As a recent Herald editorial notes, one idea in the new Plan for Downtown Grand Forks is a rapid-transit bus link between downtown and UND. This could take the form of " a dedicated bus lane on Dyke Avenue, one that skirts south of the Warehouse District - between the warehouses and the railroad tracks, in other words - before winding up in downtown ," the editorial describes.
As Herald readers may know, there is a four-mile-long dedicated busway between the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
In Minneapolis, it runs along rail tracks between the two campuses like it would in Grand Forks. In a sense, there is a real parallel between the two bus lines when one considers that UND is trying to create a downtown presence for itself. The potential for a downtown satellite campus certainly would be enhanced by some form of rapid transit.
Rapid transit bus lines are being built along numerous routes in Minneapolis, so their functionality is proven as is their affordability, being a fraction of the cost of light rail.
So many campuses are made more vibrant because in many cases, they are built right next to the downtowns of the cities they are in. Grand Forks doesn't have that luxury, so the next best thing to enable a powerful synergy to develop between campus and city is a busway rapid transit system.
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Gary Severson
Chaska, Minn.
Severson is a graduate of UND.
