St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1962-07-06
Metropolitan Transit: The
Highway Department
Replies

Replies
Thanks to the interest of Governor Elmer An
dersen have response from the Minnesota
Highway Department to several editorials MAX
ing the point that the Twin City freeways are being
planned without provisions for mass transportation
and in total disregard for this need The statement
of the highway department is published elsewhere
in this issue.
AS to be expected the highway department
disagrees with position in the matter and sug-
gests (by indirection and not too insistenty that
position is the position of non-experts theirs
the position of experts We are quite willing to con-
Cede this, without yielding inch the validity of
position We speak only for the people who have
to ride the buses. We hope that with this rather
late public statement by the highway department
the cities can now begin ful-scale debate on the
subject, and that Of the other people who
ought to be speaking up for the bus riders Officials
of the two cities, for example) will now do So
OF first interest in the highway department
statement is the revelation that Minnesota SUBJ
committee transportation and traffic" repre-
senting the two cities, Hennepin and Ramsey count
les, and the department considered the problem
of freeway use by buses in 1858 and 1859 and de-
cided nothing needed to be done about it.
The highway department says the best avail
able opinion" consulted in this matter. The
pest aVallaDle opinion dld not INCLUDE the people
who ride the buses It did not include any of the
elected officials of Hennepin and Ramsey county,
the two cities the many suburbs concerned with
this problem 1t did include, as one-fourth of the
entire committee, two officials of the Twin City
Rapid Transit company, whose most notable plan
ming activities appear to lie in the direction of
curtailing service and Indicating the trans
portaton function to miscellaneous other carriers.
A Provincial Decision
The contribution of these TCTR officials
which the highway department considered worthy
of noting in its statement that if bus trans
portaton the freeways instituted Serious
problems would be involved in passengers having to
descend ascend steps or ramps in order to reach
the bus loading areas" This suggests that the COM
mittee may be too provincial in its makeup and
unaware of how things are done in Chicago New
York Paris London and quite few other places
around the world.
We aware that the procedures followed by
the highway department in this matter grow
ing phenomenon of government and especially of
the bureaucracies We refer to the practice of maxi
ing far-reaching decisions public policy binding
far into the future and often committing us to
enormous costs, without consulting the people af-
fected, without holding public hearings, without
informing the public and without informing
their elected officials But the precedents established
excusable. And expect to go right challenging
it. with all the power of fact and logic that can
muster, whenever encounter it. We suggest that
in this matter, the highway department has been
guilty of great failure of its responsibility to the
public which supports it, and a great breach of
faith.
MHD Decision-MoIGing Is Immature
One of the troubles with making big decisions
in small closed-circuit parochial meetings is that
mature and provincial as in the case cited above
the problem of ascending and descending steps!
In many other respects, the highway depart
ment statement reflects the kind of dogmatic and
opnionated thinking that may be set down as a
result of failure to mature ideas through discussion
and debate on an appropriate scale. Witness, for
ample the unsupported statement that 1.-The necessi
ty of leaving the freeway in order to load and I'M
load for this limited number of stops lie the free
way nterchanges) will not seriously disrupt
press schedules"
This one must have come off the top of their
hats Somewhere they lost the point that in addition
to nterchanges there intersections by overpass
and underpass, and that these intersections are of
considerable Importance arterial streets carry
ing local bus service. But more important Is
the point that any discussion worthy of the term
would Immediately have raised two questions: what
schedules are we talking about? And how much
time will be consumed the turnouts? The state
ment does not say and we firmly believe that the
highway department does not even know We also
believe that run like the inter-city rum from
Loop to Loop the losttime factor could be serious
enough to affect materially the of buses There
of course other questions about loading and I'M
loading the turnouts that a mature consideration
of the problem would raise such the effect upon
local traffic and traffic approaching and leaving
the freeways The department statement dismisses
these without a word
TcRT Tells Us WhaYs Whaf
The final point regarding freeway use for bus