Hiawatha Line: Back to the Future
I took the new Hiawatha-Line Light Rail Transit to a Twins game the other day. The first train car I tried to board was so packed with humans that I couldn’t even pound my way into a cabin. I did push my way onto the next train and was soon whisked away at a fine speed and deposited six minutes later right at the front steps of the Metrodome. It was fun being on the train which is still a novelty to everyone. There was almost a World’s Fair type atmosphere as everyone lavished praise on the new transit technology. Lot’s of folks expressed happiness in that Minneapolis now joins the ranks of major cities (Chicago, New York, Washington DC) with Light Rail Transit. What’s interesting to me is that this great leap forward for our humble city is really a great leap backward to a time when mass rail transit was the norm. Although the technology is much improved the concept is still the same. It’s like if I were to take my Macintosh computer running the current Panther OS and decide I would downgrade to good old System 7 just so I could create some retro graphics using the old 32-bit QuickDraw.

Hopefully the new Hiawatha-Line Light Rail won’t become a retro novelty (like the above poster implies) and will actually serve as the cornerstone for a vastly superior and forward thinking state-wide transit system. And really, I hope this means that we aren’t far off from getting our own MLX01 Maglev Line.