From her window, Teresa Munson watches her neighbors cross the cul de sac where she lives, on their way to the Bruce Vento Trail.
“I see parents taking their kids up there to show them the native species,” she says. “We have wood ducks up there. We have bats and deer.”
She sighs. “And I can see it all just going away.”
Like many of her neighbors, Munson is concerned that a new bus line, which will run parallel to the bike trail, will spoil her neighborhood. She and nearly 30 other people voiced their concern at a public hearing April 27.
Many of them are worried about the bus itself (“How many people are going to get killed?” Chris Imm asks). Many more are worried about the people those buses will carry.
“I drive by the Green Line every morning,” Terry Mallet says. “There are eight to ten police officers every morning, going on the trains to kick off the sleeping people who have been on there all night.
“That tells you what’s riding on there. I don’t want that behind my house.”
The Rush Line bus would make 20 stops between Union Depot and White Bear Lake, allowing east siders to travel north.
East siders can easily reach Minneapolis on a westbound Green Line train. But they have a harder time reaching northern suburbs like Maplewood, Vadnais Heights and White Bear Lake. Planners say better mobility would help unemployed east siders find work.
But suburban residents, who dominated the public hearing, are skeptical.
“I drive by homeless people,” Laura Heimer says, “and I say, ‘You know, the post office is hiring [in the city].’ And they’re still there on the corner the next day. There has got to be something else. Because we love this trail.”
“A better life”
Larpenteur Avenue East appears to be a typical two-lane road. The north side’s street signs have a maple leaf emblem, and a sign on the south side says “Welcome to Saint Paul.” But nothing indicates that the road divides two worlds.
Local residents talk about the two sides of Larpenteur Avenue in dramatically different terms. The south side is “the hood,” according to Melissa Maier. It is “the inner city,” according to Heimer. The north side, in contrast, is a suburban wilderness where parents let their children roam without fear, among the flora and fauna.
“We left east St. Paul,” says Sharon Beerworth, who lives in Maplewood. “We came here for a better life.”
In truth, Larpenteur Avenue divides high-income Maplewood from a cluster of low-income St. Paul neighborhoods. The north end of Lake Phalen, for instance, is in a census tract with a zero-percent poverty rate. In contrast, Railroad Island has a poverty rate of 46 percent, among the highest in the state.
Nearly all the speakers at the hearing, which was held at a church on Larpenteur and Clarence Street, came from parts of Maplewood with zero-percent poverty rates. Nearly all of them were white. Many of them talked about owning cars.
“We came here knowing there was no transit,” Beerworth says, in an exasperated tone. “We all have cars, and we drive.”
Beerworth set off loud applause among the 70-something audience members. Less popular were people like Denise Bricher, an advocate for mobile home residents. Mobile home residents, she said, tend to be low-income and retired, and would benefit from the Rush Line.
Equally unpopular was Eric Saathoff, a board member from the Payne Phalen Community Council. The board voted unanimously to support the bus route, he said, because it would help poor people find jobs and spur business growth. Saathoff proposed a new bridge to connect the Cayuga Street bus stop to Railroad Island, which is bounded by train tracks.
“Many mothers, many wildlife”
Planners say they consulted more than 5,000 people across the region before drafting a plan for the Rush Line. The plan, called the Locally Preferred Alternative, is rough, but it specifies the type of vehicle for the route (a bus with a designated lane, rather than a light rail), and the route.
The proposed route includes hospitals, commercial areas like Payne Avenue and Maplewood Mall (with a connection to Century College), and high-density low-income neighborhoods. It will attract customers and investors, planners say. And it will be relatively cheap, because it will run on publicly-owned land along the Bruce Vento Trail.
At the public hearing, people from across the region got their last chance to weigh in on the proposal before it goes to the Metropolitan Council Transportation Committee this month for a vote.
“It’s pretty sad,” John Jarosiewicz says at the microphone. “Many mothers, many wildlife use this trail. And nobody’s listening to anybody on our side.”
Eastside Financial Center 