Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐

Twin Cities based chapter of the @CNliberalism.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Back for our regularly scheduled programming tonight!

See you there (potentially outside), look for the 🌐!

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Chapter meetup update!

We will be moving our location of our 1/21 chapter meetup to La Doña Cervecería Brewery in an attempt to help boost local, immigrant run businesses impacted during the ICE surge.

Still meeting at 6:30 on 1/21.
Address is 241 Fremont Ave N.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@ldalepete This is a not insignificant reason for the DFL’s domination statewide.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Demuth is probably the best statewide candidate the MN GOP has had since Pawlenty in 2006 and the thanks she gets for extracting wins from the legislative process and keeping the loons at bay is… this!

Just a process that has all the reverse incentives you’d want.

[Tom Hauser @thauserkstp]

BREAKING: Kendall Qualls just won GOP endorsement for MN governor with 60.4% over MN House Speaker Lisa Demuth. @KSTP

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@WafflePolitics Maybe! Depends on the candidate, Klob obviously is a different level than any of the senate candidates, but you’d still prefer to put up your best candidate!

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@familygolfmn Strange he managed to win statewide twice despite going against the voters

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

A moment of silence for Chauvin and a broadside for showing support for the Somali community…

Extremely normal stuff from the MN GOP.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Great to be at the DFL Convention in Rochester!

Bonus: Ran into MN’s Land Value Tax king, State Rep. Steve Elkins 🫡

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

For reference, Minneapolis has the same average summer highs as Barcelona and lower winter lows than Moscow.

European weather is unbelievably mild, all things considered. Most of the rest of the world has far more natural disasters AND far more temperature variation.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

That’s right

[sam @sam_d_1995]

Zohran just cited Minneapolis, Austin, and Auckland as cities that lowered housing costs via upzoning

certified ball knowledge, Auckland is a deep YIMBY cut

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Thanks to @DrMattKleinMN for joining our happy hour on Wednesday!

Great conversation about everything from geothermal, LVT, housing and of course, his campaign for Congress!

[Dr. Matt Klein @DrMattKleinMN]

Great to meet with the Twin Cities New Liberals and learn their ideas on housing, energy, immigration and more. We need a Democratic agenda that works, and these folks are up to the task.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@Vibutler_ Sure! Fare enforcement has been good and can improve a lot, still think fare gating Lake Street would be a net plus

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

BART spent $90 million on new fare gates. They're recovering about $10 million a year in fares.

That's a 9-year payback on paper. The actual return hit in six months.

Embarcadero station went from 112 hours of corrective maintenance in the six months before installation to 2 hours after. Daly City saved 109. Balboa Park saved 75. Across the system, 961 hours of cleanup work disappeared. Corrective maintenance is the term BART uses for graffiti, heavy soiling, vandalism, the damage that needs a crew not a janitor. At several stations it dropped to zero.

Crime fell 41% year over year. Riders who reported seeing fare evasion on their trip dropped from 22% to 10%. Citations issued by BART police went from 2,200 in January to under 1,000 in July, because there was nothing to cite.

The gates were a filtering project disguised as a revenue project.

Old BART gates were waist-high orange fins designed in the 1970s. You could hop them in under a second. That made the station effectively a public space, and the rider mix reflected that. The new gates are 72 inches of polycarbonate with 3D sensors that detect tailgating. You either pay or you don't enter. Once you don't enter, you also don't smoke on the platform, sleep in the elevator, or harass other riders.

BART tried hiring more police for years. Blitz operations at high-traffic stations. Increased patrols. Dedicated transit cops. None of it moved the numbers the way six feet of polycarbonate did.

The $10 million in recovered fares is the smallest line in the return. Fare revenue used to cover 70% of BART operations. After the pandemic it collapsed to 22%. The gates won't fix that gap directly. They fix the precondition for fixing it: a system that office workers, families, and tourists are willing to use again. Ridership growth at stations with new gates outpaced ungated ones before the rollout finished.

A $400 million annual deficit is heading to voters in November as a sales tax measure. Voters don't approve sales taxes for transit agencies they don't feel safe in. The $90 million on gates is buying BART the right to ask the public for more money.

That's the real return on six feet of polycarbonate.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@Vibutler_ Can’t fare gate most stations, but you could easily fare gate Lake Street and Metro Transit should do that

[Rhett Carlson @rhett_carlson]

MSP's rail network doesn't have a lot of grade separation to work with, but the one station that *is* fully grade separated *also* happens to attract an outsized share of antisocial & criminal behavior.

Fare gates at Lake St/Midtown are as close to a silver bullet as it gets. There were 31,548 calls for service & 2,195 crimes systemwide in Q3 2025. Properly screen riders from miscreants at this station alone and wipe out a substantial portion of the problem.

Save enough on annual R&M ("corrective maintenance") and maybe we can have nice things like escalators again @MetroTransitMN

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@silvertongue39 Probably not, but the low hanging fruit is right here for the taking!

[Rhett Carlson @rhett_carlson]

MSP's rail network doesn't have a lot of grade separation to work with, but the one station that *is* fully grade separated *also* happens to attract an outsized share of antisocial & criminal behavior.

Fare gates at Lake St/Midtown are as close to a silver bullet as it gets. There were 31,548 calls for service & 2,195 crimes systemwide in Q3 2025. Properly screen riders from miscreants at this station alone and wipe out a substantial portion of the problem.

Save enough on annual R&M ("corrective maintenance") and maybe we can have nice things like escalators again @MetroTransitMN

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@KangasNic Yes and if the flag opponents suggest replacing the current one with this one, that seems like a way more popular position than defending the old flag!

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Minnesota went from a bad state flag to a good-not-great state flag.

If the folks who are fired up about this change proposed an alternative flag that was great, it would make this more fun and put them in a better position.

Instead they insist on going back to a worse option.

[Pioneer Press @PioneerPress]

Inver Grove Heights City Council to discuss flying older state flag . https://t.co/yMGpluDhfz

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@cbrucebressler The people on the right hate the justification for changing flags was based on woke sensitivity and use the process as a way to run cover for hating the flag.

That could have been prevented with a better design, but we got an ok design and now we are here.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@cbrucebressler Cannot stress enough, if a Republican panel selects a flag that is better than the current flag, yes that would be fine!

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Many of the replies to this proving the point that you should have to offer an alternative to make this at all interesting!

Only @Vibutler_ meets that bar here!

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

@FarmTownGuy You believe the government should be able to impose on the property rights of individuals, we do not.

It’s fine for you to have that opinion, we don’t agree and nothing about the current makeup of land use authority is written in stone.

[Twin Cities New Liberals 🌐 @TCNewLibs]

Yeah but banning all residential construction will for sure create more affordable housing.

[Luke Hellier @lukehellier]

14 Minnesota mayors: Overriding local zoning won’t create affordable housing

https://t.co/mmOH4QyG7U