Nicollet-Central Streetcar

[kellonathan]

Looking at Section A-A and Section B-B from the draft...

- Blaisdell Ave---it is interesting to see how they made the streetcar-only lane pretty tight (10ft, compared to 11ft in general) whilst auto gets 11ft width on each lane.
- 29th Street btwn Nicollet and Blaisdell---again, 12ft for a travel lane?

- I wonder how the bus connections are going to work around the K-Mart area. Say you took a streetcar from Nicollet Mall to Lake & Blaisdell, and you want to connect to a southbound 18 (or other comparable routes) to travel further south. Where would be a good transfer point?

[Didier]

Question: What is different about our proposed streetcar plan and the successful streetcars in Toronto and Portland?

There seems to be a growing consensus that our plan is not good, but I'm curious about the details, since streetcars are definitely working in other cities.

[mattaudio]

Are Portland Streetcars good? They have a robust system now with two lines, but aren't they running at 15 minute headways? That seems fine for a neighborhood bus, but not enough for a heavy investment that's supposed to attract higher ridership and development.

[grant1simons2]

If you're talking about a growing consensus of dislike specifically on this forum it's mostly because this forum is growing and the quality has gone down. Other than that I think its mostly because its a shared lane streetcar and people are really worried it wont work through downtown because of lights, even though that can be figured out.

[Silophant]

There's a difference between "can be figured out" and "will be figured out", though. Example: LRT through downtown. There's only three stoplights between Government Plaza and Nicollet, and only two between Nicollet and Hennepin, but the trains still stop at them. It can easily be figured out, but the political will isn't there.

[ECtransplant]

Transit tunnels downtown are going to become necessary just from brute ridership a lot sooner than any official plans/policies are ready for

[Nick]

Question: What is different about our proposed streetcar plan and the successful streetcars in Toronto and Portland?

There seems to be a growing consensus that our plan is not good, but I'm curious about the details, since streetcars are definitely working in other cities.

I don't know too much about either city other than that Toronto is far larger than us and has grade separated subway lines through their downtown, and Portland is somewhat smaller than us and has a J. Crew downtown.

If funding were unlimited, sure, build a streetcar to replace local route buses like the 10 or the 2 or the 3. But in that scenario and in real life, streetcar doesn't seem like the right mode to build on Nicollet Mall and Nicollet Avenue. It wouldn't really improve mobility for anyone, and the thing will be at its functional capacity the day it opens. The City would be much better off taking the $60 million they took off the taxrolls for Nicollet-Central and putting it towards Midtown streetcar/LRT, somehow.

I mean, if we do Southwest and Nicollet-Central, we will have found a way to spend ~$2 billion dollars on transit projects in South Minneapolis without improving transit in South Minneapolis. Which would be impressive in its own way, but as a daily Nicollet Mall bus commuter, I'll be that much closer to an aneurysm.

[David Greene]

If you're talking about a growing consensus of dislike specifically on this forum it's mostly because this forum is growing and the quality has gone down.

Huh? Long-time posters with a lot of transit knowledge have questioned this line from the beginning as have a lot of transit experts who don't post here. "Urbanism" does not mean "support trail transit at all costs."

Nick outlined some of the very good reasons to question this line.

[grant1simons2]

1 persons dislike is not what I meant by the "hate"

[EOst]

It wouldn't really improve mobility for anyone, and the thing will be at its functional capacity the day it opens.

To be honest, if the worst thing we can say about this is "too many people will ride it," I think we need to reevaluate.

Not only will this line be a catalyst for some exciting (and quite obvious) redevelopment opportunities, it will also improve mobility, if only through the combination of fewer, nicer stops, level boarding, and some signal priority. Not as much as a full LRT would, or the mythical unicorn of a subway, but it's the best shot we have for actual transit improvements along this corridor.

[Nick]

Well, if we're talking about unicorns, I'm pretty skeptical lately about the entire premise of TOD in the Twin Cities. This is a bad post, but it has some more thoughts. Are there 500 people in the Twin Cities who can afford market rate apartments who want to live at Lake and Nicollet? Because it looks like the market decided that that wasn't the case at Lake and Hiawatha, and while maybe a little dicier than Lake and Nicollet, that's a quicker transit ride into downtown. I guess Champions is gone now, so that might help. In light of the past decade of experience with the Blue Line, we maybe need to reconsider TOD as a reason to build things.

The plans released the other day have the vehicles stopping just about as often as the current bus. The vehicles are a bit larger than buses. I think if we assume something like 50% more riders due to rail bias, and, like I said, the thing is full the day it opens, we need to reevaluate whether or not this is worth it. I've been on Route 18 buses that run drop off only after passing Target HQ. If we blow $200 million dollars and that's still the case, that doesn't seem like a sound investment. Talking about subways in lieu of this is obviously magical crazy talk, but I mean we clearly will be seriously talking about it in 15 or 20 years, to open 10 years out from then--why not get started now? Meh.

[FISHMANPET]

I don't think the minnpost commenters get your sense of humor.

[mattaudio]

I know when I've brought this up before I've been chided as being too "fetish map-y" but since Nick brought up a subway, I think it's fair game...

There will come a point, possibly within two or three decades, where we need to seriously up-gauge our capacity through the CBD. I realize this shouldn't derail plans for our immediate future, but we should be MINDFUL of future possibilities.

Nicollet Ave south of DT doesn't seem to be a big deal to me for Streetcar vs Subway. It would be easy to cut and cover under Blaisdell or 1st instead. But downtown, there are few good alternatives. And we're spending $5 million PER BLOCK on a Nicollet Mall redo, and hundreds of millions on a streetcar, which will make it much less appealing to cut and cover under Nicollet Mall downtown in the future.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's shameful that we have not considered future downtown impacts as part of our current planning.

[IllogicalJake]

I don't think the minnpost commenters get your sense of humor.

Those comments were the most entertaining thing I've read in weeks.

[nate]

The biggest issues identified here are:
1) The streetcar will run in mixed traffic on Nicollet, and
2) Behind buses downtown, and
3) Will only be capable of single-car operations.

Seems like all three issues could be resolved, given the political will.
-Nicollet could be a two-lane, instead of a three-lane street, with expanded sidewalks and no parking, in order to give the streetcar a dedicated lane.
-The stations could be built long enough to allow the streetcars to run as two-car trains.
-Some bus routes could be sent to Hennepin or Marquette, instead of Nicollet, in order to provide space to the Mall.

I think it is much more useful to argue for those three items that would improve streetcar operations, than for a subway (which, though necessary, would be most useful under Sixth Street to accommodate our LRT lines)

[mplsjaromir]

nate: Great response. I've trying to say something similar but you did so very succinctly.

I do not believe that under any reasonable scenario that a subway would be appropriate for this corridor. There is plenty of surface area dedicated to transportation, it just needs to be allocated more thoughtfully. Downtown is a great candidate for subway operation though.

[grant1simons2]

-Nicollet could be a two-lane, instead of a three-lane street, with expanded sidewalks and no parking, in order to give the streetcar a dedicated lane.
-The stations could be built long enough to allow the streetcars to run as two-car trains.

No parking on Nicollet? Yeah good luck with that with it continuing to develop, even if you get rid of one side, you'd still have a large amount of complaints about parking spots.

Streetcars are supposed to be one car, if you want to run 2 car then you get more into an LRT line.

We actually are not 100% sure that buses will continue to run on Nicollet, they could be re-routed and that has not been decided yet

[mattaudio]

Is anyone uptight about Eat Street over Downtown? That's why I pointed out that a future tunnel could be accomplished under 1st or Blaisdell with stations and portals oriented towards Nicollet.

[Didier]

Several people here who have educated opinions on this kind of stuff have said effectively what Nick's article says — our plan is expensive and doesn't markedly improve the service. That seems like a fair assessment.

I ask about Toronto, though, because streetcars seem to be working quite well there.

The city effectively has two subway lines that cut through the large downtown area.



But supplementing those subways are (according to Wikipedia) 11 streetcar lines totaling 51miles. It seems that the subways specialize on getting people into the city, while the streetcars focus on moving people around the city. The wikipedia map doesn't fit in this forum, but here it is:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... p-2005.png

Toronto is a huge city, and streetcars seem to be a pretty important reason for why the city is as dense and urban as it is. In addition, the city is actively improving and expanding on its streetcar system. From what I can tell, some of the newer sections are grade separated, but the majority of the streetcars run in mixed traffic.

So I'm not trying to argue anything. I'm just wondering what is different about Toronto's streetcar system that makes it work, whereas ours has a poor outlook?

[woofner]

It may be useful to keep in mind that infrastructure and services can be mixed and matched. For example a downtown transit tunnel under Nicollet Mall could accommodate the ten thousand users of bus service as well as the potential several thousand projected daily streetcar service users. The conversation should be less about which consultant-friendly transit combo packs should be built where (e.g. Enhanced Bus or Streetcar or LRT) and more about which improvements are needed in which corridor and what infrastructure is needed to accommodate that (i.e. currently transit on Nicollet in Whittier is too slow because of too much stopping and too many boardings, so it would be best improved by consolidating stops and using off-board fare collection).