urbanMSP

We could spend a lot of time second guessing decisions of the past. Yes, it would have been theoretically possible to keep the station operational and still maintain access to the river, but it would have been a compromised access. Also, Great Northern is located further form the core of downtown than the Interchange is.

I will choose to shed my tears over some other spilled milk.

The Hawthorne bus station was just built 15-20 years ago and works really well. In retrospect it would have made more sense to site it along the LRT spine, but 15-20 years ago there was an excellent chance that LRT would never bless the Twin Cities with its presence. Hawthorne is just a block off Hennepin, so it is pretty easy to get to from the bus. It's also really easy to get to the Interchange from Hawthorne, although it's really poorly signed and confusingly laid out. Not that I don't give the Interchange an F- for not considering local bus at all, but intercity bus was already spoken for.

Although now that I think about it, Megabus used to stop at the pull-out under the 4th St Ramp. There's actually really good waiting facilities there, so maybe it would make sense as a secondary downtown stop.

Basically the only service in MN handled by Greyhound these days is Mpls-Chicago. Jefferson does everything else. So Greyhound isn't really a player in MN anymore.

Also, were it still located there, the rail lines feeding it would cut the city off from the river.

The city is still cut off from the river to the north. A rail line would probably cut it off less so than a scrum of beige townhouse fortresses. Although most of the tail tracks from Great Northern actually curved to join the existing BNSF tracks in the Cut; the railyards in the North Loop were mostly unrelated to the passenger facilities at Great Northern from what I can tell. The story with the tracks to the south is more complicated and would be a lot more difficult to make compatible with the existing uses.

We could spend a lot of time second guessing decisions of the past.

Those past people made a lot of bad decisions.

And I'm sure that we're continuing to make a lot of bone-headed decisions, but such is life. You do the best that you can with the information, the resources, and the political will that you have, and you move forward. Or alternately, you sit around waiting for the stars to align and nothing ever happens.

still bugs me the station that sat on hennepin, (where the federal reserve bank sits now) was demolished.

Agreed, what a beautiful building, and perfect location. That said, we are fortunate to still have the most prominent and architecturally significant train station in the Twin Cities still remain in existence for decades after our transit network was gutted - and now lovingly restored!

Well, I'd quibble a bit. It wasn't really that beautiful of a building; compared to other old train stations, it was kind of a dog.

Well, I am talking in today's terms. Most of those old stations were partially or totally demolished (Chicago Union Station is a disjointed mess), allowed to rot (Michigan Central) or turned into REAL dogs (Penn Station). All the stations in Minneapolis were a lot smaller, and I'd argue not as nice as Union Depot. Union Depot is also the most logically-laid out train station I have ever been in, and that includes the multitude of train stations in Europe I was through. I was surprised to find that SPUD also was more beautiful and larger than a lot of stations in big cities over there, despite the Twin Cities population being relatively small in comparison.

Having access to the river is VERY nice these days in Minneapolis, but it does significantly sever and hamper the city's ability to have better options to connect to St Paul and the rest of the region, particularly since momentum for HSR has been picking up. The train tracks by the river in St Paul don't hinder the riverfront. Some more connections to the river would be nice, but the bluffs are more of a limiting factor than the tracks.

Good luck crossing the street to get to the station...

CONFIRMED: New Interchange platform will be used for day to day operations of Blue & Green lines. Existing platform will be passed by. Existing platform will be used only for post-game operations to split up Blue / Green.

That's good to hear -- seems to make the most sense of the available options.

Bonus points to anybody (Mulad excluded) who can name all of the railroads serving the Great Northern as listed on the sign above. No fair using Wikipedia.

I'm about a 7 out of 10 on the Mulad Knowledge Scale, so I'm going to leave this quiz for someone else.

Bonus points if you can name the other passenger stations used in Mpls during the 20th Century and which railroads used them.

Finally, I'd like to put in a plug for a great book that documents the history of railroads in our area. A friend's father wrote it, and it's great! Highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/Train-Pictures-19 ... 615359604/

Well CB&O is Chesapeake Baltimore & Ohio, no ideas about the others. NP sounds like Northern Pacific but I don't know if that's a real company.

E: Nope I'm totally wrong about CB&O (partly because it's actually CB&Q I think)

Hint, it's CB&Q not CB&O.

Considering I grew up with a basement full of N Scale trains and my father's favorite was the CB&Q with plenty of GN and NP thrown in and he's been a subscriber to both Trains and Model Railroader for going on 30 years now, I'll bow out of this quiz too.

#humblebrag

I will give a hint that the one on the lower left is M&StL, since many others probably can't figure out what that is.

From the2020partners...

Craig David, one of the artists selected by the Minnesota Ballpark Authority for its public art project, is soliciting community input for his artwork at Target Field Station.

https://www.facebook.com/events/490839864337164/?ref=3

Here is his website http://www.artdavidii.com/index.htm

I'll also abstain from answering as I have been an avid player of the classic board game Rail Baron http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/420/rail-baron , hence my namesake. If anyone hasn't played it, it's like Monopoly but with rails, less luck, and an awesome dude on the front of the box who I also emulated in a picture for my senior year in high school. Yep.

IMG_4485 by UrbanMSP, on Flickr


IMG_4486 by UrbanMSP, on Flickr

A major point of displeasure with this project has been the lack of a bus component. I found an image which appears to show a pick-up/ drop-off point for buses underneath the elevated rail platform on the end of the site farthest from Target Field. Am I seeing things, or can someone confirm/ discredit this? If this is indeed a bus station, that is a huge plus for the project. (center of the image, next to HERC.)
http://theinterchange.net/images/LiveIm ... tation.jpg

I suspect they're just trying to represent the bus traffic in and out of Heywood Garage in some way, but it could be something.

A major point of displeasure with this project has been the lack of a bus component.

I agree with you.

Also, does anyone know exactly how the street configuration will be around The Interchange? # of Lanes on 6th Ave? Will 5th St be a one way? Will there be turn lanes/signals at the intersection? Will there be turn lanes in/out of Incinerator, Bus Garage, Super America?

People really use 6th Ave to get in/out of the Twins Stadium/North Loop and with:
- With the number of new housing units being built north loop
- More Business being proposed at that location
- The alternate route to get to Washington Oak Lane being already being re-done as 1 lane each way with Bike path
- MANY, MANY buses turning into/out of garages off 1 lane streets

Driving in this section of the North Loop neighborhood was already starting to become a problem and that was before construction.

So stop driving?