When poverty is "eradicated" from the North Side it won't be removed from the system is will just be pushed further out. The North Side will likely start gentrifying over the next few decades regardless of whether SWLRT is built. Poor neighborhoods tend to be temporary, it just doesn't seem like it because the time scale may be half a person's life. Building expensive permanent infrastructure to deal with temporary situations seems foolish to me.
But your argument was that we should route it based on density, not need, because the need can change. If North gentrifies, there will be density so the line will serve density (and SWLRT will have been a big driver of that density). If it doesn't there will continue to be need so your premise that the need will move is wrong.
First, the premise that a transit line can ERADICATE poverty is ridiculous. I applaud your optimism but there is no transit line, no matter how perfect, that can eradicate poverty.
I guess I just don't understand your line of reasoning. It seems contradictory.
In any case, with SWLRT in Kenilworth the density will come to the Bassett Creek Valley whether or not there is poverty in North so in some sense this particular discussion seems moot to me.
This argument is not moot, it is germane. What you describe as “Bassett Creek Valley” sounds very idyllic when in fact, we are talking about a polluted mess beneath/proximate to towering expressway overpasses.
The area between Interchange and Dunwoody is a wasteland by any estimation. The effect of the highways in this zone is massively depressive to any notions about future residential density. Nobody but trolls want to live under bridges. With a shiny new transit line running through then, MAYBE this area will develop job centers/office buildings but we are talking about developing potentially polluted sites in an unsightly area of the city whose ONLY amenity would be a transit line. The kind of development that you are suggesting will not take place for 20 years minimum if ever! The lack of density between West Lake Street and Interchange, a tangled snarl of highway overpasses that is virtually undevelopable and an expensive/wasteful tunnel just so we can graze the north side because “equity” is nonsense. Before you bring it up, the Penn Ave BRT is a bandaid applied to an ugly appendage of an idea that is the SWLRT.
I’ve seen people argue against transfers on other threads and we are talking about taking a bus from actual density in north (Penn and Broadway, etc.), bussing down to SWLRT, transferring, then heading out to suburbia. You can’t have it both ways. Either transferring is unnecessarily time-consuming and awful or it isn’t.
Furthermore, the Midtown line will serve the density you're talking about so it's not like we're losing the density advantage with SWLRT. Compelling SWLRT to serve all nodes of density is a little like saying that Central Corridor should pop down to Grand Ave. between Mississippi River Blvd. and Snelling Ave. because the density there is greater than at the Westgate industrial complex.
This is a straw-man argument and you know it. Nobody is saying that one transit line should serve “all densities.” However, I am saying that a transit SYSTEM should strive to serve density. As Chef points out, any transit system that is predicated on targeting impoverished neighborhoods and not existing density is massively flawed. People/social classes are a *bit* more nimble than transit infrastructure.
Last, you can’t keep dangling Midtown Corridor to assuage all of the proponents of the “uptown alignment” because it is NOT imminent. SWLRT wouldn’t be built until 2020. I’ve already argued that this group should NOT be allowed to make another transit decision in this region but assuming that they are making it, then we can expect Midtown Corridor streetcar in what, 2030?
I've agreed with you that we need a transit system that serves the underprivileged and I've said it over and over. I applaud your valid social concerns but this line is wrong for this city/region.