As a former daily traveler of University Avenue between St. Paul and Minneapolis, I always thought that if any place made since for a light rail line, that would be it. The road is super busy and is a major conduit between the cities, with much of the population likely to use transit.

I just received the following group e-mail from Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, in which he makes some good points about the cost of the project. Read it and tell me what you think:

"The Governor vetoed a $70 million bonding provision for a part of the $900 million Central Corridor light rail line connecting Minneapolis to St. Paul. Let us assume that the cost of the project would not grow.

Even without a government discount or a bulk discount, one can buy a 36-seat transit bus (the CTS rear engine model from Champion Bus Inc. of Imlay City, Michigan) for about $120,000.

So for the same price for the 11-mile light rail line, you could buy 7,500 buses.

These buses are 38 feet long.  So the length of 7,500 buses, rolling bumper to bumper, would be 285,000 feet.

The 11-mile route of the rail line is 58,080 feet long.

So you could have five lanes of buses cramming University Avenue, bumper to bumper for the same price as the train.

Or you could have one lane of buses headed in each direction, bumper to bumper, with 4,500 buses waiting in mothballs until they were needed.

Or you could have 100 buses headed in each direction of the 50-block route, with one bus for each block.  That would leave you with 7,400 buses in mothballs.  With a five-year warranty on each bus, it would take you 375 years to run out of buses. 

So unless the Central Corridor rail line will be in operation until the year 2383, it might be cheaper to go with buses."