Highway Transitway Corridor Study

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Vagueperson
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Vagueperson » April 20th, 2020, 1:33 pm

how many people who live in Stillwater work in Stillwater? How many work in MSP?

grrdanko
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby grrdanko » April 20th, 2020, 5:46 pm

how many people who live in Stillwater work in Stillwater? How many work in MSP?
I don't think a significant number of Stillwater residents work at the airport.

Multimodal
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Multimodal » April 21st, 2020, 9:42 am

I won't hold my breath on any development along Highway 36 in Stillwater being car-light and pedestrian-friendly. How about making the existing Downtown Stillwater car-light and pedestrian friendly while the area around Highway 36 is left as is; auto-centric and not friendly towards transit, pedestrians, and bikers.
The City of Stillwater, being quite old, can certainly work on redevelopment to make it more car-light & ped-friendly (not that they are!).

But Washington County’s goal is to grow & develop more tax base in rural areas. Unlike MNDOT, they’re not looking for more highways, they’re looking for BRT. Isn’t this what we say the future is? So why do we complain when governments do this?

Yes, urbanists who live in the city want transit where existing density is—and that of course makes a lot of sense. And it’s sad that transit is so underfunded that cities & suburbs have to compete for the same small pot of transit money. But the goal is more transit everywhere, whether it’s existing urban areas or greenfield suburbs where cities & counties are planning growth.

I suppose an argument can be made for keeping farmland as farmland, and just densifying our existing developed areas. But even that would require BRT (or rail) going out to connect Stillwater to the Twin Cities.

Tcmetro
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Tcmetro » April 21st, 2020, 9:52 am

Hwy 36 is in a predicament like 169 through Eden Prairie a decade and a half ago. My bet is that the three intersections get replaced with one or two interchanges in the future.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby DanPatchToget » April 21st, 2020, 12:18 pm

I won't hold my breath on any development along Highway 36 in Stillwater being car-light and pedestrian-friendly. How about making the existing Downtown Stillwater car-light and pedestrian friendly while the area around Highway 36 is left as is; auto-centric and not friendly towards transit, pedestrians, and bikers.
The City of Stillwater, being quite old, can certainly work on redevelopment to make it more car-light & ped-friendly (not that they are!).

But Washington County’s goal is to grow & develop more tax base in rural areas. Unlike MNDOT, they’re not looking for more highways, they’re looking for BRT. Isn’t this what we say the future is? So why do we complain when governments do this?

Yes, urbanists who live in the city want transit where existing density is—and that of course makes a lot of sense. And it’s sad that transit is so underfunded that cities & suburbs have to compete for the same small pot of transit money. But the goal is more transit everywhere, whether it’s existing urban areas or greenfield suburbs where cities & counties are planning growth.

I suppose an argument can be made for keeping farmland as farmland, and just densifying our existing developed areas. But even that would require BRT (or rail) going out to connect Stillwater to the Twin Cities.
If we try to serve every greenfield suburb with BRT there’s going to be a lot of Red Lines; not actual BRT with low frequency and low ridership plus the fact that it was used as an excuse to widen a road or highway. That’s why I complain about government spending money on studying and building these type of projects.

We should be leaving farmland alone and focus on densifying in already developed areas like Downtown Stillwater, and there’s a nice freight rail corridor going out that way that could be used by regional trains that could also serve small downtown districts in Lake Elmo and Bayport. Again, already developed areas where we should focus on densifying instead of making the expensive mistake of developing as far as the eye can see.

Multimodal
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Multimodal » April 21st, 2020, 1:25 pm

I can buy into the “leave farmland alone”. It’s apparently what’s done in Europe. What they call “suburbs” are more like small nearby cities & villages, out beyond a ring of farmland. I’m OK with that.

So then do some of these distant suburban BRT lines (Stillwater, Lakeville?) essentially become the bus equivalent of intercity rail, if the idea is to densify cities like Stillwater?

DanPatchToget
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby DanPatchToget » April 21st, 2020, 4:04 pm

I can buy into the “leave farmland alone”. It’s apparently what’s done in Europe. What they call “suburbs” are more like small nearby cities & villages, out beyond a ring of farmland. I’m OK with that.

So then do some of these distant suburban BRT lines (Stillwater, Lakeville?) essentially become the bus equivalent of intercity rail, if the idea is to densify cities like Stillwater?
If we're talking buses then it would probably be just regular bus service but with all-day operation in both directions instead of the typical commuter schedule. The distance needed to travel may be the same, but there would be less station stops because one station in a denser area can serve the equivalent of multiple stations in a less dense area. Less stations means less cost and faster travel time.

That's another flaw with these highway BRT proposals. They want fast travel time but because of how spread out most suburbs are there would be a lot of areas with potential ridership skipped. Either serve more stops but increase travel time which means less ridership, or faster travel time with less stops but low ridership because areas have been skipped over. Either way these highway BRT routes won't perform well unless cities stop focusing on developing every acre of land and start focusing on improving existing developed areas; for both Stillwater and Lakeville that's their historic downtowns.

Mdcastle
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Mdcastle » April 23rd, 2020, 6:32 am

There are plans to densify downtown Stillwater, when, where, how much, and if remain to be seen. The legal kerfuffle with taking out the dry cleaners was to gain control of enough land for a second parking ramp in the future. Stillwater views a 5 minute / quarter mile walk from parking to a business to be acceptable for the type of "destination" retail in downtown Stillwater, and this second ramp would put the entire historic downtown within that walkshed (right now Brick Alley and a few businesses on the south end are farther from the existing ramp). At that point some of the riverfront parking and some of the scattered surface lots both along the river and elsewhere can be repurposed.

Despite how that article on West End pointed out that suburbanites here hate parking ramps, I think downtown Stillwater is compelling enough they'd get used if the option of surface parking was removed. Right now there's no reason to park in the ramp when you don't have too, and the cues to get to it are too subtle compared to the sea of surface parking you see on your right coming down the hill.

Every new plan from Stillwater changes what to do about the riverfront parking. In the 1980s it was even suggested to build structured parking there rather than behind the downtown. Later the suggestion was parks on the water side with two story mixed use (as not to overwhelm the historic downtown) on the downtown side of the trail. The current plan suggests keeping one or two rows of parking on the river side (if nothing else it's a handy place to build temporary dikes when needed) and is mute on the downtown side. Perhaps they realize the private lots are move valuable as parking to businesses than their value being sold off for low intensity mixed use. Rather than development, with the 2040 plan the block between Lowell Park and Maple Island is envisioned as a "destination park" with a skating ribbon or something to attract people to downtown in the winter.

The 2040 plan envisions reusing the upper stories of the main street building as residential units. I'm assuming now they're used for offices or store inventory or something. I don't know if there's ADA issues or it's just not economical to remodel and manage a couple units per specific building, or if the stores really need the space.

Tcmetro
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Tcmetro » October 9th, 2020, 7:37 pm

Highway 36 Transit Feasibility Study has a project webpage now. Recommendations from the study expected in Spring 2021, with a public meeting sometime this winter. There is a questionnaire open currently.

https://www.co.washington.mn.us/36Transit

tmart
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby tmart » February 2nd, 2021, 12:29 pm

There's a bill in the legislature to set aside funds for a study of transit on 55. The analysis has to include Highway BRT but doesn't seem obligated to select it, which I guess is an improvement over how the Orange Line went down.

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.p ... n_number=0

I don't have any sense as to whether this could survive the GOP Senate.

Tcmetro
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Tcmetro » February 2nd, 2021, 12:38 pm

Metro Transit recently won a grant from the Regional Solicitation for a limited stop bus route on Hwy 55 between Minneapolis and Plymouth, so that should help inform the study.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby DanPatchToget » February 2nd, 2021, 12:53 pm

Is there really a need for another study when one was already done in 2014? You don't need to spend months and millions of dollars to know that BRT along that corridor would perform not much better than the Red Line. Any development that could attract ridership is too spread out along that corridor for a simple routing on the highway to work, and going on and off the highway to directly serve these places would take too long and make the routing a mess.

Trademark
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Trademark » February 2nd, 2021, 1:11 pm

Once again allowing regional interests to control the direction of transit investments will focus them where they are not needed. This is why we need an additional urban funding district

tmart
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby tmart » February 2nd, 2021, 1:16 pm

Once again allowing regional interests to control the direction of transit investments will focus them where they are not needed. This is why we need an additional urban funding district
There's really nothing a city, county, regional planning council, or urban funding district can do if the state legislature wants to mandate bad ideas.

Trademark
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Trademark » February 2nd, 2021, 3:13 pm

Once again allowing regional interests to control the direction of transit investments will focus them where they are not needed. This is why we need an additional urban funding district
There's really nothing a city, county, regional planning council, or urban funding district can do if the state legislature wants to mandate bad ideas.
It wouldn't stop this project. But money for this project will likely come from the CTIB. Which because it draws from a large area. Will favor these projects time and time again. If we have a separate funding mechanism that is only funded by urban areas. It will allow other projects that don't serve the suburbs to actually be proposed and passed.

xandrex
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby xandrex » February 3rd, 2021, 1:09 pm

CTIB doesn't exist anymore, so it cannot fund this project.

Trademark
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Trademark » February 3rd, 2021, 3:07 pm

CTIB doesn't exist anymore, so it cannot fund this project.
Thanks for informing me. So the revenue from what I understand is just captured by each county for each county, or how does it work?

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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Silophant » February 3rd, 2021, 3:40 pm

Yep. When the CTIB dissolved, Hennepin (and the other counties) gained the ability to replace that 0.25% transit sales tax with a 0.5% tax. So Hennepin is funding the BBLRT and SWLRT extensions and a piece of Riverview, Ramsey is funding most of Riverview, the Rush Line, and some of the Gold Line, and Washington is funding the rest of the Gold Line.
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Tiller
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby Tiller » February 7th, 2021, 1:35 am

BRT on 55 and 394 really wouldn't be that bad. It would give local cities and transit agencies along them the ability to change zoning and add connecting bus service. It creates the capacity for incremental change and improvements.

Those changes won't happen overnight, but this covers a large and important part of the metro, and we gotta densify and retrofit all our existing suburbs.

Also, this won't be like the red line. This actually goes to downtown Minneapolis. Big plus.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Highway Transitway Corridor Study

Postby DanPatchToget » February 7th, 2021, 9:14 am

BRT on 55 and 394 really wouldn't be that bad. It would give local cities and transit agencies along them the ability to change zoning and add connecting bus service. It creates the capacity for incremental change and improvements.

Those changes won't happen overnight, but this covers a large and important part of the metro, and we gotta densify and retrofit all our existing suburbs.

Also, this won't be like the red line. This actually goes to downtown Minneapolis. Big plus.
394 I agree to an extent, though it won't be as simple as routing it down the middle of the freeway for the entire length. 55 on the other hand just doesn't look feasible for that kind of upgrade in transit. I highly doubt cities along that corridor are thinking about densifying along the highway for BRT. There's too many destinations away from the highway to make a simple and straight BRT route work.


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