urbanMSP

Good context. Yeah, I don't think it would have worked to have a mainstreet route, but what a difference in mindset.

It is a pretty stark difference from Hopkins, the SWLRT equivalent of Robbinsdale. One can't seem to understand the irony of thinking a train will divide a community already split in half by a highway, the other asked (IIRC) if the train could run straight down their Main Street instead of on the op...

Kind of annoying to see townhouses considered. I really wish we'd figure out whatever we have to do to make condo development easier in Minnesota again. I get that owner-occupied housing is a financial/generational wealth issue, but I'd really like for it to not be a binary choice between owner occu...

The cost for demolition for these buildings is going to be a much bigger number than people anticipate. In this market, I just really can't imagine somebody purchasing with the intent to demolish. Also you've got a 45% leased property with underground parking, and if your intent was to demolish wit...

The buildings look cosmetically similar to the office building that was converted into Minnetonka's Cloud9 Sky Flat Condos building.

But if I'm remembering correctly, that was a very weird, lightning-strike of a project that very few people would attempt to do in this market.

There's no world where they can convert these buildings back into Class A office product, right? It would be disappointing if newer, better proposed offices weren't able to sign tenants because something like this lured them away. But as it stands, offering much lower lease rates to the sorts of ten...

I, for one, am not losing sleep over the general public not understanding the difference between aBRT and local buses, or confusing LRT with heavy rail. Because if the powers that be start worrying about this, they will spend the equivalent of a new aBRT line (hyperbole) to a marketing consultant wh...

A lot of the complaints from Robbinsdale have been just noise, but I will say it has frustrated me that nobody has suggested putting an elevated walkway over Bottineau and the LRT station. A bridge and elevator are fine when we're talking about Bryn Mawr, we'll elevate a freeway at Bass Lake, but we...

aBRT on WBA could have been done by now (or at the very least, on the Network Next books) if Ramsey had made it a priority, and we'd still have the trail corridor available in the future if more imaginative minds ever reconsider rail service to the north instead. "[Mayor] Abrams instead asked c...

I guess it all keeps circling back to "If this is such a perfect arrangement for the team, the owners, the fans, etc., why do billionaires need public handouts?" The answer is they don't, but we are forced to do it anyway because someone else more desperate than we are will be more than ha...

The Borealis doesn't have to do a backup move if it has an engine on the back as stated. The Empire Builder would have to do a backup move though. Yes, to be clear, by "trains" I mean Borealis, NLX, or future trains from Northfield or Fargo. I do not believe the Empire Builder will ever s...

Looking at an aerial of the wye, I now see the problem. I guess a top priority for the state rail plan should be both to double track the wye, and as a part of the same project, they should also make it possible for trains approaching from the east to travel down to Target Field Station without havi...

I understand why the Empire Builder can't, absolutely.

The Borealis has a locomotive on each end of the train and wouldn't need to back up into the BNSF yard.

I don't think it would be the worst thing to run down the cliff. Lots of options. * Elevator/station at the northern end of the Smith Ave high bridge? * Station near Eagle Street for the new development near the river bottoms with some sort of access to River, Center via the western side of the Riv...

There are concerts happening at Target Center, Xcel Energy Center, and US Bank Stadium, despite the acoustics being atrocious at the latter. The even worse Roy Wilkins Auditorium also still gets events from time to time, and that's certainly a venue we could demolish safely at this point. If the con...

I still think getting the water park built on the north end of the mall is the smarter play, but now that Riverview isn't going to build a new elevated Blue Line station at the mall, that might be an acceptable public subsidy that would open up developing the East Lot into a stadium. Also, the City ...

IIRC Walz was a big part of the reason the Blue Line Extension finally stopped pretending that BNSF was just about to call them back and agree to sharing their property for the original line routing, after years of them saying "No, we definitely are not going to do that." Not exactly stand...

If Ramsey County can't put a coalition together to support a better connection between Downtown St. Paul, the region's international airport, and the region's major entertainment center, they're certainly not going to be able to put one together that supports connecting Downtown St. Paul to one of t...

The Borealis adds stops compared to the Empire Builder (two between Glenview and DT Milwaukee) but because they drop the smoke break stop time in Winona and removal of buffer time added to make up for freight delays, the schedule is still slightly shorter. As long as we didn't get a laundry list of ...

I think when the solutions boil down to "we need to merge county governments" or "we need the legislature to write our transit plans," it's effectively saying the same thing as "this isn't going to get done." Like I don't particularly like being a pessimist on this but ...