urbanMSP

This will be tomorrow evening.

The RCRRA folks uploaded a draft report to Dropbox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y4nzcb7zzj0hd ... Report.pdf

The track is maintained to a high standard. There isn't a problem of it not being up to code -- its just that BNSF crams like 50 trains a day down that track and there isn't much capacity for more with the way it is currently operated. A big unknown for me is the contract between Metro Transit and B...

Heh, I don't know if I'm the guy to talk to. Yes, the plan is to have 3 main tracks up until Coon Creek, just north of Foley Boulevard in Coon Rapids, and a little south of the existing Riverdale station there. I think a third track could be beneficial farther north, but the bigger problem at the mo...

Metalwork has gone up quickly at the Ramsey Northstar station -- the towers for the pedestrian walkway appear to be in place as of last Thursday: http://zaetsch.blogspot.com/2012/07/ramsey-like-it-or-love-it-thanks-to.html I'd gone up there 11 days earlier and didn't see any metalwork in place: rams...

When I was a student at the U, I definitely felt constrained by the river, the highways, and the rail lines. And sometimes when you get past those barriers, things are still not so comfortable -- the Metrodome vicinity being a prime example. Students would rarely wander down Washington Avenue from S...

There are a few roads planned in the industrial area between the UMN transitway and Elm/Kasota as part of the Southeast Minneapolis Industrial/University Research Park plan. I don't know of a specific site covering the whole project -- Google mostly only returns links to PDF files. One piece of the ...

Blech, I hate that striped glass. Makes it way too hard to see in, out, or through the bus shelters. The newer style with spiral patterns and transit logos isn't quite as bad. I think the striped glass was an anti-graffiti measure. It kind of works for that, but it blocks my view so bad that it make...

Seems like a good idea. Did you think about whether the light-rail line would be grade-separated at all, particularly at Franklin and at Cedar? Traffic can back up a bit on Cedar near that entrance ramp to EB I-94. There's also a bike path along the LRT line to consider, but that might not be too bi...

Interesting but confusing renderings. Some of them show two towers, yet the first image in your second post only seems to show one. It's probably best to ignore the second, narrower tower shown next to the Ford Center, since that (and its adjacent sidewalk) would seem to go above the Interchange's i...

Fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles, but with an inefficient layer wedged in the middle. Charging and discharging a battery is around 90% efficient, but using electrolysis to extract hydrogen from water is only about 50% efficient, and fuel cells to convert that hydrogen back into water+energy ...

Yeah, that would be nice. These days, I'd probably push for something like this where buses recharge at stations: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3rg-SsPJuU[/youtube] It's not entirely clear, but it sounds like those buses use ultracapacitors rather than batteries, which are a bit more sui...

Yet another video, this time from Irrigate Arts/Springboard for the Arts, who ran some bus tours a couple months ago, using an old Twin City Lines bus operated by the Minnesota Transportation Museum (it has somewhere north of 2 million miles on the odometer). There weren't many technical details on ...

I don't know if anyone else is having this issue with the mobile site, but I tend to only get the first or last page of a thread no matter whether I click on the title or page numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. I get the first page if phpBB says I've read everything in the thread, and (usually) the last page ...

The Riverview Corridor is mostly dead, though West 7th is a near-term contender for ATCS/"rapid bus" service. LRT and true BRT options never really got off the ground in the old Riverview Corridor study, but Metro Transit did upgrade the route 54 bus to have completely limited-stop service...

Here's a thread for Metro Transit's Arterial Transit Corridor Study (ATCS). I haven't heard of any action being taken since the open houses a few months back, but their timeline indicated that they may pursue funding sources throughout the year. The study was focused on "rapid bus" service...

Yep, that's the one.

I did get pretty confused at the suggestion that the area would become a significant bus terminal. The only service that really terminates at the Metrodome is Megabus's route to Chicago via Madison/Milwaukee. There are some other local bus routes which pass within a few blocks of the Dome which I su...

Do you really think it is that high at the U? I'm having a tough time believing that 50% of students at the U have cars. Maybe I'm more out of touch with Minnesota than I thought, but I would have guessed 20 or 25%. Almost no freshmen have cars. It increases each year...by senior year, I'd imagine ...

Yeah, I thought I was reading a repeat of an old article with that one, since I know it's happened at least once before. I seem to recall copper thefts happening last year, but it might have just been earlier this spring. I'm pretty concerned about the copper roofing material which appears to be a c...

I was surprised to see a notice for a new open house for the East Metro Rail Capacity Study pop up for Thursday next week. I haven't heard of any activity on that for about two years, so it's good to see that they're at least talking about it again. Hopefully they'll actually publish something onlin...