urbanMSP

Today in hindsight being 20/20:

Every time I drive up 35W under construction, I can't get over how big of a missed opportunity it was to build a 24th Street bridge for cars & buses, not just peds/bikes. I don't think 24th Street would have been thronged with cars or would have harmed any surrounding properties / property values. It would have taken traffic pressure off of Franklin, as well as 26th and 28th. It may have helped the case for returning 26th/28th to 2-way traffic. It's going to be a wonderful, safe route for peds and bikes, no doubt. But allowing cars to cross over 35W on 24th absolutely would have helped with future calming of Franklin Avenue in that same area. That's a real missed opportunity.

Why didn't it happen? Well, cost of course played a role. A car bridge option wasn't insanely more expensive than the bike/ped bridge that's currently getting built, but it was some amount more. However, to do it they would have had to lower the grade of the freeway even more, which would have intensified the already challenging stormwater issues with 35W. That change to lower the highway would have cost more than the actual bridge. I'm not making this stuff up, MnDOT presented it as an option early on, but due to the costs and lack of any local support, it never really went anywhere. Had it been advanced, I don't doubt that there would have been strong opposition from Whittier neighborhood. I bet MIA would have supported it, as long as they weren't impacted by construction. It was dropped from consideration so early, that opposition never even had a chance to form, hence why most probably never even heard that it was considered.

Ah well, it is what it is.

The theory of induced demand suggests that a new bridge might not reduce traffic on Franklin.

Regardless of inducing / reducing driving demand, a full traffic 24th St bridge (with the necessarily lowered freeway) would have made a future cap possible. Since we're not gonna rebuild this chunk of freeway for another 50+ years, that's potentially a big mistake

What percentage of people will be driving cars in 50 years? If a large percentage, what kind of storms and weather events will we be having if the global temperature has risen 2 or more degrees Celsius? What kind of changes will society have to make?

We can’t keep thinking about the future the way we’ve thought about the past.

Regardless of inducing / reducing driving demand, a full traffic 24th St bridge (with the necessarily lowered freeway) would have made a future cap possible. Since we're not gonna rebuild this chunk of freeway for another 50+ years, that's potentially a big mistake

You get a freeway cap,
you get a freeway cap,
and YOU get a freeway cap! :lol

Oprah Winfrey 2020 !

Met Council Transportation Committee agenda from 1/28/19: https://metrocouncil.org/getdoc/c0e22db ... WbBgFUqxKg

Big agenda. Of note, the annual selection of regional solicitation projects are item 5.

Why should this Orange Line connector be a separate route, rather than a BRT routing down Nicollet to Burnsville Center? (slide 15)

Although I've repeatedly posted the same idea for the Orange Line to have a "local tail" running down Nicollet, there are a few pretty obvious reasons why the "Orange Line connector" is a separate route.

1. Metro Transit will operate the Orange Line. The Orange Line connector will be operated by MVTA, as it runs entirely in their service area.
1a. MVTA was already a huge pain in the ass about Metro Transit encroaching into their service area, they wouldn't take kindly to Metro Transit operating local service too. This "connector" proposal appears to replace & enhance existing MVTA Route 426.
2. The spans of service won't be the same, at all. The connector proposal is for "weekday 30-minute service, 15 hours a day." The Orange Line will run every 10 minutes much of the day, 7 days a week. There's no way Metro Transit would agree to run "branch" service on the Orange Line, with only every other or every 3rd bus running the extended route. A huge part of the sales pitch of BRT is simple routes, no short runs or branches.
3. You can bet that the Dakota County Board (and likely Lakeville city council too) is still hoping/pushing for the Orange Line to be extended down 35W to Kenrick P&R, which is clearly a terrible idea. Ugh, the sooner we can formally kill off the "Orange Line Extension" DCRRA (pronounced 'Dick Rah') has been studying, the better. Same goes for the Red Line extensions to Lakeville as well. Someone please save these county commissioners from their terrible ideas.

Even if this connector route is a smashing success, I can't imagine any future where this segment of the route necessitates the same 10-minute frequency, all-day, 7 days/week service that the Orange Line will have.

So is the Orange Line Extension unofficially canned?

Will this bus feeder have the same stop spacing as regular local buses? If that's the case then I suppose it's better than a limited-stop, which means limited-accessibility, Orange Line Extension.

Dakota County's OLX website https://www.orangelineextension.com/ includes a video summary, which says the study is on hold until spring 2019.

As much as I'm opposed to extending the Orange Line BRT to Kenrick P&R, I commend the consultant (Kimley Horn) on the quality/clarity of that video. If I can read between the lines though, it seems like they are finding what is already obvious, that the Route 467 is extremely sufficient and the correct type of service for that demand. If you're already in a car in Lakeville, but need the station-to-station (or all day) service of Orange Line BRT (rather than the direct-to-downtown peak-hour 467), you should just drive to Heart of the City and save the public millions of dollars. Extending the Orange Line to Kenrick P&R would be a massive, irresponsible waste of service hours. The 467 is apparently quite packed on every trip, and since its inception Metro Transit has added more trips at the fringes of peak hours...it would be very unpopular to cut service on the 467 to fund Orange Line trips.

The "problem" with OLX is that the Orange Line is going to be very, very frequent, with a long span of service. There's nowhere near the demand for that service beyond Heart of the City, and Metro Transit is unlikely to consider operating "branches" or "short/long runs" of the Orange Line BRT. Branches and/or short runs are something they *should* consider in the distant future (e.g. every other Orange Line bus goes to Burnsville Center or Kenrick P&R), but not until BRT is "mature" and your non-nerd public fully understands it. At least initially, I think Metro Transit is 100% right in resisting any branches or short-runs on our aBRT and highway BRT lines, since we are selling them to the public as "like LRT". As any transit nerd on here knows, even LRT and subway lines in major cities have branches and short runs, but transit use is much more widespread and "mature" in those cities. People here are still struggling with "do I get on the Blue Line or the Green Line" downtown, because transit is very much still a new thing to the vast majority of Minnesotans.

I think that the redevelopment plan the city is pushing for the Burnsville Center will bring the Orange line down there. It's a more logical end of line than Heart of the City and can better facilitate local bus transfers.

I kinda like the connecting Orange line bus idea. I'm sure I might annoy people by mentioning this but, I kinda wish Nicollet Ave connected over the river with a bus way, pedestrian, and bike lanes. having the fast Orange line is important for commuters, but having a local bus line that connects downtown, uptown, heart of burnsville, and burnsville center would be pretty cool. Plus making it biking friendly for travelers from Burnsville center to have a really direct shot into Minneapolis would be pretty cool. I know there's not much density down there outside of the 694/494 belt, but be nice to see investment into a transit network where development can be designed in a way for better density.

Some BRT only ramps and guideway from the freeway around Cliff Ave over to Nicollet north of Hwy 13 would be ideal. Avoid the cloverleaf, aim straight south for Heart of the City.

Long ago there were plans for direct access to/from the center-running HOV lanes on 35W near Hwy 13. Nothing ever came from that plan. Many other cities with HOV/HOT lanes seem to do much better at direct access to/from center-running or reversible lanes. We're now just getting direct access from these lanes into the heart of our CBD, three decades after HOV lanes were built on I-35W.

Let me see if I can dig up any of these old plans. Or I bet @mdcastle might have them too.

Funding Celebration and Groundbreaking Ceremony at Knox Avenue P&R (Best Buy HQ).
Wednesday July 17 at 10:00am
http://metroorangeline.cmail19.com/t/Vi ... 32AAFB68BF

In case anyone plans to go: there will be orange foods and beverages provided. But bring your own Cheetos, those were not allowed because "the politicians might get Cheeto dust on their suits".

Just heard that the 4th Avenue and 10th Street to I-35W southbound ramp is opening today 2 years ahead of schedule.
Didn't have a chance to get the full story this morning so anyone know more detail about it and how it effects the rest of the project?

I’ve wondered if these ramps being out have been one of the construction projects the city have as excuses for why box blocking has been so bad this year.

Just heard that the 4th Avenue and 10th Street to I-35W southbound ramp is opening today 2 years ahead of schedule.
Didn't have a chance to get the full story this morning so anyone know more detail about it and how it effects the rest of the project?

http://www.startribune.com/key-ramp-to- ... 561313712/

Don't normally recommend tv news, but this one has comments from some bozo who biked over to check out the pedestrian bring that's supposed to open ahead of schedule too: https://www.fox9.com/news/ramp-from-dow ... f-schedule

Nice man!