urbanMSP

Not really trying to be snarky, just suggesting that Seattle is more of a special case than an equal for a couple of very important reasons. MSP should definitely be doing better with transit, but the Seattle comparison isn't reasonable.

The only thing that's really even in the same ballpark in terms of a geographic constraint would be the Minnesota River Valley, and even that's not really comparable. In my mind, the question shouldn't be "Why is Seattle's transit so successful?", but rather "How in the world did it take them so long to build it?"

As to how it gets paid for, the Minneapolis's general fund (aka discretionary budget) was just under $500m in 2017. $50m would represent a 10% increase. That's a huge hit. And more importantly, transit really needs to be a regional thing. In a perfect world, it would be properly funded at the state level. That's not going to happen, but there does seem to be a mechanism for the willing counties to continue picking up the slack, so I just don't see that the City ought to be taking on that role.

Minneapolis could probably afford it, though idk about St Paul.

Transit is the only thing on the planet that's *needs* to be a regional or state-funded thing, unlike the many other things the city provides funding for in partnership with county, state, and federal partners, including (but not limited to) affordable housing, local streets, collector streets, arterial streets, traffic signals, parks, water infrastructure, and bridges. Local bus routes that run almost entirely within Minneapolis and/or St Paul should definitely be funded by F-150 sales in Roseau.

No other metro, home or abroad, has any reasonable lessons to teach us unless their geography, demographics, population, prominent industries, and pro sports teams' colors are 95% similar.

Minneapolis can definitely spend $40m more a year on parks and streets out of the general fund paid for almost entirely by property taxes but an undefined amount in the tens of millions for transit would be too big a hit. There are no ways to trim back how much we spend on our streets, or charge local fees to drivers, to help mitigate some of that amount.

Got it.

(There's a lot to take issue with, but top for me is the objection to the relevance of the Seattle local funding model of improving transit relies heavily on improving the type of local bus routes, as opposed to paying for the regional spines approved by ST2 and ST3, that run through neighborhoods very similar Minneapolis and St Paul's neighborhoods. The city paying to run a few more buses a day on well-used routes by people making trips within city limits, or build more bus shelters, or roll out aBRT quicker, seems as close to "core government services" as anything else the city does out of the general fund.)

Interesting...

New route not going well... http://wsav.com/2017/12/18/breaking-new ... 5-freeway/

Deaths.

Time-lapse video from a 360° camera on the Space Needle showing construction around the city:

https://youtu.be/-2MTiUGvqyE