Twin Cities Public Transportation and Jobs (Arden Hills, Hills: living in, mall, bus)

[uptown_urbanist]

From today's Star Tribune:

Metro area 39th in transit-job ties | StarTribune.com

The Twin Cities ranked 39th in the nation in connecting people to jobs. Des Moines beat us; we beat Chicago (as they, too, have seen so many jobs in the outer suburbs).

It seemed relevant given all the discussions about sprawl and public transportation (including the Arden Hills thread) these days, and good food for thought.

Here's a link to the Brookings Institution findings; haven't had a chance to look at that yet, but it looks well worth a look.

[Citykid3785]

I read the article, and it's basically a ranking of how large a suburban system a city has. And if you look at a map, MSP is not confined by a ocean or lake or mountain, so we have 4+ tiers of suburbs surrounding our cities on all sides, therefore making it difficult to concentrate jobs and thus transit.

On the flip side, cities without an abundance of suburbs (Des Moines, Witicha, etc) and cities with mountains or water forcing the city to grow along a more concentrated path do well in this type of survey.

Whether this is good or bad news to you depends on your view of suburbs and urban sprawl. Personally, while I love the idea of strong mass transit and saving energy (my wife and I carpool), at the end of the day I love living in a suburb. City dwellers may take a different stance which is also understandable.

[xandrex]

An interesting article, but I'm not sure how useful it is. Des Moines might be able to rank higher, for instance, but the friends I have who live in Des Moines admit that nobody uses it because of the unusually long trips (the mall - one of the few places people apparently go to - is 15 minutes by car or anywhere from 90-120 minutes by bus and early shut down times (I believe as early as 8pm on Sundays). Sure, you CAN hop on a bus there if you'd like, but WOULD you? With the ample parking I was able to find when visiting, I'd say probably no.