urbanMSP

They've finally broken ground on Rochester's BRT line.

https://www.startribune.com/what-to-kno ... 601371293/

It seems a little strange that the F Line made the cut to be shown, but not the G Line or Gold Line extension, both of which are (alas) scheduled to start running before the F Line does. Not that the Gold Line's two new stations would add any walkshed to the map, I guess.

The B Line launch broke some new ground for Metro Transit - this is the first METRO line that full-on replaced a local bus in one go, rather than overlaying it with the local route hanging around at reduced frequency. The A, C, and D Line launches no doubt managed to catch some of the 84, 19, and 5 ...

The anti-Frey/Rainville crowd working themselves into a frenzy and concluding that the "pedestrianize Nicollet" proposal is the first step in a nefarious scheme to completely remove transit and low-income folks from all of downtown probably didn't make anyone too psyched about proposing ...

My thought had been that the text just says the report has to be in before next summer, there's no reason they can't just punch something out real fast in the next month and continue as they were, but, yeah, just submitting the existing alternatives analysis would be even better.

Aren't they expanding both the Franklin and St. Paul facilities? Or are those projects just to compensate for Shady Oak being cut?

Ten stories, you say? Chalk up another win for the 2040 plan height minimums.

It's pretty funny that it was absolutely unthinkable to have a building in the heart of Dinkytown be more than seven stories, but further north on 15th it's a-okay to have buildings twice as tall.

Yeah, those are pretty much my concerns, in that order.

1. The Park Board buying it all to just sit on indefinitely, like they've done with every other riverfront parcel they've gotten their hands on in NE. I'd be happy if they could get another 25' or so along the existing trail, to have room for ...

In a medium-hilarious coda to the whole decade-long fight between the MPRB and Graco about the East Bank Trail and former lumberyard... Graco's leaving. Right around ten city blocks available for redevelopment, if we're lucky.

I'm not convinced that one Republican legislator saying that the funding cut will kill the project forever should be taken as gospel truth. Delayed until there's a more rail-friendly government at both the state and federal level, certainly, but that was always going to be the case after last ...

If I remember correctly, the NLX money was only allocated through 2027, and will just disappear back into the general fund if (when) it isn't spent by then. Since there's approximately no chance MnDOT will actually bother to get it moving in the next two years, I'd rather the NLX money be bargained ...

Wow. Huge improvement to have 15-minute service on the 11 all the way to Columbia Heights, at least for this guy who works on St. Anthony Parkway and has thus far had to roll the dice about whether the next bus would actually go that far north.

Also really good to see the 94 continuing to be ...

Have they successfully gotten anything built since Latitude 45, which must be ten years old by now?

The ground and skyway levels of The Crossings, at 2nd and Washington, are commercial condos. I've assumed that's what's led to the more interesting business mix (electrical contractor, Oromo TV studio, etc) than the average downtown tower has.

Heartbreaking setback for the Minneapolis Parking and Recreation Board, but it looks like a huge improvement for non-car users of the parkway.

The 2 and 11 were knocked out in the early stage of the last round of BRT planning (that selected the F, G, and H Lines) as being too convoluted to make a legible BRT line out of.

I think this is a good indicator of why the BRT planning process needs to get away from just upgrading routes as-is ...

Not sure how I feel about that. It makes sense for both events (the World Cup and Amtrak's fleet shortage), but I fear they'll end up buying the equipment and then the rest of the Northstar equipment will get sold off.


I mean, they won't sell the equipment unless the service is cancelled, and ...

Yeah, same here. Like, I'll log in to type out a post, and I have to copy the whole thing to my clipboard because three times out of five it'll tell me that I'm not logged in anymore.

Mankato's pretty much the same distance from downtown Minneapolis as St. Cloud is, and Rochester's only about 10 miles futher, so if an extended Northstar was still regional rail, I'd argue that Rochester and Mankato would be too.