Red Rock Corridor

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
Tcmetro
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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » December 14th, 2013, 10:23 am

The Draft Alternatives Analysis Update was presented at the Dec. 12th meeting. The implementation of the Red Rock corridor will follow three stages. The first will be to consider expansion of express bus service to off-peak hours, to consider a new Newport-Minneapolis express bus, to consider improvements to the Lower Afton Road park and ride and to Highway 61 shoulders, and to work on advancing the BRT plan. Also land use changes will be considered, as well as an expansion of the transit taxing district to Hastings. Stage 2 will advance certain BRT elements, such as ticket machines and bus only shoulders. Stage 3 would be the actual BRT service and other improvements to expand peak hour capacity (I suppose this is included so as to not chuck out the idea of commuter rail in the corridor.)

http://redrockrail.org/pdf/December%201 ... Agenda.pdf

Tcmetro
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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » January 29th, 2014, 8:11 pm

Red Rock held a public hearing on their implementation plan at the last meeting on January 23rd, video and agenda available:

http://swctc.granicus.com/AgendaViewer. ... ip_id=4726

mattaudio
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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » April 9th, 2014, 2:06 pm


David Greene
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Re: Red Rock

Postby David Greene » April 9th, 2014, 2:38 pm

Huh. I was greatly surprised to find out that this is something I might actually use on occasion.

mattaudio
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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » April 9th, 2014, 2:49 pm

Indeed. After the underwhelming results of Northstar, I'm curious what the value proposition would look like to reimagine these projects as regional connectors rather than express buses on rails. We could have a network of regional trains under the Northstar brand, connecting places like St. Cloud, Hudson/Menominee/Eau Claire, Shakopee/St. Peter/Mankato, Northfield/Faribault/Owatonna with trains running all day at 2-4 hour frequencies.

The current commuter rail concept spends a lot of money on rolling stock and labor that's used only during morning and afternoon rushes. And FRA rules lead us to have big trains with locomotives rather than smaller DMUs that would be much more efficient to operate.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby FISHMANPET » April 9th, 2014, 3:29 pm

I would hope that we don't do anything commuter/regional railroad related until we get new FRA crash standards that allow multiple units (http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/modern- ... s-2015-fra) because I think multiple units will drastically change the equations for commuter and regional rail.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » April 9th, 2014, 3:49 pm

Yep! We don't have a lot of existing urban rail with good geometry, grade separation, and other features to build plug-and-play commuter/suburban service - but I'm hoping this will be a game changer for the few lines we have and for regional connectivity.

In Chicago, home to tons and tons and tons of straight, grade separated, double+ tracked freight roads through neighborhoods, this should also provide an opportunity for Metra to build out new routes. And hopefully electrify existing high-use routes over time. Build some infill stations, possibly set up some interlining downtown, and they'd have a very nice S-Bahn type setup to ease the El crunch. FRA reform!

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby twincitizen » December 3rd, 2014, 8:18 am

Newport Transit Station is now open: http://finance-commerce.com/transit/201 ... ng-monday/
Route 364 express buses to downtown St. Paul began serving the transit station on Monday with three trips in the weekday morning and afternoon peak periods. The trip is expected to take 24 minutes. The new transit station is expected to alleviate some capacity issues at the Lower Afton Road park-and-ride on Highway 61 in St. Paul.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby mulad » December 3rd, 2014, 9:05 am

Kind of interesting how the route wends its way through St. Paul Park and Newport -- it looks like the park-and-ride is the last stop before the bus gets on US-61 and heads into downtown: https://www.metrotransit.org/imap/map.aspx?route=364

Hmm. I guess other than the 364, which has three daily peak-direction round-trips, the only other game in town for that area is the 361, which has five peak-direction round trips and one reverse-commute round trip per day.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby Tcmetro » July 17th, 2015, 10:56 am

The latest iteration of the neverending planning process for the Red Rock Corridor supposedly will include a BRT alternative which uses local streets as opposed to Highway 61. (all the way at the end of the PDF)

http://www.redrockcorridor.com/wp-conte ... Agenda.pdf

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby Tcmetro » October 12th, 2015, 7:26 am

http://www.redrockcorridor.com/wp-conte ... RAFT-2.pdf

There are 2 alternatives now. Both operate along the Gateway BRT to Highway 61 with stops at Lower Afton and Newport. Alternative 1 uses Hwy. 61 to access Hastings with stops near 70th St and Jamaica Ave. Alternative 2 uses local streets south of Glen Rd. with stops at 70th, 80th, and Jamaica as well as a local tail into Hastings, ending at the Dakota County offices.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby EOst » October 12th, 2015, 8:02 am

Why would Alternative 1 not stop at the St. Paul Gateway stations? That seems like a really weird choice.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby grant1simons2 » November 21st, 2015, 11:48 am

They're looking for public input on which route we'd prefer

Here they are: http://www.redrockcorridor.com/wp-conte ... RAFT-2.pdf

Respond here: http://www.redrockcorridor.com/contact-us/

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby EOst » November 21st, 2015, 11:56 am

I don't understand why only Alternative #2 would stop at the Gold Line stations (Mounds, Earl, Etna). Giving those stations a 5-minute frequency would do a lot to make them more useful.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby grant1simons2 » January 1st, 2016, 5:20 pm


David Greene
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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby David Greene » January 1st, 2016, 8:54 pm

Conveniently goes right to the county offices. Hmm.

I really wonder if that's the right choice. Certainly a station at 80th is a good idea but that could be done on-line as the economic center is not far from 61. Alternative 2 seems reminiscent of the Red Line's Cedar Grove debacle.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby mattaudio » January 1st, 2016, 9:59 pm

Another thing... Lower Afton Road station needs to be cut. There's absolutely ZERO land use to serve there. Literally the only thing there is a ~90 space Park and Ride. But anyone driving to this P&R could just drive north to a Gold Line BRT P&R instead, creating more demand for service on that corridor.

And then you'd have no stations on the Red Rock between Etna St (I-94) and Newport (I-494). In which case I'd be curious to see the time difference routing this down Hwy 52 to 494 to 61. So, I G-Map'd that.

From Red Rock Crossing in Newport (the TOD/station site) to Red's Savoy Pizza at Lafayette/7th (where the lines would diverge).... Google says it is 1 mile LONGER yet 1 minute SHORTER to use 52/494 rather than 61.

You'd then have the opportunity to serve actual existing nodes along 52/494 today, as easy as exiting through a diamond interchange. Stations at Chavez/Concord, Wentworth, 5th/7th, etc.

But even if that *doesn't* happen (and I know it won't), cut Lower Afton Road.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby mulad » January 2nd, 2016, 10:24 am

I don't think there's anything particularly unusual about the line ending at the Dakota County offices -- there's a significant but very sprawly commercial strip along MN-55, and there's a Target, Walmart, and Cub Foods relatively close to that complex (among a smattering of other things). If we were still looking at Red Rock as a train corridor, a connecting bus circulator out this direction would make a lot of sense. Well, in my mind, it makes sense for someone to run a circulator bus within Hastings regardless of how/when/where the Red Rock service ever gets going.

This is my general problem with the Red Rock and Gateway projects, not to mention some of the other "corridor" projects we've had over the years -- little or no discussion of the local needs for transit service, assuming that somehow a single bus or train service will be transformative for a whole sector of the metro area. These routes make the most sense as a mid- to upper-tier services in the regional transit hierarchy, but when there isn't any talk of feeder/branching services below them, I get very frustrated.

Here are the top five destinations for commuters in cities along the Red Rock corridor, plus their counts and percentages of the cities' working populations as according to the Census's OnTheMap tool (2013 data):
  • Hastings: Hastings (3,023 / 25.9%), St. Paul (1,051 / 9.0%), Minneapolis (691 / 5.9%), Eagan (509 / 4.4%), Rosemount (348 / 3.0%)
  • Cottage Grove: St. Paul (3,582 / 19.4%), Cottage Grove (1,849 / 10.0%), Minneapolis (1,700 / 9.2%), Woodbury (1,143 / 6.2%), Eagan (776 / 4.2%)
  • St. Paul Park: St. Paul (533 / 19.9%), Cottage Grove (248 / 9.3%), Minneapolis (220 / 8.2%), Woodbury (150 / 5.6%), Eagan (120 / 4.5%)
  • Newport: St. Paul (295 / 19.1%), Minneapolis (155 / 10.0%), Woodbury (90 / 5.8%), Cottage Grove (79 / 5.1%), Bloomington (73 / 4.7%)
Getting to St. Paul is clearly important, since it's the top destination for commuters in 3 out of 4 cities, and ranks second for the remaining one. But local connectivity within Hastings is important, and Cottage Grove needs service within its borders as well as to its immediate neighbors -- North/south links between Cottage Grove and Woodbury seem like a good idea to me too, even though they involve driving through two miles of undeveloped area on the south side of Woodbury.

But this all goes to prove how transit planning needs to be integrated into the process of developing new areas within suburbs. If it's not considered, the density is often too low and there aren't good straight routes between important nodes. It wouldn't be hard to design a decent grid of routes over in this area, but there's a big lack of decent bike/pedestrian infrastructure to complement it.

Tcmetro
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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby Tcmetro » September 18th, 2016, 1:04 pm

Red Rock Corridor Sept meeting agenda includes a draft version of the Implementation Plan that will go to public hearing this fall.

http://www.redrockcorridor.com/wp-conte ... Packet.pdf

Highlights:
- Near term: 2016-2020, work with Metro Transit to establish Route 363, which would provide all-day service between St. Paul, Newport, St. Paul Park and Cottage Grove.

- Long term: 2020-2040. When Rt. 363 reaches 25 passengers per in-service hour, replace with BRT service.

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Re: Red Rock Corridor

Postby grrdanko » September 19th, 2016, 11:22 am


- Long term: 2020-2040. When Rt. 363 reaches 25 passengers per in-service hour, replace with BRT service.
25 passengers an hour? We need to enhance service where people are and where they want to go. What are they thinking?


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