Twin Cities Future Transit Map

[mattaudio]

Agreed, I think if you scrunch up some blue line stations near the airport, or cut a 45 degree there, you could extend the NE/SW plane of the Mississippi River from St. Paul southwest across the diagonal section of the red line. Then, cut due west, then southwest again after passing the orange line.

[David Greene]

This is a good exercise and shows the significant gaps we have in the east metro. What should fill those gaps? Does the potential ridership exist to build an LRT or even a BRT? I don't know. Unfortuantely, the counties are late to the game.

[Visualizer]

Yep, I already made available enough room for the Minnesota river to go in. It wasn't not a top priority so I simply kept it off the map.

[Visualizer]

I don't know. Unfortuantely, the counties are late to the game.

The East Metro looks like a malnourished branch of an otherwise healthy tree. It's a little depressing just to be looking at it

[Nick]

Uh, well:


(Yanked from Bill Lindeke's TC Sidewalks post today)

[mattaudio]

The east metro's largest suburb is getting the second LRT line in the metro.... I don't see how they're doing too poorly.

[mamundsen]

So the Yellow Line is just a hope and a dream right?

Is it likely to be on Snelling? If so I could see the Hwy 36 stop being VERY busy with Rosedale right there.

[mattaudio]

^yes, but something in this corridor is being studied. It could also route directly to Mpls. I don't think they're even as far as Gateway with the preliminary corridor or mode analyses, so we can only guess right now.

If we make the assumption that it would be LRT and it would go through St. Paul, we have evidence that it would be an extension of the Green Line since initial documents suggest the frequency would need to match up for operational purposes.

If we make the assumption that it would be aBRT from Downtown St. Paul to the Maplewood area via E. 7th, then the response I received from Metro Transit suggested that this would likely interline with W. 7th aBRT, so the line would likely go from MOA/Terminal 1 to the Maplewood area via St. Paul.

[mamundsen]

Actually I just noticed something...

If this was to go up Snelling, Hamline or anything else between the downtowns, it would come west out of Union Station not East.

I'm guessing the way it is currently depicted, is assuming it would run on Arcade/ hwy 61.

[fehler]

CR-73 on the Purple Line should be named "Hopkins Crossroad".

[mattaudio]

I was wondering if we could use interlining Freeway BRT as a way to replace the 94. Imagine the 394 line and gateway line as one, running express between downtown Mpls and downtown St. Paul. Maybe there will be other Freeway BRT lines as well down the road, such as 61 if Red Rock rail gets the axe, and maybe a branch that goes down 394 but then cuts south at 100 or 169 to connect more job centers. Thus we could have interlining of multiple lines on 94 between the downtowns to provide a higher frequency express service.

[mattaudio]

visualizer, the photo is private in flickr... any way we can see a bigger example so we can see the station names?

[mattaudio]

I could see a F-BRT plan like this: http://goo.gl/maps/EgqIX ... obviously the only real lines that are considered as part of this network are purple, pink, red and orange [edit: those are the colors on visualizer's nice map, and of course only red and orange are happening soon]. This map is purely conceptual but it shows how someday with more FBRT lines we could use interlining, including express between the downtowns to replace the 94.

[Visualizer]

visualizer, the photo is private in flickr... any way we can see a bigger example so we can see the station names?

Here it is. It is also accessible through my public dropbox folder.

[Visualizer]

I was wondering if we could use interlining Freeway BRT as a way to replace the 94. Imagine the 394 line and gateway line as one, running express between downtown Mpls and downtown St. Paul.

a problem it is not

[Visualizer]

I'm will re-post mattaudio's hard work here. What does everybody else think about interlining the "purple" and Gateway lines?

[Visualizer]

• Red Line: extended the Red Line / Cedar BRT to Downtown per mattaudio's proposal. Minneapolis's network starts to look complete.
• Purple Line: The i394 BRT interlines with the Gateway BRT via i94 express bus service between the downtowns (replaces #94 bus).
• Green Line: Green Line now extends to Maplewood Transit Center in place of the Yellow Line LRT. Any other thoughts?

[Visualizer]

I could see a F-BRT plan like this: http://goo.gl/maps/EgqIX ... obviously the only real lines that are considered as part of this network are purple, pink, red and orange [edit: those are the colors on visualizer's nice map, and of course only red and orange are happening soon]. This map is purely conceptual but it shows how someday with more FBRT lines we could use interlining, including express between the downtowns to replace the 94.

I thought about your plan and I would like it for a potential fantasy map.

But there is a caveat. Some of your lines extend far out into the ex-burbs. From a design standpoint, attempting to include them in their entirety would have me dramatically re-scaling the map. This would make all features on the map appear smaller, which would have the following implications:

1) The aBRT network would fall "below" the scale of the map and would therefore not be included at all.
2) Certain Metro line stations would [possibly] have to be cut to accomodate transfer stations, hubs, etc.
3) Showing partial routes is not ideal
4) We would need two separate maps, one to display the overall Metro network and another to show both Metro and Aerial BRT in greater detail.

Let's dwell on this idea a little more.

[MNdible]

I understand why you'd want LRT or other rail routes to interline, but do you really get any benefit by interlining bus routes? I wouldn't think so, and any time you have a bus running a very long route, you have the possibility of delays compounding such that the bus might be badly behind schedule by the time it reaches the end of its route.

I understand that there's a desire to have one-seat rides, but I think in most cases, there aren't that many riders who are actually continuing through.

For example, I think it's been observed that the 18 and the 10 are really one long bus line that's been split in two, presumably for operational reasons.

[mattaudio]

Visualizer, those FBRT lines weren't really intended to be a proposal. I just threw some ideas out there... I do not even like the idea of these lines going far out of the beltway. If you want to run with it, go ahead, but I was mainly trying to show the interlining possibilities (which is problematic as MNdible noted).

MNdible, you have a good point. I always figured that a system with a line on this map should have service levels which don't really require a timetable... in my opinion, at least 10 minute headways. If one can expect a bus within X minutes, delays become irrelevant so long as the headway is maintained. Then, with advances in GPS tracking, etc maybe there are ways to prevent bunching and slowing which would interfere with operations.

The interlining between downtowns is actually a holdover of my commuter rail ideas, where all lines would go between downtowns and provide an express service (staggered arrivals from end segments to provide clockface departures between downtowns, and frequent departures during rush periods). This would probably avoid most of the operational problems you describe, but I can't imagine how far it would be in the future when we have a handful of commuter rail lines in our metro.