How Can Grand Forks ND Survive Without a Monorail?
Earlier today I posted about the upcoming news conference by Mike Brown laying out his vision for the future.
Well the first reports are out and they smell fishy to me.
It IS a monorail; and an aquarium, too…
First, Brown didn’t call it a “monorail;” he said “light rail.” There are some differences in their advantages and disadvantages, though there’s apparently no clear agreement on which one costs less. A major advantage of monorail though, is voters think it’s super-cool.
The other very puzzling proposal is the aquarium next to the CanadInns water park. When I got wind of it on Friday, my first reaction was “How?? Why?? Here??” Again, this is a proposal looking for a partner. There was mention of UND but university President Robert Kelley said that he had not talked about it with the mayor, which would be logical because, correct me if I’m wrong, marine biology is not one of the university’s fortes.
Wow, has mayor brown been seen hanging around with the anesthetists too much?
Grand Forks has one really unique facility which is the Ralph Englestad Arena. Does the mayor think that by connecting that with the Alerus that somehow the success of the Ralph will rub off on the failed Alerus center?
I don’t see you ever needing some kind of short run people transport running between those two points. It’s not that people are going to move between the two in the same evening. (As if you are watching an hockey game at the Ralph and drop in at the Alerus too watch the concert during the period break.)
I don’t know if the Mayor thinks that this way would be a way to share parking. The large events at either facility empty out all at once. A monorail with only a few cars could hardly handle the thousands of people clearing out. A better solution would be the one we use now, which is to buses to disperse people. The beauty of that is that you don’t have to pay anything when you don’t need the buses which is vastly different than what a monorail would require.
The mayor’s idea to have an aquarium doesn’t hold water either. I mean sure, they’re neat and all, but they hardly are commercial success in anything but the largest cities. Duluth apparently still has one that had quite a bit of trouble.
It doesn’t appear the mayor has any idea of how to fund these projects which is hardly surprising. I sure hope these two goofy goofy ideas die a quick death. Somehow I think they’ll be haunting us for a while.
Maybe the mayor just thinks that if he acts like a crazy man we’ll quit noticing the Alerus finances going downhill.
