Elderly see light rail restoring freedom of their youth

Residents of Episcopal Homes share memories at Central Corridor open house

When Katy Carlsen was a schoolgirl growing up in the 1930s and ‘40s on Portland Avenue in St. Paul, she thought nothing of taking the streetcar by herself to downtown St. Paul to visit her mother’s workplace.

“It gave youngsters a lot of freedom. If I needed to go buy something in those days, nobody worried about us being safe. It’s hard to describe to people who didn’t live then,” said Katy, who attended the first public open house for the Twin Cities’ next LRT project — the Central Corridor. The event was held in May at Episcopal Homes on University Avenue.

She and other residents of the senior housing project were keenly interested in the open house because the line will stop in front of Episcopal Homes; light-rail trains will one day take them back to some of the favorite haunts of their youth without an adult chaperone. This time, though, it’s their adult children who won’t have to accompany them everywhere.

Car keys won’t be needed anymore

Participants view maps at the Central Corridor Open House May 17

Jim and Jan Johnson, residents of the Episcopal Homes on University Avenue in St. Paul, were among visitors at the first public open house for the Central Corridor LRT on May 22.

Wanda Schweizer and Katy Carlsen at the first Central Corridor light rail open house May 17

Wanda Schweizer, left, relied on the streetcar when she was a student at Hamline University decades ago. Katy Carlsen, right, took the streetcar to her mother’s workplace. Both women, residents of Episcopal Homes, are looking forward to light-rail transit.

Jan Johnson jokes that her adult children, who include son-in-law St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, have vowed to take away her car keys in six years. She says the Central Corridor LRT project better be ready to help her get around by then.

“The light rail is the main reason we moved here. I said, `Jim, why would we want live here in an industrial area?’ He said because the light rail will run here,” Jan said.

Jan’s husband, Jim Johnson, relied on streetcars for transportation in his youth. He rode streetcars from his home in south Minneapolis to the YMCA in downtown Minneapolis and to his job at a Lake Street grocery store. The ride cost 7½ cents (you bought two tokens for 15 cents) or 10 cents if you didn’t have a token. The streetcar fare box accepted dimes because they were the same size as a token, but you lost 2½ cents if you had to substitute a dime for a token. Given that this was the 1930s and Depression-era children appreciated the value of every penny, Jim said, you tried not to be caught without a token in your pocket.

Meredith and Grant Robinson took streetcars in opposite directions when they were college students attending different campuses in the Twin Cities, often waving at each other as they passed. She also used the streetcar to get to the St. Paul library, and Grant would travel to the swimming pool at the St. Paul Athletic Club where his father was a member. As a youngster, he loved taking the streetcar all the way to Wildwood amusement park in Mahtomedi to ride the rollercoaster.

As a student at Hamline University, Wanda Schweizer relied on the streetcar to go shopping in St. Paul or to Union Depot where she boarded passenger trains to go home to Windom during school breaks. Later, as a young mother, she used the streetcar to go places with her children while her husband worked at his dental practice.

Although some of the residents aren’t as agile as they once were and some rely on walkers to help them get around, they look forward to regaining some of the freedom of their youth when the Central Corridor light rail line opens in 2014.

“Just get it done so we’re still here,” Meredith said with a smile, as she and Grant examined plans for reconstructing University Avenue in front of Episcopal Homes to accommodate the LRT tracks.

More open houses scheduled

The proposed LRT line is 11 miles and would run primarily along University Avenue between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis. The line would serve a projected weekday ridership of 38,100 by 2020 and 43,300 by 2030.

The project is in the preliminary engineering phase, during which the Council and its project partners will:

Finalize plans for station placement and design
Refine the estimates of project costs, benefits and impacts
Finalize management plans
Identify and commit local funding sources.

Preliminary engineering will be finished in late 2008 and complete about 60 percent of the design work. If the project ultimately receives Federal Transit Administration approval to complete final design and obtains federal funding, construction of the line will begin in 2010, with operations beginning in 2014.

The Metropolitan Council has scheduled additional open houses in June to share information about the project.