B Line Lake St Rapid Bus, Midtown Rail Transit

[mattaudio]

Yah, as moderator here I'm gonna say this is a good discussion, but it needs to be on a different thread unless it is directly and ONLY related to transit in the greenway. Thanks

[ProspectPete]

The bridge east end of the midtown corridor, are there any plans to extend the bike trail over it? It would come out very near the Shriners hospital,on E River Road.

[talindsay]

The bridge east end of the midtown corridor, are there any plans to extend the bike trail over it? It would come out very near the Shriners hospital,on E River Road.

No, definitely not at this time. That had been one of the hopes of both Hennepin County and Minneapolis as the freight use on the corridor was dropping in the 1990s and early 2000s, but use of the tracks has increased quite a bit in recent years. After the bridge was burned a few years back MN Commercial actually felt the corridor to be valuable enough that they paid to fix the bridge and installed fences and alarms at both ends to keep people off it - clearly a sign that they intend to keep using the corridor for a good while. If the fire hadn't happened there might have been a chance of talking the freight rail into an easement on half the bridge to allow bicycle use, but clearly the fire got them worried about protecting their property - they actually get off the train, open the fence, go through, then lock the fence behind them.

It would be nice for bicycles to be able to cross into Saint Paul on the bridge, but for transit I think it would be a pretty crappy corridor anyway - density is very low and all residential along the east part of the Greenway. Any Southeast Minneapolis or western Saint Paul transit infrastructure should cross the river on Lake/Marshall, where there's both higher density and an active commercial corridor.

[mulad]

Yeah, I think if bicycles were ever going to go on that bridge, the upper deck would need to be rebuilt to increase the amount of available space.

[ProspectPete]

So it's also safe to say that that bridge would never be used for LRT or Trolley use.
A related question: is the gauge of the tracks for LRT and trolley the same? That is could they ever be interchangable?

[talindsay]

So it's also safe to say that that bridge would never be used for LRT or Trolley use.
A related question: is the gauge of the tracks for LRT and trolley the same? That is could they ever be interchangable?

EDIT: Read Mulad's post below, I seem to have been smoking crack. The rail gauge is the same: 1435mm, standard gauge. Interchangeability has to do with loading gauge and weight.

[FISHMANPET]

Uh, subway cars are actually lighter than light rail cars. Light rail cars and streetcars are built stronger and heavier because they can interact with vehicles. Subway cars running on exclusive guideways don't interact with traffic and thus aren't built as strongly.

The light in light rail refers to capacity and also cost, not the weight of the vehicle.

[mulad]

I haven't heard of loading gauge being related to the weight of vehicles, but maybe i've missed something over the years. Loading gauge definitely affects the shape of vehicles, though, defining the envelope that trains pass through. Train cars vary in height , width, and length, and their shape can affect whether they fit under bridges, through tunnels, and around curves. Loading gauge also affects how closely tracks can parallel each other and the placement of passenger platforms at stations

[ProspectPete]

But a 30 foot trolley must be quite a bit lighter than a full two car LRV. So I guess they'd have to decide soon if they are ever going to run LRVs down there, no?

[UptownSport]

Were the freight trains that ran down the very bed lighter than LRV's?

[ProspectPete]

Haha... Good point. Can someone explain the single/double track option they speak of in the report? Would there be times when they would double up the tracks to facilitate passing?

[Nick]

Haha... Good point. Can someone explain the single/double track option they speak of in the report? Would there be times when they would double up the tracks to facilitate passing?

It's great to have a new active poster on the forum, but you're really asking quite a few questions that have already been covered in the topics you're posting in. Might be a good idea to take sometime and familiarize yourself with some of these projects.

[David Greene]

Haha... Good point. Can someone explain the single/double track option they speak of in the report? Would there be times when they would double up the tracks to facilitate passing?

Because the Greenway trench has pinch points and historical designation, it's much easier and less expensive to do double-track where you can and single track at the pinch points. The idea is to time the streetcars so there is never a conflict at a single track point.

The double track option is just that: double track everywhere. It's much harder to do in the Greenway.

[talindsay]

The double track option is just that: double track everywhere. It's much harder to do in the Greenway.

Slight correction: it's much harder to do in the Greenway *while maintaining the quality of secondary uses currently offered along with the historic bridges*. Obviously the Greenway was multi-track for its full length back in the day; the fact that we can have such a fantastic bicycle road along with streetcars in any form speaks to the very large amount of ROW; as the bridges slowly get replaced it's going to become easier to do both double-track *AND* the bike road, so my thought is that we build it with the single-track at the pinch points now, and as the bridges get replaced the line can be brought to full double-track. Historic designation or no, the bridges *will* get replaced as they become deficient. Eventually the Greenway will not have that limitation.

[David Greene]

The double track option is just that: double track everywhere. It's much harder to do in the Greenway.

Slight correction: it's much harder to do in the Greenway *while maintaining the quality of secondary uses currently offered along with the historic bridges*.

I thought that was kind of obvious.

Historic designation or no, the bridges *will* get replaced as they become deficient. Eventually the Greenway will not have that limitation.

It's not just the bridges. The slope and vegetation also have historic designation.

I am not kidding.

I have no idea why.

[talindsay]

The double track option is just that: double track everywhere. It's much harder to do in the Greenway.

Slight correction: it's much harder to do in the Greenway *while maintaining the quality of secondary uses currently offered along with the historic bridges*.

I thought that was kind of obvious.

I pointed it out only because I think it's worth keeping in mind that the Greenway only exists in the first place because of an historic need for grade-separated multi-track rail activity through the midtown area - and it's current choices, not the Greenway itself, that prevents this being an easy thing today.

[woofner]

It's not just the bridges. The slope and vegetation also have historic designation.

I don't believe this is true. I'm pretty sure it's just the grade separation that is designated. Otherwise they couldn't have built the ramps, could they? Otherwise all of the Elans and Track 29, etc, would have needed variances, and I don't recall seeing them at the HPC. So you can change the slope, make it a wall if you want, as long as it's grade separated.

[twincitizen]

From II. Introduction of the Midtown Corridor Historic Bridge Study
http://midtowngreenway.org/files/mgc/ck ... -30-07.pdf (large document warning)

Within the Midtown Corridor lies the Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul
Railroad Grade Separation Historic District. The historic district lies
parallel to 29th Street between Humboldt and 20th Avenues South. Its
period of significance is from 1912 to 1916, with a historical function
related to transportation, specifically railroads. Its current function is
transportation, and its sub-function is pedestrian transportation.

While not conclusive, it sounds like the historic district pertains to the bridges, and as redisciple stated, the grade separation itself. To me, it sounds like re-introducing rail transportation to the corridor would actually bring it more in compliance with the historic designation.

Regarding vegetation specifically:

The natural landscape has also undergone a change. During the period of
significance, there would have been little, if any, vegetation in the corridor. Since
that time, any vegetation that appeared was voluntary, and hence haphazard in
type and placement.

[Tcmetro]

So I saw this posted on the Midtown Corridor website:

http://www.metrotransit.org/Data/Sites/ ... ndouts.pdf

- Looks like the double track will be installed along most of the length of the route, with the exception of the parts at the ends of the line. Basically this means there shouldn't be any limitations to frequencies for if they stay above 8 minutes or so.

- A lot of new retaining walls under consideration.

- Station platforms would be 90 feet in length, indicating use of an LRV as opposed to a streetcar vehicle.

- Proposed service levels would be every 10 minutes. Route 21 buses would run every 15 minutes (currently every 6-12 minutes.)

[talindsay]

That all sounds great, hope they stick to that plan. Now, the question is, if they use single LRVs to deliver the service, do they call it, "streetcar" or "LRT"? Certainly the operational style of this line would be a complete hybrid of the two by our region's definitions - dedicated ROW, dedicated platforms, rapid-transit-style amenities, but only single vehicles, single-track sections, lower speeds, less-frequent service intervals.

It does look like they plan to fully integrate this line into the two LRT Lake street stations at the termini - which is great from an operations perspective and also definitely sets this up as LRT rather than streetcar - but it does preclude the possibility of continuing east on Lake Street or the Greenway in the future. I'm kind of torn about that - the possibility of fully integrating this is great for a lot of reasons, but since it would explicitly *NOT* allow through-routing to either downtown on either end, it seems the possibilities for interlining are pretty sparse.

I think I'd rather see the East Lake / Midtown station *NOT* integrated, to allow future rail connections to continue to downtown Saint Paul. Alternatively, I'd like them to study whether they could set up some kind of connection to allow the trains to link on to the Hiawatha tracks the other way, so that Uptown trains could be through-routed to downtown Minneapolis. The latter would be very difficult and is probably better accomplished with a transfer, but it seems like there's no benefit to a one-seat ride from Uptown south, compared to the significant benefits of a one-seat ride from Uptown to downtown Saint Paul (the best possibility) or downtown Minneapolis or the U (both more interesting than the airport).

I suppose that if an eventual MSP-Saint Paul line were built with tracks crossing the river at 46th instead of Highway 5 (doubtful), then a carefully-designed wye in South Minneapolis could allow interlining of trains from Uptown to DT Saint Paul with trains from MSP to DT Saint Paul; that seems an unlikely and very future-centric route pattern though.

Mainly I'm happy to see this "streetcar" looking more LRT-like than I had expected.