Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

[HiawathaGuy]

To add to this, I follow the Rush Line Corridor on Facebook, and they're doing A TON of public outreach. Yes they're holding standard meetings. But they're also going out to actively seek feedback. They're at farmers markets and grocery stores and community events. If you truly want to get the feeling of the community you have to GO OUT to the community and ASK THEM what they think. The minimum bar for civic participation has to be far lower than devoting an entire evening on a week night to a stodgy boring meeting.

So you're saying you don't think that the Bottineau team has done this very same thing for this extension? Being someone who lives along the Hiawatha line, and has since before the Blue Line went through, I can assure you that there were countless efforts made by Met Council to reach out to the community for that line. If they did it for that line - and the Central - and for Southwest, I think you might be wrong in assuming they aren't for the Bottineau. Just saying.

[FISHMANPET]

I'm responding specifically to the claim that "the community" decided against the Broadway alignment after 321 people had been engaged.

E: And is it really engagement when the options have been narrowed down so far? Sure, if you give someone 100 options you're going to overwhelm them, but I don't know. I'm going all Glenn Beck here, but I'm just asking questions, I don't know the answers. I'm not happy with the engagement model of "gather people in a room for 2 hours" so I'm always open to alternatives that can more accurately gauged the wants and needs of a group.

[HiawathaGuy]

I'm responding specifically to the claim that "the community" decided against the Broadway alignment after 321 people had been engaged.

E: And is it really engagement when the options have been narrowed down so far? Sure, if you give someone 100 options you're going to overwhelm them, but I don't know. I'm going all Glenn Beck here, but I'm just asking questions, I don't know the answers. I'm not happy with the engagement model of "gather people in a room for 2 hours" so I'm always open to alternatives that can more accurately gauged the wants and needs of a group.

I think the problem here is that you're hoping for something that doesn't seem to be in the cards. I completely agree with you that I wish there was more engagement. But the reality is that people are far more apt to get involved or show up for a sporting event than a public debate about "X". Transit projects, highway projects, even new development! I've been to many, many neighborhood association meetings for various things. And they are very sparsely attended. So the fact that 321 went on record to give their feedback on the Blue Line extension routing doesn't surprise me. It's part of what's wrong with our country. People want convenience but don't want to get involved. So when things aren't convenient (at least for them), they're usually the first to complain about it. It's laziness and it's sad.

[LakeCharles]

I do agree that our system of asking 200 people who were able to make it to some community center at 6 on a Tuesday which of 2 options they like better and then running with that is strange. But engagement and community input are extremely difficult. No one really has figured it out.

[FISHMANPET]

See, you've actually completely missed my point. We shouldn't blame the people that can't make it to a 2 hour meeting in a location that may not be easily accessible by them. I'd say if you're poor or otherwise economically disadvantaged, you're more likely to work multiple jobs, and/or work outside the standard hours of 9-5. So to be involved in your community you'd have to take off work, or maybe you'd have to arrange child care for your children, and that's not usually cheap. And depending on where the meeting is, transportation may be difficult for you. Contrast that to me, a white collar worker with a car. If I need to leave early to make a public meeting, I just can. If the meeting isn't easily accessible by transit from my home or office I can just jump in my car and drive there. It's easy for me. So it's easy for me to get my voice heard. It may not be easy for some people, especially the people that our system has most traditionally left behind. And these are the people that, ironically, whose input is most valuable and important.

This idea that to "care" about something you have to be able to make all these sacrifices, it's just, it's just fucking TOXIC. I mean I guess it's endemic of a lot of our planning process is we just throw our hands up in the air and say "anything but the status quo is too hard!" Engagement is hard. It's really really super duper hard! But the reasons its hard are really the reasons its so critically important that we do the engagement in the first place.

Yes, 321 people gave their feedback. That doesn't mean only 321 people cared. It means 321 people were able to show up. What about all the people that wanted to show up but couldn't because of the reasons I listed above? Or all the people that would have liked to give input in the process but didn't even know it was possible?

So like I said, I don't have the answer for how to do it better, but at a bare minimum we need to accept that the community meeting model is critically broken.

[HiawathaGuy]

I don't think you're going to find many people on here who don't agree with your point. But I do think you're wanting people do either do something they are (with no net results, at least according to you), or can't (most likely because of limited funding). Neither of which is a great end result. But it is the end result.

I do believe that there are a lot of very passionate people who do spend a lot of time engaging with the community on a multitude of levels, for project feedback. Emails, Facebook pages, Flyers (both mailed and hand delivered), meetings (which you only seem to focus on), which are often had at a root level before the main meetings you may see about online or in the paper. There are lots of ways for people to have their voices heard - whether affluent or not - but they choose not to.
I don't think that's the fault of Met Council for not reaching out hard enough. There are countless people who dedicate their time to helping educate people on specific causes, including transit plans. And they are the ones at the neighborhood farmers markets, or neighborhood meetings, or reaching out to churches, or going to corporate campuses.

But at the end of the day, the only feedback that can be reviewed by the public is what's officially submitted.
That doesn't mean that there weren't more people who expressed their opinions or worked tirelessly to educate people.

I just don't think it's as black and white as you seem to think. Blaming poor outreach, etc. It's just too simple. And life is anything but simple. Nor is building a rail line in an urban area with literally no ability to please everyone, nor having the money to build it perfectly.

[MNdible]

Do you think that if you had more than 321 attendees, you would have liked the outcome better?

I guess I just don't see a bunch of people getting really excited to go look at civil engineering plans. The process is broken because, perhaps, we're asking it to do something that's not achievable. This stuff is really complicated. If you dumb it down enough so that it's really accessible, it's still unlikely that you'll get much more than the immediate neighbors, the urban studies nerds, and the cranks (and those last two are not mutually exclusive). And when you dumb it down, you get feedback that's not terribly helpful because you've oversimplified things.

I know public engagement is sacred, because democracy and stuff, and I'm not really suggesting that we get rid of it, but I'm also suggesting that even in a perfect world, it's kind of a ridiculous pantomime.

Jaundiced cynical rant over.

[HiawathaGuy]

For the record - I very much wish that this extension didn't follow Olsen Memorial to the railway corridor! I wish our rail was placed below grade in our dense areas of the city. Not only would it be faster, and benefit more people, it would also be better for our climate.

But I also know how difficult it is to get any line built - politically or cost-wise. So while I'm not overly excited about the path the line will go, I'm still a huge proponent of this extension to our overall system!

[Archiapolis]

See, you've actually completely missed my point. We shouldn't blame the people that can't make it to a 2 hour meeting in a location that may not be easily accessible by them. I'd say if you're poor or otherwise economically disadvantaged, you're more likely to work multiple jobs, and/or work outside the standard hours of 9-5. So to be involved in your community you'd have to take off work, or maybe you'd have to arrange child care for your children, and that's not usually cheap. And depending on where the meeting is, transportation may be difficult for you. Contrast that to me, a white collar worker with a car. If I need to leave early to make a public meeting, I just can. If the meeting isn't easily accessible by transit from my home or office I can just jump in my car and drive there. It's easy for me. So it's easy for me to get my voice heard. It may not be easy for some people, especially the people that our system has most traditionally left behind. And these are the people that, ironically, whose input is most valuable and important.

This idea that to "care" about something you have to be able to make all these sacrifices, it's just, it's just fucking TOXIC. I mean I guess it's endemic of a lot of our planning process is we just throw our hands up in the air and say "anything but the status quo is too hard!" Engagement is hard. It's really really super duper hard! But the reasons its hard are really the reasons its so critically important that we do the engagement in the first place.

Yes, 321 people gave their feedback. That doesn't mean only 321 people cared. It means 321 people were able to show up. What about all the people that wanted to show up but couldn't because of the reasons I listed above? Or all the people that would have liked to give input in the process but didn't even know it was possible?

So like I said, I don't have the answer for how to do it better, but at a bare minimum we need to accept that the community meeting model is critically broken.

<insert congratulatory gif here>
This is perfect.

[FISHMANPET]

Do you think that if you had more than 321 attendees, you would have liked the outcome better?

I think If more than 321 people had been involved when Broadway was taken off the table, I'd be more willing to accept the currently absolute asinine argument that it's what the community wanted. Maybe they really do want that, but I have no earthly idea. And with 321 participants I don't feel like the planners, or anyone arguing in favor of the current alignments do either.

I mean, I'm pretty jaded on a lot of public engagement as well, because it usually ends up as government by referendum and I'm super not a fan of that either. Maybe the current model really is the shiniest turd in the bunch. But I think if you put a bunch of engineers and technocrats in a room and ask them how to improve engagement, you're not going to get a whole lot. If you put a much more diverse cast of characters, like people from all sorts of disciplines, artists, other creative types, professional organizers, you'll get a better system. For the Dinkytown historic study, they actually had some artists do a project that got people on the street involved and giving input. That's a creative idea that engineers aren't going to come up with.

I mean, I get it, it's really really hard! But it's not impossible! My neighborhood, Corcoran, has a full time organizer. He goes out and he engages. And he doesn't just hold a meeting and say "if you care you'll come to my meeting" (though sometimes there are meetings). He goes to, gasp, where the people are! He's at the farmers market talking to residents. He's in the neighborhood talking to people. He's knocking on doors, he's going into apartment buildings, he's going where the people are. We have a lot of latinos with little or no english skills, and he literally speaks their language, he knows Spanish so he can talk to them. I think Corcoran has a pretty good handle on the actual needs and problems of the community, because we don't wait for the issues to come to us, we go out and find them. And you know what, when we do hold public meetings, they're packed.

So it's hard, but it's not impossible, there are ways to do it, there are people that know how to do it, but we're not engaging those people I guess.

[MNdible]

These people exist.

I don't envy their job.

I mean, just look at the excruciating conversation we've been having here about the Broadway ROW. You really need to get into that level of detail before a layperson off the street can meaningfully answer the question, "Do you think there should be LRT on Broadway?"

[FISHMANPET]

I think in the context of broad engagement, that's not even the right question to ask, and that's part of the problem. That's a very crunchy engineering question to ask. The questions you should be asking are much squishier, because they're about values and goals and desired outcomes and generally are questions with a much broader scope than things like "are 10 foot travel lanes acceptable on this corridor." Once you get a hold of the much squishier goals you can maybe work with engineers to try and distill that into some kind of route planning.

[Nick]

So to echo MNdible's jaundice...do we feel like there is generally a correlation between amount of public input and quality of an idea? Usually trying to super badassedlly identify the forum's groupthink is pretty annoying, but that would seem to run counter to a lot of experiences in other areas.

[RailBaronYarr]

I know public engagement is sacred, because democracy and stuff, and I'm not really suggesting that we get rid of it, but I'm also suggesting that even in a perfect world, it's kind of a ridiculous pantomime.

110% this.

[froggie]

I'm responding specifically to the claim that "the community" decided against the Broadway alignment after 321 people had been engaged.

Please go back and reread my posts. Nowhere did I claim that "the community had decided against the Broadway alignment. My point was that the community was given an opportunity to respond, not just at a meeting, but also online. That only 321 chose to do so speaks more to the state of the public desiring (or not desiring) to get involved that HG and MNDible discussed than anything else. By comparison, I vividly remember I-35W meetings from the early '90s that numbered in the thousands...

What I DID claim earlier, because it's a matter of public record, is that Penn Ave homeowners opposed that routing, and the BUSINESSES along West Broadway opposed a West Broadway routing. And both groups made it loud and clear what their position was.

[David Greene]

As someone who has participated in project development as a community member both on and off official boards (the CAC), I'll say that Peter has a lot of really good points, many of which I have raised multiple times in multiple contexts. On the other hand, no one denies that outreach is ridiculously difficult. The effort around Bottineau has been the best I've seen so far on LRT, so take that however you want to.

There are definitely things we can do to make participation easier/better:

- Define specific roles for the community - what decisions do they *really* have input on?

- Hold events in transit-accessible locations. We're developing transit. For God's sake, shouldn't the current users of the system be able to participate? Downtown Minneapolis at 11am does not suffice.

- Hold multiple meetings at a variety of times in the same area. Yes, this means more money and more staff. 5pm in Plymouth and 8pm in Hopkins doesn't count.

- Have a good number of meetings be community-led with resources and technical expertise provided by the planning agency. The best Bottineau meetings I went to were organized by NTN with assistance from the county.

- Shorten project development cycles. Honestly, most people simply cannot think about something that's going to happen a decade from now. People are worried about next week's paycheck, not next decade's LRT line. This is a huge freaking problem.

I understand the "design by committee" argument. Point #1 above is an attempt to address that. I believe we need *more* community input, not less, to design a better system. Stops for Us made that crystal clear. We can't make good decisions when we leave entire communities/demographics out of the process. And that's exactly what we're doing today as Peter pointed out.

[trigonalmayhem]

Engineers solve problems given a set of parameters. If you give them bad parameters you get bad results. But you probably shouldn't let them drive the whole process and push cost savings as your one and only God. If you pick a corridor that is hard to build in, the engineers are supposed to find creative solutions not tell you it's impossible. I've known plenty of engineers and they aren't really very creative until you give them a problem to solve. If you hand them a blank sheet of paper you get something plain and safe and utterly devoid of creativity. It takes a challenge to bring out their real talent.

[a_tribe_called_chris]

I am part of the Community Working Group for this project. The City of Brooklyn Park has really made an effort for outreach on this project. We have had informational and listening sessions at North Hennepin that were advertised on social media, E-mail and an actual mailing. There are areas on the line that have been re-zoned to accommodate transit orientated development such as 4-6 story mixed use housing. The infamous corn fields at the end of the line will be transformed into a main street style development along with a LRT service garage. Brooklyn Park has taken the approach to think of our 5 stops in a holistic manner. We are also looking at ways to improve the pedestrian experience. Bike connections are being developed along with consideration to bus routes to connect residents further away.

I think many of you who speak of equity and the north side are unaware that Brooklyn Park is more diversified than both Minneapolis and St Paul. We also have some segments of poverty that are near the alignment. These communities stand to benefit from this project provided we continue to focus on equity and make efforts to avoid gentrifying the neighborhood.

[sean]

County Road 81 bridge recommended for Blue Line Extension trains This is north of the 694/94 ramp. Estimated to add $25-30 million to the project cost.

[MNdible]

Is it really too hard to have north facing up?