Duluth transit center is a go
May 14, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
Money included in last week’s state bonding bill means that work will begin this year on a long-planned, $27.5 million Multimodal Transportation Center at Third Avenue West and Michigan Street in downtown Duluth.
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This project will be helpful for a number of reasons…parking in the winter when there are Bulldogs games and a symphony performance plus an event in one of the ballrooms at the DECC are good examples.
Moving DTA users off Superior Street will help the mall and adjacent business be more accessible.
The Wells Fargo ramp is ready to fall down, I am somewhat concerned that the property is owned by INRIET but tax dollars are being used to demolish it….and I am sure they (Wells Fargo) will retain a drive-through in the new facility…let’s be sure this project is equitable to the taxpayer.
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The owners of the Wells Fargo building have known since 1995 that the ramp was unsafe and needed, at that time, to be either completely rebuilt or replaced. LHB did the engineering study that revealed the decrepit state of the ramp in 1995. Since then the ramp has been patched and painted but no real repairs were done while the ramp continued to deteriorate. Now it looks like the taxpayers are going to build Wells Fargo a new ramp. How nice.
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Says more about you then it does about the proposed transit center.
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You’re right it does. It says I have an aversion to soul numbing ugliness in architecture.
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Or an ugly numbing soul.
Seriously stranger, There are lots and lots of us that really enjoy modern design and making unpleasant comments is more of a reflection of how one feels about them selves then anything they appear to be talking about. All I am saying is, lighten up.
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Stalinist?! Concrete + steel = Stalinist? Jeez David, I usually try to give you the benefit of the doubt, but really?! What’s your word for the concrete jungle up on Miller Hill then? Freedom? Ha!
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The president and CEO of CAVE (Citizens Against Virtually Everything for the newbies in the crowd) has spoken… again…
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Will be nice to see the crumbling (literally) ramp come down and the bus traffic moved down to michigan. @David: Wake up on the wrong side of the bed again?
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I would like to see retail space in this new building along Michigan Street instead of a blank wall.
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There is already too much retail space going unused in Downtown.
This project looks good in the artists drawing…no its not a gem, but its good.
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You could argue the reason why these spaces are unused is due to a combination of high rent, lack of parking and difficulty traveling the downtown area due to the buses and such.
This could change that, albeit not to an extreme.
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Where in Duluth would people take a taxi that they couldn’t access by bus?
Also, your notion that only tourists from the cities would use a train is deceptive. What about the average person who goes from Duluth to the cities (or vice versa) a handful of times every year just to see friends/family?
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Once we start paying the same price as they do in Europe, you can imagine we are going to start using rail more and more.
I do think that a Rail system going east to west would be very useful in this city.
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Once we dispose of Obama there is no reason to assume we will shoot ourselves in the foot and artificially inflate the price of gas like the fools in Europe.
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Please do enlighten everyone as to how Obama was singlehandedly able to artificially inflate the price of gas.
He must truly be the Magic Negro because, he’d be the first president in US history to have any control over gas prices.
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Why is the price of gas so much higher in Europe? You think it’s pure market forces?
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You know that market forces have very little to do with oil prices, David. Don’t be so naive.
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I.E. The private oil companies choose the price we pay. The combined income of the 7 sisters (major U.S. oil companies, all descendants of U.S. Standard Oil) is greater than the annual budget of the U.S. government! And they control the market forces… the market forces don’t control them, and neither does the government.
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Yea… Europe has artificially inflated their oil prices. Every single European country is part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to increase oil prices in order to make middle eastern countries rich.
Makes sense.
Why do you think we have been sticking our noses into situations in the middle east for years? For fun? No, it is to secure our interests in those regions so we can keep our oil prices lower than other countries.
You fight to protect access to your most valuable resource, and Oil is arguably the most valuable.
But the transit center is pretty cool.
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Dorkus, countries in Europe have “artificially” higher oil prices so they are not as hopelessly dependent on oil once supply inevitably starts running dry. If gas jumps to $10/gallon there, it’s no big deal, life goes on. If gas jumps to $10/gallon here, we’re screwed.
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Merv: You are wrong. Make no mistake: the price of the raw gas is about the same as the U.S., but Europe taxes gasoline at a higher rate. At the moment, taxes in France make up about 70 percent of the pump price. In England the gas taxes are 60% of the pump price. Similar abuses of taxation exist in other European countries. Most of the taxes are used to support the rail systems and government programs. For comparison, the U.S. federal gasoline tax of of 2005 was 18.4 cents per gallon, with each State adding between 10 and 33 cents of tax, according to Widipedia. That makes the maximum gasoline tax rate 17% in the U.S.
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That is good, because European leaders had the cajones to do the right thing. Our gas taxes don’t even cover the cost of the highway system here in the USA. There are extra subsidies for that. And yes, they have 8-lane highways in Europe too. Also, other countries do in fact have to pay more for oil because oil is set to the dollar. Why did we kill Saddam? It wasn’t because he was a crazy dictator. He wanted to sell oil in a currency other than the dollar, and we wouldn’t have it. That is why the dollar is the world currency, Ulysses.
Also, you’re a businessman. You should know darn well why oil companies aren’t drilling domestically. If they did, it would send prices down and they wouldn’t profit as much. Now why on earth would they go and do that?
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So, Merv, if it’s the right thing to do and everyone knows it, why doesn’t Obama just campaign that he is going to raise our gas prices?
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Most Americans don’t know it. Most Americans actually think gas prices are HIGH right now. And most Americans are too clueless to have even the slightest grasp of how wasteful their lifestyle actually is. The fact that owning a car has become an automatic right to most Americans is a testament to how detached from reality this country is.
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How is this project any different than Minneapolis pushing the buses off of 7th & Nicollet to Marquette avenue? Michigan is only a block off of superior and Marquette is only a block off of the retail/restaurant district of Minneapolis. As a city grow’s, you have to plan for transportation hubs that work best for the area, and many larger cities have them at a central spot or the edge of downtown. (you’ve got to admit the current spot does not work).
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The current spot works great for people who actually use the buses. It saves time by not having to go out of the way down to Michigan St and back. The current spot is inconvenient for motorists because they feel entitled to drive 30mph on every single block. The reason the spot doesn’t work now is because it’s not conducive to buses and pedestrians. If Superior St were actually a no-car zone like Nicollett Ave in Minneapolis, then you’d have a point. But Superior St is motor mania, and there is no space designated for other users of the roadway… so they “get in the way” because they are simply not considered in the design.
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Both Bush and Obama have not been able to control “Big Oil” and the price of gas–so that is a stupid point to make time, and time again………….
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Ok, you guys had fun attacking me personally. How about defending the beauty of this structure? I see a box with a cylinder and an elliptical …. something tacked onto the corners seemingly at random. It’s unimaginative, it’s stark, it’s bu*t ugly.
So go ahead. Defend the beauty of this soul sucking monstrosity.
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How about giving us an example of good architecture and how it came to be? Because right now, the buildings constructed by private investors have been complete CRAP! Strip malls, parking lots, big box stores… that’s what you’re defending, David! And they’re much more soul sucking than this.
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The subject of this article is a specific proposed building. Not Target. Excuse me for staying on subject.
Next time they print a story about a new big box store I’ll be glad to critique the architecture of it with you.
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As long as this structure has a lot of glass on the outside and not cement, I’d be happy to have it. Mayo does a good job of constructing parking ramps in downtown Rochester that look more like office buildings than cement parking monstrosities.
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A taxi is much sexier than the bus! Imagine the jealous gawkers watching as a Twin Cities tourist rolls up to the Shopping Centre on Miller Hill in a bright yellow taxi!
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I wonder how long it will take for a car to drive through one of those glass windows?
My money is on 3 months.
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Dorkus: My money is on one of the many drunks who sleep in the parking ramp stairwells putting either a rock, brick or themselves through one of those windows as soon as it opens.
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I am sure they will be safety glass of some sort, will take more than a rock or a drunk to go through it.
But a car would work.
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My money is on geezer, or teenage girl on cell phone.
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As this will be a design-build project. The illustrations only represent the major elements of the project and not necessarily the final architectural design.
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Merv: Put down the pipe, man. The “no war for oil” conspiracy is old and tired. Saddam killed over a half million people during his bloody reign, and the world is better off without him.
It’s probably a good thing you’re not an urban planner. Your political ideology and warped worldview would severely skew your ability to do any proper planning.
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Merv: in another thread, you stated that OPEC controls oil and prices. Now you say it is the oil companies.
Pick one, bud. Wishy wash arguments don’t fly.
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I thought this was going to be built on the site of the dumpy old parking ramp between 3rd and 4th Ave West that is ready to fall down?
Speaking of gas prices? I love how the republicants are blaming Obama for the high gas prices when in fact they’ve dropped and remained nearly .60 a gallon lower since he took office and have never reached the price of $3.99 from $1.60 locally when Captain monkey ears took office in 2000! LMAO!
Does it mention how much Wells Faqrgo is investing other than already owning the property it will be built on?
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Tim: Are you smoking some wacky tabaccy or are you just trying to spew lies? Gas prices (national averge) ws $1.95 when Hussein took office. I haven’t checked the internet for todays prices but I would guess the national average is somewhere around $3.65. Lie, or are you just ignorant like so many wacko lib supporters of Hussein? And before you start calling anyone “monkey ears” maybe you should look at that chimpanzie that currently occupies the Oval Office. Talk about “monkey ears”!!! Don’t be throwing that first stone, wacko lib.
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You are right ulysses, it was $1.95 when the election hit. Down from the $4.12 cents per gallon that it was just 3 months earlier. http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
I wonder why the price plummeted right before the election?
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The same reason it is falling right now…upcoming election and the president wants to attempt to get re-elected.
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There is a big difference between the $2 per gallon drop that happened across a 1 1/2 month span in ’08 and the $0.20 per gallon drop that has happened in the last 1 1/2 months.
The $0.20 drop we are currently experiencing is simply due to the switch from winter to summer blends.
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It is wonderful that they are going to move the transportation hub away from Superior Street and the Holiday Center.
I hate to sound derogatory, but I really like to support local downtown merchants. I especially like buying gifts from the shop in the holiday center that sells prints from local photographers, stained glass, etc. Unfortunately to get to these locations, you have to get through the congested areas for the bus stops which is full of people smoking, swearing, pan handling, and garbage. It really destroys the “downtown experience.” We have a beautiful downtown that could once again be very vibrant, but people need to feel safe and secure, need to have accessible parking for a quick stop, and it needs to be clean. This is a great start. I hope we can stay on the path we are on, so Duluth’s best days can be ahead.
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Would someone enlighten me: Who is Hussein?
Petrol (gasoline) costs £1.429/litre and diesel costs £1.449/litre in England. The lion’s share of the retail unit price is tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer loves tax revenue so what does the gov’t stand to gain by lowering tax and getting freight and families off the road?
Standard Oil (ESSO) was broken up because it was a monopoly. Several years back, Exxon and Mobil teamed up again with gov’t approval. So, they’re right back where they once were.
We are in an intractable position of being oil dependent. The USA does not have an integrated transportation network and that makes America vulnerable.
Public transport / mass transit is not inherently bad if it’s done right. It’s got to be affordable, comfortable, get you to where you need to go and be frequent.
I remember when gas cost around $.34/gallon and the price was stable for years. It’s gone up by a thousand percent in the course of 30-some odd years.
Do we continue to drilling, driving and paying or what? We have to decide a course of action as citizens, governments and stewards of the environment. I don’t have the answers.
I drive sometimes, cycle a lot, try to not buy plastics, recycle and oppose North Slope drilling. I’ve not bought Exxon gasoline since that corporation told the US gov’t and people of Alaska they had finished cleaning up Valdez. That said it all as far as I’m concerned.
Sunshine and wind are free – let’s use it.
Land planning around most of the USA is automobile-centric. Impossible to walk anywhere or move goods by train from manufacturer to distributor to consumer. This is hugely expensive and wasteful.
I look at these boards and read with amazement how much whining there is about not enough parking downtown. Give me a break! Park your car if you must drive and hoof it a couple blocks to the office or the shop. I took the bus when I worked downtown. And now some of you are complaining about walking one block to Superior St? Don’t be so lazy!
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Ah HA! Someone hit the nail on the head. LAZINESS! We’ve designed an entire nation around it! You can’t even walk across the street from Target to Savers. It’s jaywalking, which is against the law. You are essentially forced to be lazy and get in your car.
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I see it as a matter of freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want, without having to check in with anyone.
Freedom should be despised, it should be cherished.
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Opps, Freedom SHOULDN’T be despised that is.
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It seems that my point went over your head, David. It’s great that people have freedom. But the freedom of all those people to drive anywhere and everywhere has come at the expense of my freedom to walk wherever I choose. I am not free to cross the street between Target and Savers. In fact, I am not free to walk along many of the intersections by the Mall Area, because there are “No Pedestrian” signs abound. Take a look on the corner of Highway 53 by the mall. Your freedom to drive a car everywhere takes away my freedom to walk everywhere.
Do you get it now?
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Dorkus, you made an important point that most people don;t know. Gas prices spike EVERY spring because of the federally mandated formulation switch. And every spring big media act mystified as if the spike is completely unexplainable.
It’s not just that it costs refiners money to retool their refineries, or that the summer blend is simply more expensive. It’s also that there is a different schedule for different regions in the country. So for a while they have to be making BOTH blends which completely screws up the distribution patterns.
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/03/07/why-summer-gasoline-means-higher-prices/
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Yep, and some people use that simple tidbit of knowledge to predict a spike in gas prices in an attempt to make themselves seem more “in the know” than they actually are. Thus making people more likely to listen and believe them when they say something stupid.
Merv also makes a good point, in that Urban Sprawl creates a dependence on transportation that we did not have in the past. This effect drives the price up due to increased demand. Those who choose to shun that dependence and walk everywhere get shafted because all the available funding goes towards building roads instead of walkways.
But what Merv misses is that we live in Duluth, where people usually do not walk between Target and Savers for 6 months out of the year due to the cold and the snowbanks. Why fund something you are only going to use for half the year? Not a very sound investment.
But then you look at the downtown area, and you see all the money invested in skywalks and see that it is not a bias against walkers, it is urban sprawl in general that is the problem.
You would think our downtown area would be vibrant due to the winter weather, as everyone would want to shop downtown. But nobody does because parking sucks, parking costs too much and Superior St is overcrowded with buses.
Which is why this transportation center is good for our area. It creates a hub of transportation which SHOULD increase the amount of foot traffic in the downtown area without clogging the main artery.
Now, if we could just find a way to help lower the price of retail space in general. Perhaps a tax break for new and struggling businesses in the downtown area?
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