Downtown-to-Downtown Rail Capacity Study

[mamundsen]

Wow! 23 min would allow for 60 min frequency. Leave Target Field on the hour. Leave SPUD on the 30s. I think this could be useful. St Paul would surely love it!

[ProspectPete]

Could someone map that out for me? It would leave target field, cross nicolet island and hang a right until pierce butler, then across 94 and ayd mill road to shepard to downtown? Is that the basic route?
I wonder if a stop at the U of MN would be possible.

[Silophant]

I think that's the route it took, yeah. I would think a platform pretty similar to Target Field Station would be doable at the edge of the Ski-U-Mah lot, across 23rd from the new Heart Institute. As long as the trains remain relatively infrequent, you could even get away with a single side platform serving both directions of travel, I would think.

However, I think a consistent time of 23 minutes is probably unrealistic for this route, given the various train yards it passes through and BNSF's known willingness to screw over passenger service to keep the oil trains on schedule. I know the yards run 24-7, but I still assume Sunday evenings are more lightly trafficked than, say, Monday mornings.

[kellonathan]

Could someone map that out for me? It would leave target field, cross nicolet island and hang a right until pierce butler, then across 94 and ayd mill road to shepard to downtown? Is that the basic route?
I wonder if a stop at the U of MN would be possible.

I think you are talking about MN Commercial Railway route (the current Amtrak route) through the old Amtrak Midway station.

The route we took on Sep 21 (Sun) was pretty straight. Here are some details (thanks to Google tracking my movement):
Union Depot(9:19pm) -> enter BNSF Midway Subdivision thru wye (9:21pm, crossing 7th St) -> pass Jackson St (9:24pm) -> pass Midway Yard (9:31pm, right south of Energy Park Dr around Raymond Ave) -> enter BNSF Wayzata Subdivision at Mpls Junct. (9:38pm) -> cross Nicollet Island (9:40pm) -> Target Field (9:42pm)

Ideally, I can imagine having a stop right east of 15th Ave SE in Dinkytown and another stop at Snelling Ave.

I thanked an official from MetroTransit as I get off the train, saying "This is great! We should do this regularly, like much more often." He smiled back at me right away. But there was no other word except "thank you" and all I got was a weak handshake.

[froggie]

Silophant's spot on. That 23 minutes was likely an outlier, and the typical travel time is probably a bit longer than that. If you were to attempt 60-minute headways with a single trainset like mamundsen suggests, it would leave very little time to get the train "turned around and ready", and any potential delay would cascade right down the schedule.

60-minute headways are possible...but only with two trainsets. IMO, it's not worth it for a standalone service...especially when HOV or HOT lanes on 94 could be done at less cost than what BNSF would likely demand.

Figuring out a way to extend Northstar to SPUD or getting the Empire Builder a 2nd train and ability to stop in Minneapolis would be more worthwhile than this.

[mattaudio]

^Correct. Let's figure out how to get more regional/intercity trains, and make sure they all serve both Mpls and SPUD.

[mulad]

What do you guys mean by outlier? kellonathan's timings give the end-to-end speed an average of 30 mph, fairly flat speed across the run aside from getting to 40 mph or so between Jackson Street and the Minnesota Commercial yard. I bet a lot of the individual segments could be improved by 10-20 mph, and the end-to-end time by 5-10 mph, which would put end-to-end time in the 17-20 minute range.

Now, congestion would be an issue that needs addressing, so I assume that's what you meant. Some junctions would need improvement, some track would probably need to be added, and I think it would be good to look at moving at least one of the intermodal (container/trailer-on-flatcar) facilities that currently exist along the route to other corridors. I don't really know how feasible any of that is, but of course that's why there's a study going on.

[at40man]

^Correct. Let's figure out how to get more regional/intercity trains, and make sure they all serve both Mpls and SPUD.

Whether people like to admit it or not, SPUD is the hub and focal point for rail travel in the state -- it contains more future expansion possibilities, far greater capacity, a $250 million price tag, and every railroad in the state uses SPUD as the starting place for counting miles. I don't think it will be feasible to route every train through both cities.

If anything, Northstar should stop at SPUD before proceeding to Target Field Station. The stub and land-locked nature of TFS make it far too limited to be anything other than a terminus.

[MNdible]

Ah, this old chestnut.

Let's allow which station people want to board at be the deciding factor, not which location has a fancy old building. Just because we blew a quarter billion of our limited transit dollars on SPUD doesn't mean that we should force people to use it, convenience and accessibility be damned.

[HiawathaGuy]

If anything, Northstar should stop at SPUD before proceeding to Target Field Station. The stub and land-locked nature of TFS make it far too limited to be anything other than a terminus.

Too bad there's that pesky bit about the vast majority of those riding Northstar into the cities are ultimately going to Minneapolis...

[Silophant]

Too bad there's that pesky bit about Northstar coming from the west! You'd quickly lose all the Minneapolis-bound riders when you told them that they'd be passing within a mile or so of TFS, continuing 25 minutes beyond it, then backtracking to TFS.

I suspect at40man may have been talking about NLX, though, in which case I totally agree. It should hit both downtown stations, and in that case it absolutely makes more sense to hit SPUD first, since it doesn't involve a turnaround.

[Nick]

Ah, this old chestnut.

Let's allow which station people want to board at be the deciding factor, not which location has a fancy old building. Just because we blew a quarter billion of our limited transit dollars on SPUD doesn't mean that we should force people to use it, convenience and accessibility be damned.

Who are you and what have you done with our MNdible?

[illman00]

Just pave a road along the rail corridor and drive a bus down it!

[xandrex]

^Correct. Let's figure out how to get more regional/intercity trains, and make sure they all serve both Mpls and SPUD.

Whether people like to admit it or not, SPUD is the hub and focal point for rail travel in the state -- it contains more future expansion possibilities, far greater capacity, a $250 million price tag, and every railroad in the state uses SPUD as the starting place for counting miles. I don't think it will be feasible to route every train through both cities.

If anything, Northstar should stop at SPUD before proceeding to Target Field Station. The stub and land-locked nature of TFS make it far too limited to be anything other than a terminus.

If I remember correctly (and I could be totally off...someone please tell me), the west metro makes up about 2/3 of the entire population of the area. In what world does it make sense to have the hub 9 miles away in a much less populated area (east metro overall, not specifically St. Paul).

I've frankly never bought into the idea that someone wanting to head to Duluth or Chicago from Minneapolis or nearby is going bus (or drive) to the light rail downtown, take that to St. Paul, then transfer an intercity train. At that point, I may as well drive...or fly.

[mattaudio]

And through-routing is the reason why we don't need to choose one hub or another. We can serve both nodes, in many cases with the trackage we have today. Down the line, if it was successful, we would need to figure out how to route trains from the north (BNSF Hinckley / Staples subs primarily). Of course I have my tunnel idea hashed out in other threads, or there's other possibilities discussed on here as well (rehab the Monticello spur and bridge the river to connect back into the Staples sub). Or we could just reverse the trains that approach Target Field from the north, so they can head over to SPUD. The rest, trains approaching Mpls from the south/west, and trains approaching SPUD from either direction, should be able to through-route directly to the other station.

[mulad]

I made a response over on the NLX thread: https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18& ... 008#p69008

[Chava]

Interestingly enough, a similar idea appeared in the Chicago news. http://www.redeyechicago.com/news/cta/c ... 9002.story

Looks to be related to this concept that would tie in(if it happened):http://www.midwesthsr.org/crossrail-chicago

[Tcmetro]

The new idea of the express train from O'Hare to Downtown Chicago is much better than the old one, which was to build bypass tracks around the existing Blue Line stations for some x-billion dollars. They even sunk almost $250 million into a downtown terminal that would provide check-in services (I think HK is the only city in the world that manages such an operation) for both O'Hare and Midway and is now sitting unused.

The new plan is similar to the Union-Pearson express train in Toronto. The difference is that the Toronto train will operate directly to the terminal, whereas the Chicago proposal will require a transfer to the inter-terminal shuttle train from a remote parking lot. Taking that into account, as well as the fact that this train will serve Union Station instead of the central loop, door-to-door times will probably be the same between such an express train and the Blue Line.

If the effort is made to have stops directly at Terminals 1/2/3 and at Terminal 5, and provide a HSR stop, then perhaps such a project will be quite useful.

[mattaudio]

So this will use the same tracks as the existing Metra station that is labeled O'Hare but basically doesn't get you to the airport or even the people mover?

[Tcmetro]

So this will use the same tracks as the existing Metra station that is labeled O'Hare but basically doesn't get you to the airport or even the people mover?

AFAIK, that's basically what this new plan is, an express Metra from the "O'Hare" station to Union Station. This is the HSR dream:

http://www.midwesthsr.org/sites/default ... _10_17.pdf

EDIT: Looks like there is a webpage for this specific O'Hare train proposal:

http://oharedirect.org/index.shtml