Green Line / Central Corridor construction thread (archive)

[min-chi-cbus]

What I find a bit odd is that although light rail has been a home run in terms of beating expectations in the Twin Cities, there are still only 2 (in 2 years) lines that are for sure going to be built and operating here, while Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Diego, and freaking Dallas or Charlotte, are expanding their systems at an even faster pace but with less fanfare (with the exception of Portland and perhaps San Diego). The Twin Cities makes sense as a place for rail mass transit because it has a denser urban core and meaningful destinations to connect to. Cities like Dallas make absolutely no sense to me as examples of cities where LRT can work. It isn't dense enough and the culture there is extremely car-oriented and very anti-city. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, the cities themselves are often times more popular than their suburbs (kind of like NYC, Chicago, Seattle or Portland). I can't say the same for many other places with expansive LRT systems.

Are we being slighted? Are we slighting ourselves? It seems like that to get the attention of the Federal government you either have to be burning on fire or drowning, or you have to be growing so out-of-control fast that you need government intervention and support to keep your city from choking on itself. Minneapolis-St. Paul will hopefully never be either!

[lordmoke]

Article from F&C with some interesting development tidbits. I remember someone was mentioning the Old Home building earlier, though it might have been in another thread.

http://finance-commerce.com/2012/10/wor ... -corridor/

[seanrichardryan]

Oh yeah, 100 units and some commercial space. Read that on Minnpost.

http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2012/ ... -shot-hope

[Nick]

Random hypothetical question: It doesn't appear to be a problem yet, but say demand for housing along University really takes off once the trains start rolling, and we start to run into problems with the down-zoning St. Paul did along some of the line. Wouldn't the Met Council have grounds to take them to court like they did with Lake Elmo and their refusal to allow development along I-94? The Green Line is a regional asset and shouldn't be held back by silly under zoning. This obviously isn't at all an issue yet but it could be in the near future, thoughts?

[woofner]

Wouldn't the Met Council have grounds to take them to court like they did with Lake Elmo and their refusal to allow development along I-94?

Not unless the Met Council's land use plan became much more specific than it is. The Lake Elmo lawsuit was due to the municipality's refusal to incorporate into its comprehensive plan the growth there that the Met Council had planned for in its regional land use plan. My understanding is that the Met Council assigns growth targets to municipalities but does not specify where that growth will go as long as it's within the MUSA line. So St Paul is assigned so much growth but the Met Council doesn't even necessarily say it has to be along Central Corridor, much less evenly distributed along it (although there are regional policies about clustering growth along transitways of course, but they're pretty toothless).

The other piece is that, while the zoning on the eastern half of University is generally lower that it should be, the Met Council's density definitions are generally low as well. I should dig through the plan to find how ridiculously low they are, but if I remember right, anything over 15-20 units per acre was considered very high density. So the lower TN districts likely fit that definition, although as I mentioned above, the Met Council does not get into which parcel should actually get which zoning.

[MNdible]

I'd be interested to see how Minneapolis's version of the charts on page 163 of that document would compare.

Actually, looking at it more closely -- are those charts correct? Does San Diego really have five times the system ridership of Metro Transit? 400 million vs. 80 million?

[spectre000]

Random hypothetical question: It doesn't appear to be a problem yet, but say demand for housing along University really takes off once the trains start rolling, and we start to run into problems with the down-zoning St. Paul did along some of the line. Wouldn't the Met Council have grounds to take them to court like they did with Lake Elmo and their refusal to allow development along I-94? The Green Line is a regional asset and shouldn't be held back by silly under zoning. This obviously isn't at all an issue yet but it could be in the near future, thoughts?

I don't think this will become a problem for a long time. But it'd be a fun problem to have.

Here are links to the new proposed zoning along University Ave for those who haven't seen them. As you can see there is still a ton of TN-4 zoning (up to 10 stories) along the route. There was really only a little down zoning from T3 (6 stories) to T2 (3-4 stories), and a small parcel of industrial preserved. But it still has a ton of TN-4/3. The eastern (Frogtown) half won't be as tall or dense, but that's the way the neighborhood wants it.

The new zoning areas.
http://www.stpaul.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/17126

A link to a document showing what was originally proposed, and downsized.
http://www.stpaul.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/16281

[Andrew_F]

I'd be interested to see how Minneapolis's version of the charts on page 163 of that document would compare.

Actually, looking at it more closely -- are those charts correct? Does San Diego really have five times the system ridership of Metro Transit? 400 million vs. 80 million?

Wikipedia shows San Diego at 82 million.

I made this graph in 2010, but I doubt too much has changed since:

EDIT: Open in a new tab to see the whole thing, including the key.

EDIT 2: It appears I've screwed up the page formatting with the large graph. Linked: US Cities by Daily Transit Ridership & Mode, 2010

[aguaman]

What I find a bit odd is that although light rail has been a home run in terms of beating expectations in the Twin Cities, there are still only 2 (in 2 years) lines that are for sure going to be built and operating here, while Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Diego, and freaking Dallas or Charlotte, are expanding their systems at an even faster pace but with less fanfare (with the exception of Portland and perhaps San Diego). The Twin Cities makes sense as a place for rail mass transit because it has a denser urban core and meaningful destinations to connect to. Cities like Dallas make absolutely no sense to me as examples of cities where LRT can work. It isn't dense enough and the culture there is extremely car-oriented and very anti-city. In Minneapolis-St. Paul, the cities themselves are often times more popular than their suburbs (kind of like NYC, Chicago, Seattle or Portland). I can't say the same for many other places with expansive LRT systems.

Are we being slighted? Are we slighting ourselves? It seems like that to get the attention of the Federal government you either have to be burning on fire or drowning, or you have to be growing so out-of-control fast that you need government intervention and support to keep your city from choking on itself. Minneapolis-St. Paul will hopefully never be either!

It's us (Minnesota) not FTA or FRA (Federal govt) that is the cause of the slow adoption of the 21st century transportation system in the area. Back when I was researching LRT nationwide, I found that this region was working super slow compared to all other metro areas in building a second and third LRT line; most second lines were completed in 5 years or less after a first line and ours will be a decade. And of course I think we all know that we got a super late start on the first line too. Actually we were last of the major cities to implement rail transit and smaller cities were (and still are) passing us by in rail system development. The feds provide financing to whichever metro area can provide a match (and comply with regulation) regardless of hardship and since we have a problem here with coming up with a match, we cannot develop the rail transit backbone like our other peers have done and are continuing to do.

[woofner]

Does San Diego really have five times the system ridership of Metro Transit? 400 million vs. 80 million?

The 400m refers to annual passenger miles, while the 80m refers to annual rides. Comparable data for MSP can be found on the NTD. It looks like the stat is roughly equivalent for the two systems - excluding demand response modes (i.e. dial-a-rides), San Diego had 464m to MSP's 449m (interestingly, MSP surpasses San Diego by 1m when demand response is included).

Looks like the historical data comes from this database. I put together these charts using data from the web app. The first uses passenger miles, the metric used in the paper. The second is ridership.

MT Annual Passenger Miles by Mode 1984-2010.jpg

MT Annual Passenger Trips by Mode 1984-2010.jpg

These charts are a nice illustration of why I have such hostility towards the Interchange project.

[Nathan]

This is happening tonight in case anyone isn't working/wants something to do!

http://www.twincities.com/stpaul/ci_218 ... :0|order:2

Documentary of the History of Uni Ave

[mattaudio]

Yikes. $50 to see the premiere.

One of the bloggers/forum people had created google map that showed the wholesale bulldozing that happened between the downtowns in the Rondo/94 corridor. Anyone remember who that was or what the link was? It was really astounding to see how much had been cleared.

[mulad]

Yeah, I made one for the I-94 corridor between the downtowns. It's not very scientific, mostly just looking at what has changed between old aerial photos and what appears on Google Maps now. Some of the Midway shopping center area used to be rail-centric stuff (both freight and streetcar) for instance, though that's also where the Montgomery Wards was. Due to the idiosyncratic logic, some areas could be added or removed if someone wanted to get more specific about it, but this gives a general picture:



link

Regarding the documentary, the film's webpage says there will be three free public screenings next month.

[aguaman]

Wikipedia shows San Diego at 82 million.

I made this graph in 2010, but I doubt too much has changed since:

EDIT: Open in a new tab to see the whole thing, including the key.

EDIT 2: It appears I've screwed up the page formatting with the large graph. Linked: US Cities by Daily Transit Ridership & Mode, 2010

comparison data:
Twin Cities: http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pu ... s/5027.pdf
San Diego: http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pu ... s/9026.pdf

[UptownSport]

Think it was mentioned on other stations, but Hamline looks like it should have people standing and waiting-
All lit up and e-marquees are working

[mulad]

I took a ride down the corridor today from the UMN campus to downtown Saint Paul. Concrete was actively being poured around tracks in front of Amundson Hall, and it looks like they're only a few days away from embedding tracks in the Northrop Mall area.

Tracks appeared to be continuous across the Minneapolis - Saint Paul border at Emerald Street (by KSTP), though they had not been embedded yet. There may still be some welding to be done there.

Over on the east end, tracks are embedded until about a block and a half away from Marion Street, and track is in various stages of completion beyond that point, but appears to be close to being done. The track itself appeared to be continuous at the intersection of University and Rice, but the concrete wasn't quite there yet.

I'm not sure about the state of tracks along University Avenue east of Rice. In downtown Saint Paul, Cedar Street is beginning to resemble a street again. The intersection of Cedar & 7th (right by MPR) is currently closed as it gets rebuilt. One southbound lane of Cedar Street is open on the bridge over I-94 but only goes for about a block beyond that currently (10th Street on the west side of Cedar). The sidewalk is done on both sides of Cedar between 6th and 7th.

Anyway, we seem really close to having continuous track all the way from the West Bank to I-94 in downtown St. Paul, assuming I didn't miss a big gap on the north side of the Capitol...

The catenary between Raymond Ave and Lynnhurst (near the old Porky's) is still being fiddled with. The top catenary wire and the bottom contact wire have been strung for both tracks, but they're still in the process of adding the dropper wires and getting it properly tensioned. Looks like they're only about halfway done with that one segment the westbound track catenary so far.

[aguaman]

it appears that the tracks are embedded now at MLK.
also, concrete was being poured yesterday around the Leif Erickson monument as part of station connectivity.

[twincitizen]

19th Ave tower - This sucker is tall!


Street level, under the 19th Ave Bridge. Note the ridiculous sign in the center of the image.


Artwork installation on the Cedar Ave tower - Pretty sweet!


Looking at some signage inside the Cedar Ave tower entrance

[Didier]

Any way to shrink those pictures?

[twincitizen]

They display as thumbnails for me (using Chrome), so I figured it was fine. I was kind of wondering about that...