urbanMSP

From a transit perspective, the "problem" here IMO is that Maplewood Mall barely fits into the corridor. Fine, there's some overlap between the St. John's and Maplewood stations--though IMO having a stop in very close proximity to the hospital makes sense when you consider that by the nature of a hospital, these riders may have more limited mobility. But setting ridership aside the St. John's stop is actually well-aligned with the ROW, so a station there is a lot less of a disruption of the route than traveling 3/4 of a mile perpendicular to the main ROW, across 3 signaled intersections, turning left, circulating around a bus corral, and doing the whole thing in reverse to get back to the main ROW.

Obviously nobody's going to argue we should skip the mall entirely, because it's a significant destination, but including it involves some significant degradation of the route, which is the cost of planning mistakes made long ago.

totally agree with this, tmart. Maybe Maplewood Mall should build a circulator system that goes around their property, including the Rush Line stop by the hospital... It could have door to door service to each of the mall anchors.

Extend Rush Line and Gold line to Minneapolis via I-94.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mJMag ... sp=sharing

Extend Rush Line and Gold line to Minneapolis via I-94.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mJMag ... sp=sharing

Access denied.

fixed.

Minor tip: I'd suggest choosing a different color for the Gold Line; it blends in with the yellow roads.

Overall it's a sensible idea. Transfers are clunky, but that's natural when you have to split the route along parallel streets.

If we were more ambitious about transit planning and making investments to benefit multiple future routes, I'd say this would work best with a dedicated two-way transitway along 5th, from Broadway to Cleveland Circle. That would allow Gold/Red Rock to get from SPUD to I-94, Rush from Robert to I-94, and would solve the eventual future problem of routing the Riverview LRT from West 7th to Central Station.

We need to have a serious conversation about the Union Depot and Ramsey County's fixation with all routes leading there.

That being said, I'm not sure I wouldn't rather transfer to Green Line for DT MPLS and have the Rush go somewhere else in St. Paul. If it goes on 94 I imagine the bus would be faster than the Green Line, but it would be interesting to compare times from the Robert/14th stop to DT MPLS on both routes. Rush would need to wind through DT StP but Green Line would have many more stops.

Question... is there a spot where I can see data about the planned WBL downtown station? I know they are thinking about a two story ramp at Clark and 2nd/3rd.

A friend on Facebook is sharing a petition against it. There are currently about 2500 signers. He said his major concern is the traffic. My initial response was that a district parking would be good and allow the other surface lots to be developed. It would also consolidate traffic.

Other thoughts?

what traffic?

what traffic?

The petition is “SAY NO to Park and Ride Bus Hub in Old Downtown White Bear Lake” and doesn’t actually reference Rush Line by name. It’s clearly someone with half info spouting off in fear of the unknown.

Signature count is now just under 3k.

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-whitebea ... 014-1%3Av2

To be fair, without knowing anything about this petition, the idea of a park & ride in your traditional downtown is a sign of failure for your traditional downtown.

Yeah, even if this is NIMBYism, we have enough parking. If they want a park & ride put it somewhere that isn't a historic downtown.

I'm a bit skeptical about whether this would inspire parking lots to be developed.

Wasn't the WBL park and ride going to be at the Mariana Triangle station? Do we really need this too?

If this was also a district parking ramp with price controls to manage the supply, and it led to local businesses giving up some parking lots for development, it would be a positive. I doubt either will be true though.

Mariana Triangle is a bigger opportunity for development. Apparently Kowalski’s has mentioned that they’d be open to a new store in a mixed use building. Maybe something like Whole Foods on Snelling & Selby.

http://www.startribune.com/rush-line-de ... 498058861/

Oh look NIMBYS

This is why its beneficial to provide renderings of your proposals, and stop assumptions before it gets out of control. I didn't know the parking ramp would include retail on the ground floor.

Looking at the petition again, its difficult to tell if they're just against the parking ramp, or the Rush Line in general. Now I wish there was a feature on change.org to remove my signing. I do stand by my stance that it should be extended two miles north to Bald Eagle, then there wouldn't be all the traffic coming from Hugo, Forest Lake, etc. using the Rush Line. I assume a lot of people using this parking ramp will be coming from the north?

Yeah, I feel quite a bit different knowing the ground floor would have retail.

Found a packet from August about WBL station area planning. Surprisingly I found it on Nextdoor.

https://www.ramseycounty.us/sites/defau ... 180814.pdf

I wonder how realistic the Marina Triangle concept is. That’s a HUGE change.