Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[UptownSport]

Interesting that everyone is excited to talk about trams/LRT down Nicollet, or The Greenway and BRT on Hennepin, and discuss in detail (sometimes personal)why it's needed.

What's missing is any of that for SW- besides pie in the sky promises about impound lot- railyard miracle development.

To me SW reasons are akin to adding a line on our model trainset- exciting and all but its practicality doesn't exist.

[David Greene]

Well, 3C would have had a tunnel for a good chunk, right?. If I'm not mistaken, this document (pg 40) shows from 4th St/Nicollet to 28th/Nicollet would take 8.1 minutes via 3C-1

Your analysis looks right to me but 3C was not in a tunnel, but a gradually rising trench from the Greenway to Franklin. I believe it was at grade north of Franklin.

If 3C could travel the distance in 8.1 minutes I should think we could get a Nicollet streetcar with dedicated ROW very close to that.

I know, everybody's busy.

True, you have to pick your battles. Currently I am battling the city and the county with Harrison so that takes up some time. Plus I'm working on the Midtown corridor and some stuff in the neighborhood. And I have a 5 1/2 month-old. I guess I can count my Midtown work as contributing half-an-effort toward emulating 3C.

[David Greene]

What's missing is any of that for SW- besides pie in the sky promises about impound lot- railyard miracle development.

There's a separate thread for the BCV master plan. People will talk about what they want to talk about. I'd love to talk about the BCV master plan. Head over to the thread and join in!

[woofner]

Your analysis looks right to me but 3C was not in a tunnel, but a gradually rising trench from the Greenway to Franklin. I believe it was at grade north of Franklin.

No, it was a tunnel with a south portal between 27th & 28th and the north portal between Franklin & 22nd. I have the PE plans and I've been meaning to scan them and upload them. Maybe I'll do that later today?

[Mdcastle]

Hypothetically, if the Southwest corridor went through uptown, would it still be an extension of the Green line, making a right turn in downtown?

[UptownSport]

Letter by EP Representitive Loon railing against the Met Council;

http://m.startribune.com/opinion/?id=222750661&c=y

[David Greene]

Hypothetically, if the Southwest corridor went through uptown, would it still be an extension of the Green line, making a right turn in downtown?

No it would not. It would end at Nicollet. Losing the opportunity to inline is one of the reasons 3C lost out.

[David Greene]

Letter by EP Representitive Loon railing against the Met Council;

http://m.startribune.com/opinion/?id=222750661&c=y

Where do I start? Pretty much every paragraph puts forward misinformation.

Rep. Loon doesn't even know what the decision-making process is. I've already explained Chair Haigh's suggestion that the *CMC* (a body with no decision-making power) use a consensus model instead of voting. She never suggested the Met Council not vote.

I'm all for considering an elected Met Council but we do have to be careful how we design such a thing. Suburban folks generally want one because they suspect (rightly, if we're not careful) that the current political strength of the suburbs would lead to a setup where the suburbs direct the actions of the Met Council, which is exactly what we *don't* want.

[mattaudio]

3C-2 could have interlined with the green line.

But of course if we were thinking a little more strategically about regional transit, 3C could connect with other lines too, such as a line along Central with strategic grade separations (fully replacing the streetcar plan) or a line cutting through Northeast Industrial to Rosedale and beyond.

Then if we wanted to extend the Green Line, we could bring it to West End (and eventually beyond) connecting even more regional employment nodes.

[Mdcastle]

If the voting is rigged so it's still dominated by anti-sprawl, anti-highway urbanists an elected met council still wouldn't be acceptable to suburbanites. And urbanists wouldn't want suburbanists dominating it either. So if we can't elect a met council that's acceptable to both than why bother to move to an elected body.

I do wonder which route would have the minimal number of transfers- people from the suburbs going to the Vikings stadium or the U or downtown St. Paul would have to transfer with the Nicollet route, while people going farther into uptown or Nicollet (and I'm not convinced there's that many that want to go to someplace on Nicollet) would have to transfer with the Kennilworth route. People from Uptown going to the stadium, the U, or downtown St. Paul would have to transfer under either scenario.

As big of deal as they make Eat Street out to be, I don't happen to know anyone that ever goes there and I've never been there personally. Maybe there's different crowds that do go there, because obviously some people are.

[Silophant]

I go there, though I probably wouldn't nearly as often if I was coming in from the suburbs.

[RailBaronYarr]

As taxpayers continue to subsidize a portion of every passenger’s experience, this is not the time to shut out public debate or speed things up.

Well then we should have MnDOT officials be elected as well. Why not call for that? How much have we spent and subsidized on every street and highway and interchange to ensure people don't sit in 3 minutes of extra congestion (which has been a failed effort anyway). I'm sure Loon asked the same questions about the single interchange at 169/494 costing $125million...

[Mdcastle]

Actually, a directly elected transportation commissioner seems like a very good idea to me. Think the Stillwater Bridge is costing to much? Although it's probably unstoppable now If the majority of the state does they could throw out the current commissioner and vote in one that wants a bunch more trains and busses. Does the majority of the state want the new MN 41 freeway built instead of the Southwest line? Elect a commissioner that promises to do (and find funding for) that.

[mattaudio]

That's just what we need, another way for the state to siphon wealth from the core cities and throw it at the exurbs.

[twincitizen]

Another one-week delay on the doomsday decision: http://finance-commerce.com/transit/201 ... ck-a-week/

If it wasn't reported earlier, Hopkins is now a lock for the O&M facility, but their rep. is throwing a fit and wants compensation for lost tax base... don't they know there's going to be a ton of development coming their way? "Loss of 200 jobs"...mmmk, that's obviously not counting any of the (probably higher paying) LRT operator and maintenance jobs that will be gained. Not one of those people will make less than $45,000/yr, except maybe the cleaners.

[MNdible]

Yeah, Hopkins seems to be a lock for the biggest winner of all out of this line.

[Anondson]

Will this facility be a property tax paying entity? I think that's Hopkins' big beef. The Shady Oak station was originally intended to be shared between Minnetonka and Hopkins, which is why Minnetonka got a veto on the original name of the station (was to be Hopkins West), then the "Shady Oak" station got redesigned to take land entirely from Hopkins with no burden falling on Minnetonka to provide space for it.

I think Hopkins position after getting the Shady Oak Road redesign wiping out a swath off homes and businesses but not so much in Minnetonka, then Shady Oak station redesign being pushed into Hopkins entirely and then the facility chosen is a bit of a SNL, "Really?" Land that could have been redeveloped and improved the tax base gets yanked off permanently.

I know, we're crying tears here. But when Hopkins is all of four square miles, this hits there much harder than it relatively would have elsewhere.

[Silophant]

New Strib article.

Anoka County Commissioner Matt Look asked why the Met Council has virtually rejected a less expensive idea: having the freight and LRT run next to each other in the Kenilworth corridor and rerouting the recreational trails for about a mile at the narrowest points.

This is encouraging. I wish the LRT wasn't going down Kenilworth, but that train's pulled out of the station. At the end of the day, it's a rail corridor. We don't need to move rail out of it so bikes can continue their 'temporary' use of it.

[Mdcastle]

Was bicycle use in Kennilworth intended to be temporary until LIght Rail came along, or did that only apply to the LRT trails west from Hopkins?

[Silophant]

I thought it was all the way through the Kennilworth, but I'm not 100% sure about that.