Green Line LRT

[FISHMANPET]

Ah, yes

[mister.shoes]

[HiawathaGuy]

Come back in a decade!

He's referring to SW and Bottineau.

I'm sorry, I call that statement a little bit BS.
The Green Line will end in Eden Prairie - current population: 62,500 +/-, and probably closer to 70,000 by 2020. Does the line ending at Mitchell really warrant this response? Really? A low-density neighborhood?

And for the Blue Line extension, Brooklyn Park's current population is 78,300 +/-... again, probably closer to 85,000 by 2020. The area where the line will end is currently undeveloped, but that doesn't mean it'll be a low-density neighborhood in a decade!

The fact that BP will probably have a higher population in a decade than Bloomington makes your attempt at poking fun of the extension pretty silly.

Both suburbs will nearly match St. Paul in population by that point, and they equate to a similar land mass, St. Paul: 52 sq. miles, Brooklyn Park + Eden Priarie: 58 sq. miles. St. Paul has about 5,500 people/sq. mile, where BP & EP is 2,400 people/sq. mile. Is it as dense as St. Paul, of course not - but I'd hardly call them low-density neighborhoods.

Nor does it take into account the growth that will happen along these lines in the respective suburbs.

I'm just trying to point out that it seems pretty inaccurate to call either of those suburbs, or the cities that both extensions will run through as low-density.

Not that I'm advocating for more sprawl... but it's clear that both EP & BP have been steadily increasing their density over the past 50 years and should continue to do so in the future. These line extensions will help with that, as well as solidifying our two downtowns as the economic engines they are.

I for one will be curious to read his review about his next stop... St. Louis.

[FISHMANPET]

Will the end of the SW or Bottineau lines be a major trip generator the way that the Downtowns and the MOA Airport area currently are? No? No.

[HiawathaGuy]

Will the end of the SW or Bottineau lines be a major trip generator the way that the Downtowns and the MOA Airport area currently are? No? No.

Of course the ends won't, but does that mean we shouldn't provide increased rail to those places then?
However, if both lines nearly double the full system's daily ridership (I believe the estimates are that 27,000/day Blue & 32,000/day Green), does one really believe that the ends of the extensions will be "low-density" for long?

I'd also like to point out that most Metro systems radiate out from their center city(ies). The ends of those Metros tend to not be as big of trip generators as the downtown areas. That's just reality.

[FISHMANPET]

But it's still a true statement that the ends of the Blue and Green line will be in fairly non dense areas in 10 years. The statement you called "BS" on is, by your own admission, true!

[FISHMANPET]

And by the way, I never made a value judgement as to what the end of a radial transit line should look like, so that's a nice big strawman you built for yourself there.

[Snelbian]

Citywide population is a TERRIBLE way of measuring neighborhood density. The Green Line ends in Lowertown. Decent density. If it ended at Lower Afton and McKnight it would not be ending in a neighborhood with equivalent density even if it is St. Paul, and a decision to do that would be crazy. If density were equally spread across any given city, that would be another matter. That's not how it works in reality.

[mister.shoes]

#1: my tongue was firmly planted in cheek when I quoted that portion of one sentence in his article and made my response.
#2: what FISHMANPET said w/r/t trip generators. EP + BP are certainly big cities, but they remain suburban in general.

[HiawathaGuy]

Citywide population is a TERRIBLE way of measuring neighborhood density. The Green Line ends in Lowertown. Decent density. If it ended at Lower Afton and McKnight it would not be ending in a neighborhood with equivalent density even if it is St. Paul, and a decision to do that would be crazy. If density were equally spread across any given city, that would be another matter. That's not how it works in reality.

Well said.

[HiawathaGuy]

#1: my tongue was firmly planted in cheek when I quoted that portion of one sentence in his article and made my response.
#2: what FISHMANPET said w/r/t trip generators. EP + BP are certainly big cities, but they remain suburban in general.

Good to know on #1 - it's hard to know when people are saying things in jest or not. I also agree on #2.

[David Greene]

I'd also like to point out that most Metro systems radiate out from their center city(ies). The ends of those Metros tend to not be as big of trip generators as the downtown areas. That's just reality.

I know that people here weren't making value judgments, but the article author most certainly did.

With that understanding, I'd like to point out that HiawathaGuy is exactly right. It is really quite a unique situation we have that both ends of our two LRT lines are major trip generators. Even having *one* LRT like that is pretty rare, I think. For this reason, the author's comment struck me as really odd.

Just something to keep in mind when we start comparing future lines.

[FISHMANPET]

I didn't read that the author was making a value judgement on transit termini. But he is from Germany where everything is different and they probably don't have the same kind of railway termini as we do. I think his his surprise at the uniquness or our situation in America, even though it is probably common in Europe, could be confused as a value judgement.

Holy crap that's a lot of words about a single sentence.

[Wedgeguy]

Lucky you don't have to take shots of tequila for each of those posts where that line was talked about. You'd be plastered and nearly passed out on the floor!!

[mattaudio]

so this is what I miss when I'm up north camping.... well you know what I would have said, so nobody is missing out.

[Silophant]

I realize that he's looking at it more from a overall system perspective, but I'm gonna quibble with his complaint about campus station placement. I think it makes perfect sense to have the East Bank station adjacent to the hospital, and as for Stadium Village station, do they not have stadiums in Europe? He doesn't see any reason to not have the train station be on the other side of a major thoroughfare from the structure 60,000 people will be leaving at once?

[Nick]

He doesn't see any reason to not have the train station be on the other side of a major thoroughfare from the structure 60,000 people will be leaving at once?

Huh...that's actually the first time I've heard that justification. Makes sense, I guess, must not have been paying attention.

[exiled_antipodean]

^ Indeed.

The Schwandl blog post was a fair critique, but I think not quite apprehending the local nuances in station placement on the East Bank campus. A stop at Coffman would either be partially on a hill (awkward), or blocking Church St.

The Stadium Village station is really a stadium stop, but as the parking lots around it get built over it will be less dependent on the stadium traffic. Already it's a fairly busy stop (I suspect university people catch it to get to the parking lots).

As I recall there was a seemingly good reason for the transitway routing, but I've forgotten what it was

[transportationist]

The real reason for the transitway routing is that it was needed to get the slope right for the tunnel under Washington Avenue.

They of course dropped the tunnel under Washington Avenue. But the EIS was done, so they kept the alignment. There are BS reasons like University Avenue wasn't wide enough, or its closer to the stadium, but the real reason was not reopening an approved alignment.

It saves a couple of traffic lights but adds distance, and is mostly a wash.

[go4guy]

But, it is also now in a better position for people attending games at any of the arenas there, and is convenient for those parking in the lots around there.