Green Line LRT

[mulad]

Maybe this small science lab explosion at the U had something to do with delays? http://www.startribune.com/local/minnea ... 13131.html

[Silophant]

Since everyone else was posting times, I took the train from Nicollet to East Bank just now.
Scheduled time: 9 min.
Actual time: 7 min, 45 sec.
So, clearly it can work, they just need to fine-tune things so it does.

[talindsay]

Since everyone else was posting times, I took the train from Nicollet to East Bank just now.
Scheduled time: 9 min.
Actual time: 7 min, 45 sec.
So, clearly it can work, they just need to fine-tune things so it does.

That's actually some impressive time - if they can operationalize a time that brief this will be a lot more successful. The time issue will kill public perception if they don't get it fixed in the next month.

[ProspectPete]

Union Depot to Westgate: 28 minutes

[Nick]

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/comm ... 53131.html

I guess we need to give them a month or so to figure this all out, but honestly, they did have something like nine months where they were (supposed to have been?) doing testing. As someone who periodically takes/took a 94 at night or on weekends, I won't feign outrage over the added 30 to 40 minutes roundtrip, but...I don't know. This is all at least a little bit disappointing. A billion dollar streetcar, basically?

[Silophant]

Well, from what I could see, they were testing whether it was a good idea to stop at every single intersection. They appear to have decided it works better to just stop at some.

[Chava]

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/comm ... 53131.html

I guess we need to give them a month or so to figure this all out, but honestly, they did have something like nine months where they were (supposed to have been?) doing testing. As someone who periodically takes/took a 94 at night or on weekends, I won't feign outrage over the added 30 to 40 minutes roundtrip, but...I don't know. This is all at least a little bit disappointing. A billion dollar streetcar, basically?

A BILLION DOLLAR streetcar? Ay dios mio!

Not their first line, and they ran "test" trains for weeks. No excuses really.

It's great that we're all sympathetic to the plight of transit planners and daily ops people, but sorry to say y'all, but our sentiments about urbanism and the common good are irrelevant. All transit, like all politics are local. For the people who had their previous transit choices replaced or altered by an inconsistent line, slow or inconsistent=broken. They have to get to work or school and are expected to be there on time. That's their job. Justifiably, they expect transit agencies to do their job and get things right from day one,regardless of the complexity of the job. The long term "economic impact" doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things if they can't get to work on time.

We paid a billion dollars for some engineers and eggheads to get it right. A BILLION DOLLARS!

$1,000,000,000.00. Sure, construction is expensive, but you spent a billion dollars on the thing. You don't get to make excuses when we gave you a billion dollars. Thats life.

To any metro transit employees out there making this thing go? Thanks! Signal issues are not the fault of drivers, and I'm sure there is a lot of misplaced

[Anondson]

Seems on this the pro- and anti-LRT crowd agree, with signal timing like this it is one expensive street car line.

[mulad]

That Strib opinion piece brought up a 30-minute downtown-to-downtown time again -- I can't say I ever heard a number quite that low. 35 was what I'd seen for a trip like Nicollet Mall to Central.

I'll remind folks that the Hiawatha Line only ran from Hennepin Ave/Warehouse District to Fort Snelling when it first opened in June 2004. For more than five months after that, you had to transfer to the 155 bus to get to the airport and Mall of America. It also took them almost three years after the start of rail operations before Go-To cards were working -- something that was supposed to be in operation before Hiawatha was up and running. We still don't have NexTrip working with LRT for some reason.

At this point, the line has been carrying the public for 82 hours -- 44 of those hours in actual revenue service.

[VAStationDude]

Anyone whose sole arguments against the Green Line are comparisons to express bus travel times and the capital cost can safely be dismissed as either a troll or dumb ass.

I've been out of town so I haven't ridden the green line yet but people complaining about must haven never ridden the 16 ever because that was the most unreliable worthless nightmare even after fifty years of experience.

[Nick]

Well, I wholeheartedly agree that I'm a dumbass, but out of all the people in America who are actually busy (not just bingewatching One Tree Hill on Netflix while tweeting about how tired they are) many of them are the same types of transit dependent people who take the 94. I have forty minutes to spare in a day. Ride the 94. Many of those folks don't. It's not full of choice riders. I don't think this has been a disaster by any stretch of the imagination, but it's disingenuous for them to have eliminated most of the 94 and then, at the same time, said that the Green Line isn't supposed to be the way to get between the cities.

[VAStationDude]

Clearly you do notunderstand the concept of frequency and wait times. I used the 94 on weekends for a couple years when my now wife was living in sw Minneapolis and I was in Saint Paul. Even at 48 minutes the Green Line will be faster because you're not stuck waiting outside office depot for a half hour for the next 94b if your 6 bus lost the final thirty seconds of the six minute transfer cushion because someone had to ask in three different ways at Maple and Hennepin if the 6U went across the river.

[Nick]

Clearly.

[VAStationDude]

Yes.

[ProspectPete]

I gotta jump on the bandwagon tonight. I'm a big proponent of transit for the record.
But so far, this sucks.
I left westgate at 8:26, we have hit EVERY light going eastbound. I have to be to work at 9:00 pm. Going to be close.
I thought the evening post rush hour would be a cake walk. Not only every intersection we hit we have to stop, furthermore, I've gotten my yearly quota of N-word exposure on this ride.
Hooray.

[nate]

Walking down to Central at 5:30, I just missed a train. Ended up waiting for 25 minutes for the next one to show up...then there were two bunched close behind it. On the way out of St Paul, we stopped for red lights at 10th, MLK, Rice, Western, Mackubin (!) Victoria, and Lexington. Not impressed, I'm still confident we will get the kinks out.

[ECtransplant]

Anyone whose sole arguments against the Green Line are comparisons to express bus travel times and the capital cost can safely be dismissed as either a troll or dumb ass.

Idk. Telling someone the best way to get from Nicollet Mall to Lowertown is an express bus seems pretty backwards when we just spend a billion dollars to connect the downtowns via rail. Turning the length of university into a transit mall would remove the delays from conflicts with auto traffic and allowed express service via triple tracking. I'm sure those complaining would have supported that.

[Tcmetro]

If the 94 had decent off-peak frequency (10-15 min) then it would be much more useful than the Green Line. Nobody going from downtown to downtown wants to spend 45-55 minutes on the train when the bus can do it in 20-25 minutes.The Green Line is great for people on University Ave, it's a direct replacement for the 16 and 50 buses, not the 94.

I took a ride today from Raymond to Central. We stopped for lights at Vandalia, Fairview, Snelling, Hamline, Griggs, Lexington, Victoria, Dale, Western, Rice, 12th/Cedar, 7th, 6th, and 5th. The trip took about 34 minutes, 10 minutes longer than scheduled.

I know it's really early on in the service to complain, but these reports are really bad. While the travel time isn't as awful as the 16 was, it's fairly close.

[mullen]

lines been open less than a week. deep breaths.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/comm ... 53131.html

[robotlollipop]

If enough people complain about this, they will have to solve it, right? The fact that he said it wasn't meant to be a good option to get from downtown to downtown makes me feel like the ~48 minutes is set in stone. :/