and force you to use BRT.

Doubling people’s commutes and calling it progress is fucking horsehit.

By: John

John — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:39:15 +0000

I voted for the land preservation. I have no problem paying a little more for things like that if they are spent well. If done well I think it can be a huge win for the folks that will take over when we’re gone. I think it’s very cool to preserve some quality pieces of land before we’ve stripmalled everything from St. Cloud to Rochester.

I think there are a lot better budget items to attack than this one.