urbanMSP

It sounds like they'll rebuild that stretch of 7th Street, from Nicollet to 1st Ave N. Just $470,000 total budget though for both stops, new curb & gutter, street lighting, etc. No idea if that funding amount includes the shelters & TVMs too. A portion of that money is coming through the Met Council, but the bulk of it is city street reconstruction funds.


IMAG1300 by twincitizen, on Flickr

Looking at my photo above, I would guess that buses will travel AND stop in the current right travel lane. The "wider sidewalk" and street lighting, shelters, TVMs, etc. will necessitate the taking of the current "shoulder" area that buses pull into.

The big question is what happens between the two bus stops... is it an exclusive transit lane? I imagine the curb locations, taxi stand, etc. in front of Marriott won't change, but I don't think it's a major impediment to bus travel today. If that right travel lane is signed/painted for buses/taxis only, that would be great.

As for the Mayo Clinic Square stop, boy they really missed an opportunity to just build a recessed "shelter" into the building itself, instead of having an external transit shelter on the sidewalk. The stop was (still is?) closed for a long time during construction there. The old stop had no official shelter, but there was a canopy/overhang with movie posters in it that substituted for a shelter.

EDIT: Link, since we're on a new page http://www.minneapolismn.gov/www/groups ... 139347.pdf

Ok. Thanks. I agree. After asking I found a map that highlighted the project area as the two blocks of 7th.

So, it looks like the link that I'd seen previously with more detailed documents has been pulled down because the bidding period is over, but my sense was that the curb was only getting extended out approximately 4' or so. Enough room to allow non-bus stop circulation behind the new shelter, and a loading zone in front of the shelter.

I've been trying to find the plan on the met council but no luck. Maybe someone already took the bid?

Per MNdible's comment (which is probably correct), that seems really stupid to extend the curb by 4' instead of just taking the entire curb "lane" / stopping zone. If you extend the sidewalk AT ALL, stopped buses will necessarily block travel in the right travel lane. So why not just have the bus "take the lane", to borrow a cycling term, instead of sorta-kinda pulling over to the right.

We need to get our hands on some layouts...

It's possible they could plan on cheating the 4' out of the three other travel lanes -- not sure what they're striped at now.

I mean, obviously. Too bad Minneapolis Public Works already said an E-W dedicated transit lane would disrupt traffic too much. Plus parking.

But for real, the 5, 7, 22, & 94 (off top of my head) use 7th. So many buses carrying so many people. This would be huge.

It's much harder to do with 94 dumping everyone onto 7th.

It's possible they could plan on cheating the 4' out of the three other travel lanes -- not sure what they're striped at now.

What are the chances that they plan to remove one through lane, use part of it for the 4' sidewalk extension for the bus stop, and use the other left over part to create a one-way cycle track (hopefully protected by parking) on the other side of the street? The math works well and 7th doesn't currently have designated bike space.

Can we switch the thread name to 7th st transit advantage now that we have an official name and a project?

"Transit advantage" is Metro Transit's general term for busways, bus lanes, and bus-only shoulders. Maaaybe things like signal priority too -- not sure on that one. At any rate, something that gets vehicles out of the normal traffic flow.

I crunched some numbers on 7th St usage:

Vehicles using the 3 thru lanes per day: 17,600 (2010)
Bus ridership along 7th:
- 5: 2,980 NB riders daily from 7th/Park, plus another 2,517 boardings by Twins Way = 5,500 daily
- 94: 2,000 daily WB riders getting off at points along 7th
- 19: 2,662 riders getting on between 7th/Park & 7th/Hennepin, 360 getting off (not counting those who get on/off outside these boundaries) = 3,000 daily

[apologies for the difference in methodologies by route, the 5 data I have is more granular based on some other research I'm doing]

That makes for 10,500 people riding down 7th in just these 3 routes. Schedules for the routes show roughly 10-12 minutes to get from ~7th/Chicago to 7th/Hennepin. PM rush hours can sometimes be worse. I believe it's probably true that a dedicated lane might not shave all that much time off the downtown slog given dwell times and inevitability of hitting a couple reds. But seriously the buses are carrying 60% what 3 thru (plus turn) lanes take to carry people in cars. 7th needs a dedicated bus lane. Is there any way to get MC/Minnapolis PW on board with this?

I would love to see a dedicated bus lane but again, convincing people to do that after we decided to dump I-94 onto the same street is going to be a lift.

A bunch of people take 5th St/4th Ave/11th St. to get to La Salle. My guess is a bunch of those folks will just continue west on 7th to La Salle once the freeay exit changes.

I was thinking that the right-hand lane of the new ramp should be a bus/HOV lane all the way in from the highway, or at least as far back as it can be, considering that it's only a single lane right at I-94 -- I presume the configuration of the actual exit won't change significantly, though it might be beneficial to have the shoulder lane go straight into an HOV lane, considering buses may be trying to scoot past traffic using the shoulder there.

A bunch of people take 5th St/4th Ave/11th St. to get to La Salle. My guess is a bunch of those folks will just continue west on 7th to La Salle once the freeay exit changes.

I'm not sure that's true.. Looking at the traffic counts coming off the current ramp/exit, only 40% even stayed straight onto 5th (37% turned left), using 2011 numbers (well before stadium construction, etc). I would imagine a portion of those people turn/park before they get to the 4th Ave jog down. Also, 40% of the cars headed SB on 11th Ave turn right at 7th St, so there's already a good chunk of freeway exiters using 7th today.

Even still, if you assume that the entirety of the 40% of those who are currently exiting 94 and continuing along 5th St will now just use 7th instead, we're talking another 4,000 cars (2010 exit ramp numbers were 9,200 - I fudged up for VMT growth that may or may not have happened) using 7th. That brings the ratio of cars:bus riders to 21.6K :: 12k (I added in the 22 which carries 1,500 folks a day). That's not even 2:1.

I think the way to sway leaders on this one: the vast majority of the riders of those bus routes along 7th are Mpls residents, and many of them low income (buses serve South & North Minneapolis plus the 94 between downtowns). There's no real reason to prioritize (mostly) wealthier people, the majority of whome live outside the city over the previous group of people. Especially when the city's own traffic estimates show a dedicated bus (+right turn lane) would add just 22 seconds delay at all intersections combined.

This is such an obvious win for equity (etc.)

The problem it seems is that staff (City & Metro Transit) just seem to be out of sync with where some of our newer elected leaders are at, and they are working with dated assumptions on what will/won't fly politically. Previous proposals for the E-W (7th/8th) Transit Corridor have come and gone, and have met resistance from the business community for various reasons. It was true a few years ago (I believe the proposal at that time was a contraflow bus lane on 8th) and it would be true today for any actual proposal to create dedicated transit space. If the business community is strongly opposed, then Lisa Goodman was (and is) opposed.

However, I'm not sure that her opposition alone carries the weight that it may have with the previous council, though she remains chair of Community Development Committee and wields power there. If we want to organize around a better result for this transit corridor, it would be best to reach out to Blong Yang (northside), Jacob Frey (downtown, though north of this location), and perhaps Lisa Bender & Alondra Cano as well.

It seems that what it actually being proposed for these two bus stops on 7th is VERY, VERY watered down from what the corridor actually deserves. On the other hand, it is actually happening, so there's that. Ugh...this whole situation. Perhaps someone should just reach out to NOC (Neighborhoods Organizing for Change) and hand it off to them. This needs to come from the people actually using those stops on 7th, and that would primarily be folks heading to the Northside from these locations (shelters, heat, etc. are less important to those folks getting off the 94, buses from the southside, etc.)

Question: How much would this hypothetical bus lane actually help bus travel times, since most of the delay is probably being caused by traffic lights and boarding dewll times?

Related question: How much would removing a general use lane hurt overall traffic congestion?

My suspicion is that you'd be getting very little actual benefit for the buses and hurting general use lanes significantly.

No one is proposing to take away a traffic lane to be punitive to drivers.

And there's much more to transit rider experience than raw speed. Stopping in line vs. swaying to the curb is a big one for ride quality/comfort. So is having a defined place to wait vs. place to walk, which is obviously a major issue here.

With such large volume of the users of this corridor being on buses, and the current transit experience ranging from utterly despicable to borderline 3rd-world conditions, I'm willing to say that ANY speed improvement is worth it, and taking the lane will have other appurtenant benefits that not taking the lane wouldn't have.

E: Yeah I'm just a jerk

Yeah I actually came here to delete what I said because I realized it was waaaaaaaaay to mean, so sorry about that :/