12 Sep 2024

Letters: Now, review what rail should be in the Twin Cities. Here are some standards

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Rules for rail

Now that the Riverview Corridor “modern streetcar” has been canceled, it’s time to review what role rail transit could have in the Twin Cities metro. The following are necessary to justify its great cost:

Absolute security
Dedicated right-of-way
Stoplight control if on an arterial
Regional routing
Average speed of 35 mph or more
No honor system

Absolute security means zero tolerance and real enforcement. Dedicated right-of-way means physical design separating rail from all other modes. Stoplight control means turning signals green from red, not just prolonging an existing green light. Regional routing means long trips that are faster than any bus and link high-density destinations and stations. Average speed above 35 mph means fewer stations, where the train goes to 0 mph. No honor system means no unsecured boarding — physical access to stations requires payment.

While we’re at it, how about enclosed platforms designed with boarding doors on the platforms that open only when a train has arrived to a full stop? Elevator lobbies have doors. The Terminal One rail shuttle at the airport has platform doors. Why not transit train platforms? And how about transit police substations on each platform, not just squad cars? After all, we are trying to get people to switch from cars to transit. Wouldn’t policing transit be more effective with platform police stations? When Northstar or Amtrak board and deboard passengers, there is a conductor checking tickets. Expand that to metro rail in general.

Finally, consider tunnels and elevated viaducts. Given current cost overruns, subways and elevated trains might not be much more expensive and would for certain be more efficient and faster.

Mathews Hollinshead, St. Paul

 

Plug it back in and start over

I regret the demise of Ramsey County’s plan for a streetcar line between St. Paul and the airport. But, let’s treat it as a course correction and move on to something more likely to succeed. I am an amateur in civic capital projects but I have some observations.

The planning and management seemed scattered across multiple agencies, making the “who decides what?” question quite confusing.

The option analysis seemed to drag on forever, in part to ensure universal input. The downside was rising impatience and cynicism.

As an observer, I was made well aware of neighbors’ objections but was less aware of evidence-based upsides for the project. I view an increment of a few minutes of travel time to be near-irrelevant versus environmental and urban development concerns.

Now that we have opportunity, let’s rethink the project objectives in hopes of meeting current needs in a better way. For example, since the original planning, 3,800 new living units are being developed at Highland Bridge, adjacent to the 7th Street corridor. Shouldn’t we try to meet that new need? Let’s start again and do better.

Joel Clemmer, St. Paul

 

Thanks, MAC

I read with interest Frederick Melo’s excellent story, “Riverview Corridor rolls to a close with no streetcar, and no bus” (Sept. 7). Ramsey County officials are wringing their hands about canceling further planning on a streetcar project that: a) was intensely opposed by businesses in this important commercial corridor, b) would increase transit travel times relative to current bus operations, and c) would cost 2 billion (that is not a typo) dollars. How was this a difficult decision?

The story quotes Ramsey County Commissioner Rafael Ortega as stating that federal funds could potentially have been secured for up to half the overall price tag. However, $1 billion is still an immense amount for a locally led project of questionable overall merit. And, as we have seen from other mega transit projects (e.g. Southwest Light Rail Transit here in the Twin Cities), actual costs always increase substantially relative to preliminary, planning-level cost estimates.

Per the story, the County is blaming opposition from the Metropolitan Airports Commission for ending the streetcar dream; if this is true, County leaders should be thanking the MAC for saving them from themselves. As a retired transportation planner, the fact that the streetcar option was championed for as long as it was (devouring huge investments in planning analysis along the way) is quite remarkable to me.

Peter Langworthy, St. Paul

 

With all this in mind, are polls meaningful?

I have a question about polling maybe someone among your readership could answer.

I have been around quite awhile now and have never been polled. Furthermore, I don’t think I know anyone who has reported ever being polled. I’ve always imagined that polling would be done by telephone, but today many people no longer have a landline. This could vary by location, income, education, age, etc. To my knowledge, cell phone numbers are not listed in any organized published form. On top of that, I suspect it is only certain types of people who would agree to being polled.

With all of this in mind, I am wondering how polls could possibly be representative of the general population. Are polls meaningful?

G.J. Mayer, Lino Lakes

 

Smile at Snelling instead

I am writing to suggest that the MNUFC replace the billboard at University and Snelling Avenues. Several times a week I drive north on Snelling, and turn left at University to go to the Midway Y. Sitting in the left turn lane, I see above me the billboard with the oversized face of an angry young man, yelling at this troubled intersection. It casts a negative shadow on everyone below, and makes me wonder what the team intended with the sign.

Please replace this sign with happy, smiling faces. That would better represent the team and the vibe you’re trying to create at this busy intersection. We need something more positive at the corner of University and Snelling.

Russell Myers, St. Paul

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12 Sep 2024

Young women are more liberal than they’ve been in decades, a Gallup analysis finds

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By LINLEY SANDERS and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, according to a Gallup analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.

Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way.

For many young women, their liberal identity is not just a new label. The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.

Young women “aren’t just identifying as liberal because they like the term or they’re more comfortable with the term, or someone they respect uses the term,” said Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “They have actually become much more liberal in their actual viewpoints.”

Becoming a more cohesive political group with distinctly liberal views could turn young women into a potent political force, according to Saad. While it is hard to pinpoint what is making young women more liberal, they now are overwhelmingly aligned on many issues, which could make it easier for campaigns to motivate them.

Young women are already a constituency that has leaned Democratic — AP VoteCast data shows that 65% of female voters under 30 voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 — but they are sometimes less reliable when it comes to turnout.

Young women began to diverge ideologically from other groups, including men between 18 and 29, women over 30 and men over 30, during Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency. That trend appears to have accelerated more recently, around the election of Republican Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement and increasingly successful efforts by the anti-abortion movement to erode abortion access. At the same time, more women, mostly Democrats, were elected to Congress, as governor and to state legislatures, giving young women new representation and role models in politics.

The change in young women’s political identification is happening across the board, Gallup found, rather than being propelled by a specific subgroup.

Taylor Swift’s endorsement Tuesday of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, after her debate against Trump, illustrated one of the issues where young women have moved to the left. In Swift’s Instagram announcing the endorsement praised Harris and running mate Tim Walz for championing reproductive rights.

Signs for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are posted in Jarvis Square ahead of the presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

The Gallup analysis found that since the Obama era, young women have become nearly 20 percentage points more likely to support broad abortion rights. There was a roughly similar increase in the share of young women who said protection of the environment should be prioritized over economic growth and in the share of young women who say gun laws should be stricter.

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Now, Saad said, solid majorities of young women hold liberal views on issues such as abortion, the environment, and gun laws.

Young women are “very unified on these issues … and not only do they hold these views, but they are dissatisfied with the country in these areas, and they are worried about them,” she said. That, she added, could help drive turnout.

“You’ve got supermajorities of women holding these views,” she said, and they are “primed to be activated to vote on these issues.”

Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman in London contributed to this report.

12 Sep 2024

2 Black women could make Senate history on Election Day

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By LISA MASCARO Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has the potential for history-making this fall, with not one, but two, Black women possibly elected to the chamber, a situation never seen in America since Congress was created more than 200 years ago.

Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester marks the milestone by saying that the reason she does this work is not about making history, “but to make a difference, an impact, on people’s lives.”

Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks said that people like her, and stories like hers, don’t usually make it to the U.S. Senate, “but they should.”

If the two Democratic candidates prevail in their elections this November, their arrival would double the number of Black women — from two to four — who have ever been elected to the Senate, whose 100 members have historically been, and continue to be, mostly white men.

Never in the Senate have two Black women served together at the same time.

“I have to pause and think, How is that possible?” asked Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

“It’s not that white male attorneys’ perspective shouldn’t be at the table,” said Walsh, but “they shouldn’t be the only thing at the table.”

FILE – Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., speaks during the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

To be sure, there are a many stairs to climb before Senate history would be made this election, where not only the White House, but control of Congress is being fiercely contested, and essentially a toss-up. The Senate races, in particular, are heated, grueling and costly.

Blunt Rochester is almost assured to defeat the Republican candidate after Tuesday’s uncontested primary for the seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Carper in the small state that is home to President Joe Biden and where she is the at-large representative to the House. But the race in Maryland between Alsobrooks and Republican Larry Hogan, the popular former governor, is expected to be tight to the finish — and it could determine which party takes majority control in the Senate.

Alsobrooks upended conventional wisdom to beat back wealthy David Trone in the primary to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin by amassing deep grass roots and party support, showcased in a notable campaign ad with hundreds of backers. She is the former State’s Attorney for sprawling Prince George’s County and is now its top County Executive.

On their private text chain Blunt Rochester says they call themselves “sister senator to be,” as they run down-ballot from Vice President Kamala Harris — a friend and colleague who became the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate when she won in 2016 — in her own historic run for the White House.

The first Black woman elected to the Senate, Democratic Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1992, served a single term. Harris was the second. And a third Black woman, Sen. Laphonza Butler, was appointed to fill out the term of long-serving California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died in 2023.

“People are anxious and excited at the same time,” said Glynda C. Carr, the president and CEO of Higher Heights for America, an organization that works to elect Black women to office.

What’s striking about their campaigns is the way the two women embrace their own backgrounds but also, like Harris, don’t dwell on the historic firsts they would bring to the job, leaving it to the voter to see their Blackness and hear their voices as women.

“The vast majority of us know that we have so much more in common than what separates us,” Harris said on the debate stage this week, brushing past Trump as he revived questions about her race.

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On the campaign trail Blunt Rochester has shared the story of the Reconstruction Era documents showing her great, great, great-grandfather, who had been enslaved in Georgia, as now having the right to vote.

As she reminisces on that history, “what we’ve come through as a country,” she said she also thinks of what she will pass on to her own new baby granddaughter.

“There isn’t a cookie cutter way to run” for office, Blunt Rochester told AP.

Blunt Rochester and Harris are close, both entering Congress the same year and often sitting together at Congressional Black Caucus events. “The most important thing is that we show up as our authentic selves,” she said, adding “because it requires all of our different and diverse lived and work experiences.”

Alsobrooks launched her campaign for the Senate in a video telling her family’s story of leaving South Carolina for Maryland after her great-grandfather was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy after a traffic stop.

As a young prosecutor she first met Harris, then attorney general in California, a friendship that formed more than a decade ago.

But unlike 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran for president in a white suit symbolic of the suffragettes, the 2024 Senate candidates are positioning themselves more broadly in a way that may appeal to a wider electorate but also signals the cultural shift as the country becomes more diverse and Congress becomes more reflective of the electorate.

“We learned from 2016, we’re not going to lead with identity in the same way that Hillary Clinton did,” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, an organization that supports women of color in American leadership.

Allison said a new generation of candidates is showing you can be “holding multiple identities” at once. “It’s demonstrating you have a heart for people who you’re not like … but deserve to be served by government and deserve representation.”

The challenges Black women face to get to this point in the campaign are steep, rooted in a two-party political system that has often been slow to support Black women candidates and quick to doubt their ability to win statewide office, despite the qualifications.

Over the years, the parties have not always shared ample resources with Black women candidates who strategists said proved they could have had more success in several close races, creating a Catch-22 loop that reinforces biased attitudes against their electability.

In fact, the Senate may have been poised to swear in another Black woman, Rep. Barbara Lee, who ran for the open seat from California after Feinstein’s death but fell short during a multi-candidate primary. Rep. Adam Schiff ran a strong campaign to become the Democratic front-runner with wide party support and is expected to handily win the seat that is now filled temporarily by Butler.

With the Senate heading toward a 50-50 split, tens of millions of dollars are being spent in Maryland, where the popular Hogan was recruited by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to help the GOP win back the majority.

Hogan and Alsobrooks appear to generally appreciate one another. Alsobrooks said Hogan was a good governor, but warns that in the Senate he would be a decisive GOP vote.

Hogan’s campaign said he greatly respects Alsobrooks, and is proud of the work they did together during his administration.

“Our campaign has been laser-focused on Maryland and Marylanders — their local concerns and priorities, and the opportunity to elect an independent swing vote who will put the best interests of the state above party-line politics,” said Hogan campaign spokeswoman Blake Kernen.

During the Democratic National Convention the two women candidates held an event at a historic Black history museum in Chicago with Moseley Braun delivering remarks and Butler introducing them.

Blunt Rochester, noting her own powder blue power suit with its padded foundation, said she’s standing on the shoulders of those who came before her and has strong shoulders ready for those who come next.

12 Sep 2024

The debate opened voters’ eyes in suburban Philadelphia and Harris is getting a closer look

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By MIKE CATALINI Associated Press

BRISTOL, Pa. (AP) — The presidential debate this week was the final affront to Rosie Torres’ lifelong Republicanism. She said her allegiance to Donald Trump, already strained by his stand on abortion, snapped in the former president’s “eye opener” encounter with Kamala Harris.

It’s time to put “country before party,” Torres, 60, said Wednesday in Bristol, a riverfront town in suburban Philadelphia. Trump left her frustrated after his appearance recently at Arlington National Cemetery when a member of his staff pushed a cemetery official, she said.

“I still was willing to vote for Donald Trump,” Torres said. “But you know, I think that what he did at the cemetery for the veterans — that was very disrespectful. I feel like our country is being disrespected.”

In Bucks County, a critical area in a vital swing state, the debate is producing a lot of hard thinking about what to do in November. Millions of Americans elsewhere have made up their minds but in purple Pennsylvania, plenty of voting choices are still in play.

In interviews in Bristol and Langhorne, another longtime Republican came away from the debate intrigued but not sold on Harris, a young first-time voter is going for Trump, and a Democrat is still trying to shake the image in his head of people eating pets after Trump’s “moronic” talking point on that subject Tuesday night.

A closer look at what voters in a key part of the country are thinking after what could be the only presidential debate:

She’s still shopping

There’s Mary Nolan, 70, of Bensalem, a registered Republican for 50 years who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020. She has more thinking to do after a debate in which Harris both impressed and frustrated her.

“I wasn’t happy with Biden-Trump,” she said of the options before President Joe Biden abandoned his reelection campaign. “I didn’t feel we had any good choices. And I’m still not sure we do. We might. But I still want to see more about Kamala Harris.”

She said she and her husband, who’s registered as a Democrat, split their party registrations so they could have a say as a family in primary elections. Immigration, the economy (she said she had just paid $6 for a pound of butter) and the infrastructure bill that Biden signed into law were her top issues.

“I like that Kamala Harris does say I am going to be the president for everyone,” Nolan said. “I don’t think our politicians say that often.”

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She figures she’ll make her voting decision by the end of October, just days before the election. Meantime, she’s aggressive about collecting information.

“I take different opinions from all over. I don’t do any blogs. It’s simply news. Different interest groups like AARP.”

Her political ideology? “I think the world is changing fast, and I’m still in my values from 1960,” Nolan said.

What values?

“Family, home, morals. You know, our kids don’t have the upbringing that you did or I did because the streets are different now. I think if someone would say, you know, this is what I’m going to do to improve life in the United States, I definitely would vote for them.”

She said she thought Harris had a good debate, but dodged some things.

“I did not like that she avoided questions. She talked around them when they asked her direct questions about abortion. There was one about abortion. There was another about immigration. And there were a couple that said, hey, you’ve been here three and a half years, but you haven’t done those things that you’re saying are so important. Why not? She ran off into her talking points and never gave a direct answer.”

But Harris gave her a good impression. Trump did not.

“I think yesterday, definitely Kamala Harris presented herself very well. She’s dignified. … She would be a good representative of our country.”

Trump? “I think his policies are good. I just want a more stable, dignified president.” She wants “someone that doesn’t yell and scream and call people names.”

This Democrat saw history unfold

Terry Culleton, 68, of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, is a retired high school English literature teacher and was reading “Autocracy, Inc.” by Anne Applebaum at a cafe Wednesday morning. His support for labor, then for civil rights and human rights, made him a Democrat.

He thought Harris held her own against Trump and articulated her plans well.

But what really stuck with him was Trump’s false comments about immigrants in Ohio eating pets.

“So moronic a thing to say and to repeat that I just can’t get it out of my head that somebody would go on national TV and state that,” he said.

He said he got a sense of history unfolding watching the debate last night.

“I think it’s democracy versus something close to totalitarianism. I think it’s a matter of supporting democratic governments as opposed to supporting the kind of governments that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is trying to export, which Trump has no problem with, as far as I can tell.”

Inflation led her to Trump

Kelli Surline of Langhorne was at a café with her fiancé and young daughter who wore an Eagles kelly green T-shirt. She described herself as politically unengaged until the pinch of higher prices got to her. She didn’t watch the debate, in part, because she’s made up her mind.

“I’m 28 years old and I’ve never seen the country this bad ever,” she said. “So I made the choice to get my voter’s registration, and I’m definitely voting for Trump.”

She talked about how difficult it has been to get ahead.

“We wanted to get a place together,” Surline said, motioning to Geoffrey Trush, 40, her fiancé. “We’re not able to do that.” Instead, she’s living with her mom. Unaffordable prices make it “a struggle every week.”

He was once a Democrat

Ron Soto, 86, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, is a longtime Trump supporter and retired tractor-trailer driver and Army veteran who left the Democratic Party in the 1990s for the GOP after coming to realize he disagreed with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s positions.

He said he tuned into the debate Tuesday, his hound dog, Sam, by his side, after watching the Phillies game.

Illegal immigration is a major issue for him and Harris didn’t win him over.

“The biggest issue is I don’t like her, and I don’t like Joe Biden.”

Saying he served in the Army from 1955 to 1963, Soto asked: “What the hell did I stick my neck out for? Why? So you can give it away? The Democrats can open the gates, the floodgates, and tell the whole world. You’re welcome. Come on in.” He added: “These people have ruined this country.”

She had her fill of politics

Christine Desumma, 50, a former Trump voter and the owner of a salon on Bristol’s quaint shop-lined street, expressed frustration with both parties and said she won’t be voting at all in November. She said her taxes were lower when Trump was in office and recalled the sting of COVID-19 shutdowns.

She got fed up, particularly with social media and Facebook. Online debates, she said, were driving a wedge within her own family, and she’s washing her hands of it.

“I just made the decision that I’m not going to vote and I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Now I choose to not watch, not pay attention.” She’s found another pursuit.

“I’m studying yoga,” she said. “I got myself back.”