urbanMSP

What makes FRA difficult to deal with when it comes to passenger rail services? FRA Crashworthiness Standards.

@kellonathan, sort of both but primarily streetcar. Our LRT seems (to me) to fall somewhere between a standard Tram (streetcar in US) and a commuter rail. Located in street ROW like tram but with some dedicated ROW. Faster than a tram, not as fast as commuter. Stop spacing about the same as tram/st...

Are we talking Portland Streetcar? or TriMet MAX light rail?

I know these are submitted by architects, and I know I am just 'reviewing' these ideas with my planner-eyes, but, but, but, these are all horrible if one of these gets to be implemented as-is. Most submissions didn't seem to consider the nature of surrounding neighborhoods at all. For industrially o...

Not to be snarky or anything, but does RST even have an international service right now?

August 20th - Route 2 joins Hi-Frequency network! Check out the PDF version of the updated schedule, and compare it with the current version. http://www.metrotransit.org/Data/Sites/1/media/pdfs/Schedules/Routes/34/002.pdf http://www.metrotransit.org/Data/Sites/1/media/pdfs/Schedules/Routes/33/002.pd...

I actually really like the idea of cutting the Orange Line at 98th St. (current South Bloomington TC location right off of I-35W, I assume) I am not up to date on the ridership patterns along the corridor, but I always assumed that Burnsville passengers would be better served by higher service level...

There are ups-and-downs when it comes to organizing bus services w/ branches---I am often leaning against branches, and generally with the Metro Transit's practice of "over-saturating" the schedules/maps by designating routes with different terminus points with different suffixes (even if ...

Hmm... looking at the south alignment options, I don't know how I feel about putting a well-landscaped boulevard that's directly facing a highway on one side. (The Cedar Ave Alignment) Wouldn't it make the parkway work more as a frontage road instead of a boulevard?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6898844/urbanmsp/northloopnorth.PNG I was stuck in a flying metal tube with my new tablet-laptop for couple hours the other day, and thought it would be a good idea to remove that elevated I-94 ramp and make the reclaimed land into a linear park. And maybe we can...

Couple things I noticed from the newsletter: 1. Are they pretty much set on the rolling stock/locomotive selection? (I highly doubt it.) The graphic in the newsletter has a Surfliner/Capitol Corridor looking bi-level cars. 2. Gosh. We should really stop calling this a high speed rail. 90mph is not h...

I agree that the current MOA station (an island platform with no tail tracks) doesn't have a capacity to handle both Hiawatha and Riverview. I am pretty sure someone ease already mentioned this somewhere in this thread, but if you look at the plan for the currently proposed MOA station, I think the ...

Now I wonder how downtown routing analysis has been done with Hiawatha Line on 5th St (Mpls). I should look up some of those old planning documents---I recall looking at the original plan calling for LRT running on 4th St instead of 5th St.

(I am not super familiar with the routing process for other transit routes, but this is just a generalized description of how projects often progress.) When a project is at a super-beginning stage, where people casually float around ideas for alignments with different ideals and visions, planners (o...

My thought exactly. Just by reading through the documents that were posted so far, I think they are not at the stage of actually doing any cost-benefit analysis yet. As soon as we have some numbers and dollar signs to talk about, CP Spur+W 7th St hybrid alignment will look much attractive. (I am act...

Thanks for 'restarting' the discussion! As a former commuter (as a Blue Line rider and as a driver,) I've been always wondering about those two corridors. One thing to consider is that both Hiawatha Ave and Olson Hwy are still state highways and designated 10 ton truck routes---Hiawatha, especially,...

I see an item on Stage 2 called "Mall of America Station Improvement." Does anyone know if it's something like this? Or is it an entirely separate project? http://www.lsadesigninc.com/#!mall-of-america-transit-station-master-p/cq5o (They made that draft language to read as generic and vagu...

14' travel lane? Urgh, disgusting!

Did you guys all notice the Twin Cities - Northfield - Des Moines line being recognized as a phase 1 project?

Something I want to figure out is why the Utah Transit Agency's FrontRunner service has been able to operate their commuter trains at about 1/3 the cost per revenue mile and per revenue hour versus Northstar (as of 2012 -- them vs. us ). For your information... Population (2012) Big Lake, MN 10,247...