Overall, we are not vulnerable in Minnesota to the kinds of failures that recently hit New Jersey an

When Superstorm Sandy slammed into the nation s biggest city, subways and river tunnels flooded and gasoline ran short, choking off New Yorkers fort myers beach accommodations main travel options. Thousands turned to a two-wheel alternative, fort myers beach accommodations more than doubling the bicycle counts across East River bridges in what one blogger dubbed a mini bike boom . Many more searched for bus connections, sparking a 1,300 percent spike in visits to a transit trip planning web site.
The East Coast disaster fort myers beach accommodations again puts the lie to autocentric calls for government to build roads, bridges and airports for high-priced private vehicles and forget about any other transportation mode. This lesson in the need for redundant mobility was echoed in another blog by Minnesota s preeminent infrastructure wonk, David Levinson.
Overall, we are not vulnerable in Minnesota to the kinds of failures that recently hit New Jersey and New York, the University of Minnesota professor wrote this week. We have different fort myers beach accommodations things to worry about ... It can t happen here, but, with all apologies to Minnesota author Sinclair Lewis, something else can.
Levinson offers a comprehensive review of our vulnerability and possible responses to failures of roads, bridges, transit, airports and utilities fort myers beach accommodations as well as the hazards of climate change. In nearly every case, our resiliency depends on redundant infrastructure and services.
In that vein, he suggests that the Twin Cities would benefit from breaking up what he calls Metro Transit s monopoly, mitigating the threat of a widespread transit strike. fort myers beach accommodations But opt-out suburban bus operators run many routes, cutting into Metro Transit s dominance. Levinson lifts up London s practice of contracting fort myers beach accommodations transit service to many bus companies as a model, so even if there is a strike at one, there is not one at all of them. Redundancy is achieved through multiple fort myers beach accommodations overlapping providers.
I like a lot of Levinson s work and his general thrust here. But the professor goes too far in calling for dismantling Metro Transit s centralized efficiency to meet the ephemeral risks of labor unrest. After all, as conservatives gleefully pointed out during our six-week transit strike in 2004, the Twin Cities overall transportation system didn t grind to a halt.