Riverview Corridor Streetcar

[mamundsen]

That is so crazy. Downtown I can't hear them 2 blocks away.

[intercomnut]

That is so crazy. Downtown I can't hear them 2 blocks away.

Probably because there's more ambient noise in Downtown.

Source: Also live Downtown.

[HiawathaGuy]

That is so crazy. Downtown I can't hear them 2 blocks away.

Probably because there's more ambient noise in Downtown.

Source: Also live Downtown.

Agreed. When the wind direction is good, I can hear the train horns south of the airport on 34th Ave S. I can also hear the 54th Street gate bells at our house near 50th often, as well as the 46th Street gate bells. They used to be a way of knowing how close the train was to 50th for me (before real time). So I could see the sound carrying a bit across the river to St. Paul - given "good" conditions.

[MN Fats]

Exactly, conditions had to be right -- it was only audible on quiet nights during the summer.

[BigIdeasGuy]

Yeah, I think that's the most straightforward idea on the east end of downtown. I suspect the one eastbound lane of 4th would need to be removed/blocked in order for it to work, and the fancy entrance in front of the LRT maintenance building would probably need to be trimmed back, but I think the geometry should work.

To me both are very doable. The last time they did a traffic study was in 2008, so well before the Green Line construction, but the daily traffic count was 1900. I would venture a guess that number has dropped since then as well so it wouldn't be surprising if closing the eastbound lane would result in less than 750 cars being rerouted daily.

And trimming back the fancy entrance itself wouldn't be difficult but there is about a 4 foot drop in elevation between 4th and Prince St. That could be large issue but I don't think it would be unsolvable.

[mulad]

More meetings announced for January:

January 11, 2016
Union Depot – Red Cap Room
214 East 4th Street, Saint Paul
4:00-6:00 pm
Presentation at 4:30 pm

January 12, 2016
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church
700 Snelling Ave., Saint Paul
5:00-7:00 pm
Presentation at 5:30 pm

January 13, 2016
Nova Classical Academy
1455 Victoria Way West, Saint Paul
5:30-7:30 pm
Presentation at 6:00 pm

[twincitizen]

What exactly is this project team doing at this point? What value do these meetings have?
(That said, I plan to attend one since I missed the last round, BUT...)

Here we are now 14 months or so in, and they just got around to eliminating commuter rail and freeway BRT from the universe of alternatives...something that could've been done in the first month or two. I feel like the planners (and politicians) at Ramsey County are stuck in a holding pattern, and they now know they're stuck, and they are just going to "public process" the hell out of this thing until more firm engineering work is done on the river crossing.

Whenever I think about this project, I keep coming back to Peter McLaughlin's comment in MinnPost a month ago:

If an alignment requires a new bridge over the river, for example, that would likely make it unaffordable. So why, he asked, should it stay on the table? Rogers said that since there has been no engineering work on any alignment, there is no basis yet to make decisions about cost. But Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin said it wasn’t a good idea to make a significant decision on alignment, which is expected to happen sometime next summer, without knowing how to cross the river. The staff and consultants have not yet examined whether the existing bridges can carry the load of light rail or streetcar.

“If there’s something that’s gonna blow this thing up, it’s getting across the Mississippi River,” McLaughlin said. “We could do a tremendous amount of work and then run into this dead end in terms of how you get across the river ... I don’t know how you have a locally preferred alternative before you have some notion if your bridge option actually works.”

April Manlapaz, the project manager for engineering consultant AECOM, said there will be more information available on bridges before the committee makes final recommendations on route and mode. For example, she said staff will look at existing bridge inspection reports to assess whether they can bear the weight of light rail or streetcars. If not, the committee will have an estimate of the costs to enhance the bridges available before the locally preferred alternative is chosen.

It really seems to me that Ramsey County should have FIRST performed a bridge analysis study, THEN opened the full-blown Alternatives Analysis process. Because to me it sounds like there will be zero news over the next six months, despite the fact that they are in the middle of the damn AA, burning money (paying additional staff, holding meetings, etc.)

[VacantLuxuries]

Is it cynical to think that the bridge question was pushed as far back as possible to prevent the project from meeting a premature end, to keep salaries coming for the planners?

[mattaudio]

And will the recent redecking of the Hwy 5 (Fort Road) Bridge play into it? Was that a Chapter 152 project? Seems like a lost opportunity to work together with rail planning on that bridge.

[twincitizen]

On the first page of this thread, you'll find news articles from Jan. 2014 announcing the AA process, stating the cost (~$1.5MM) and time frame (18 months*). So yeah I do think maybe it is a bit cynical to assume impropriety on the part of the planners. Perhaps it's a lack of having proper systems in place or something, but it just really seems there should have been a "pre-AA" step to specifically get the ball rolling on the river crossing bridge stuff, which was such an obvious major question to resolve for this project.

*Note: the 18-month study didn't actually begin until fall 2014 I think (September best I can tell), so it will come to a close next spring/summer. The article from Jan. 2014 was merely announcing it, then it went out for bid, etc. That said, it does seem like they'll go well beyond 18 months, probably closer to 2 years.

EDIT: And to tie into matt's post, yeah you would think MNDOT would come away from that complete re-decking project with SOME useful information relevant to the Riverview project...But I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Nick]

I personally can't think of any other regional transit projects where major engineering challenges were left out of the Alternatives Analysis.

[froggie]

And will the recent redecking of the Hwy 5 (Fort Road) Bridge play into it? Was that a Chapter 152 project?

Yes it was.

[twincitizen]

I personally can't think of any other regional transit projects where major engineering challenges were left out of the Alternatives Analysis.

Point taken, sort of. Peter McLaughlin's comments were definitely dripping with irony given the whole Kenilworth situation (i.e. choosing an alignment before knowing if freight relocation was actually feasible, based on 1% engineering).

However, this is clearly not the exact same situation, because for SW it clearly felt like Kenilworth was always the preferred alignment of elected officials, and favored by the FTA rules of the time, etc. Here, with Riverview, it is not super clear what the "politically desired" alignment is, because they have so many fish to fry: 7th Street vs. rail corridor (and which parts), how to get through downtown, replicate the 54 straight up or detour to serve the Ford site, which river crossing, etc.

[seanrichardryan]

I'd thought the Ford/ 46th st bridge would be fine to handle the weight of streetcars, since it had in the past. Then I actually looked. The 1948 TC Lines no.1071 operating in SanFran is 37,000lbs. A modern Siemens S70 tram is 96,500 lbs AW0.

[Tiller]

http://kstp.com/news/stories/s4013996.shtml?cat=1

Gotta love yellow journalism. Of course you can't have a "downtown experience" without parking.

[mulad]

Since the river crossings are such a big question, I did a quick search for info on the Washington Avenue Bridge retrofit to support the Green Line. According to the Met Council, it cost $21 million ($2 million under-budget) and saved the overall project $80 to $100 million vs. completely replacing the bridge. It also made the bridge non-fracture-critical and extended the lifespan by 75 years.

The Highway 5 bridge is a different design, so I couldn't tell you whether it could be upgraded/modified for that amount of cash, but it gives some guidance for setting some lower and upper bounds on the cost.

[mulad]

Also, I'm sure many of you have seen these, but there were three posts about Riverview this past week on the streets.mn blog. They have different perspectives and are worth a look:

https://streets.mn/2016/01/26/the-riverv ... in-cities/
https://streets.mn/2016/01/27/five-light ... -corridor/
https://streets.mn/2016/01/30/route-54-r ... e-airport/

[grant1simons2]

Agenda packet for PAC meeting tomorrow:

http://riverviewcorridor.com/wp-content ... Packet.pdf

They removed PRT, Vintage trolleys, Commuter rail and Highway BRT from the scope.

[Silophant]

Poor Bob "Again" Carney.

[VacantLuxuries]

Really don't get why DMUs are still in the mix.