urbanMSP

Interesting stat I picked out of this Rider's Almanac post on transfers:

...survey found that 25 percent of Northstar customers transferred to light rail and that 21 percent transferred to a bus.

I assume then that the remaining 54% walked to their destinations. Unfortunately the data is from a customer survey, not actual ridership data. It seems like they'd be able to track what Northstar riders are actually doing. I'm guessing something like 100% of weekday Northstar riders use a GoTo card of some kind, so their transfer trips should be trackable.

The survey also found that 40% of Blue Line riders transferred to or from a bus route.
http://www.metrotransit.org/good-questi ... -transfers

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/241758501.html

Metro Transit Route 852 mid-day extension to Ramsey Station (to supplement Northstar riders) has one passenger, will be canceled in June. It was billed as an 18-month experiment, but will be cut off a little early. Judging from the comments (the non-crazy ones anyway), even people who rode Northstar from Ramsey Station were unaware of the service.

Slowly but surely this line is coming into it's own.
http://knsiradio.com/news/local/northst ... ets-record

Slowly but surely this line is coming into it's own.
http://knsiradio.com/news/local/northst ... ets-record

I was hoping the article was going to say something about funding the remaining stretch from Big Lake to St. Cloud...

I feel you, but I still appreciate what I view to be good news

Indeed, anything that's not doom and gloom on this line will pay 10x the dividends if we hope to ever add more commuter rail lines. What a pariah this has been. (And hopefully we fully fund them before building them in the future...)

Abysmal ridership with an ungodly subsidy setting a new still-abysmal "record" isn't really good news. This line has as much total subsidy as the Blue Line, while supporting far-flung sprawl. If this is "success" we clearly shouldn't be building commuter rail. If 8,000 riders a day used it then at least it would be a qualified success and we could debate the merits of helping exurbanites commute into the core; at the numbers it has, it just makes rail transit look bad.

if we hope to ever add more commuter rail lines

We are building commuter rail lines, but using electric multiple units instead of diesel locomotives. Here are the threads:
https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5
https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7

Touche Matt
Tom, I still hold out hope. 3100 riders a day is nothing to scoof at in my opinion and the improvement is what I find most encouraging. Remember, this is literally a "train to no where." Imagine what the numbers would be if it went all the way to St Cloud.
I would argue our Metro is still learning how to do Commuter rail correctly, as slow as it may seem, and I like the gradual tweeking that is occuring to improve the final product.

if we hope to ever add more commuter rail lines

We are building commuter rail lines, but using electric multiple units instead of diesel locomotives. Here are the threads:
https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5
https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7

We are building commuter rail lines, but using electric multiple units instead of diesel locomotives. Here are the threads:

Right, because Eden Praire = Big Lake.

If it's not Minneapolis, it's crap.

I don't think that was remotely mattaudio's point at all. You know exactly what he meant: that Southwest and Bottineau largely by pass the densely populated parts of Minneapolis in favor of faster commutes for suburbanites. Bottineau especially, is just a LRT line on a commuter rail alignment. No stops for 3 miles between Golden Valley Road and Robbinsdale? That's not LRT, that's commuter rail. If we're going to bypass dense Minneapolis neighborhoods, we could put commuter rail on the existing freight track on these alignments for far less money. I think the demand for all-day frequent service on the outermost stations of both of these lines is going to be pretty dismal. I won't be surprised if after a few years of lower-than-projected ridership, we cut the frequency in half beyond downtown Hopkins (Green) and downtown Robbinsdale (Blue). It's going to take decades for those areas to fill in. There's no indication that Brooklyn Park will support dense residential development along that line at all, especially out by Target North.

I'm not going to comment on Bottineau, because honestly the NW suburbs are a foggy mystery to me. But to equate SW with Northstar is just cheap snark. And I'm pretty sure that Matt knows it.

Again, I don't think he was equating SWLRT to Northstar, but to real, successful commuter rail lines. It may use a different rolling stock than we typically associate with commuter rail, but the stop spacing, largely suburban nature, and suburban station area land use and future plans all seem to mimic suburban commuter stops rather than dedicated ROW-to-grade separated rail we usually associate with urban lines. Interlining with the CCLRT and Blue Line are how they cease being CR within the core cities, IMO. And twincitizen is right that off-peak hour operations past Hopkins/Robinsdale should probably be cut if ridership doesn't support it (though that's obviously a chicken/egg discussion for promoting station area development, and more useful in a different thread...)

Our region's LRT proposals look very similar to some east-coast commuter lines, such as LIRR's Port Washington Branch -- 13 stations on 15 miles of track, running EMU trains.

Our region's LRT proposals look very similar to some east-coast commuter lines, such as LIRR's Port Washington Branch -- 13 stations on 15 miles of track, running EMU trains.

I'm not sure why that's classified as Commuter Rail as it has a third rail and vehicles just like heavy rail.

Because it goes to Long Island

Also one has to realize the differences in density. The area that the LIRR Port Washington branch serves is nothing like Northstar service area, the first station east of Penn Station is the Woodside station, the census tract where the station lies has 86k+ residents per square mile. While the most dense census tract along the SW LRT 3C route has merely 21k residents per square mile. Main Street Flusing Station census tract has 131k+ residents per square mile! And that is almost ten miles from the terminus.

Because it goes to Long Island

Actually, upon further investigation it appears that it's classified as Commuter Rail because it falls under FRA jurisdiction unlike most rail transit modes.

And to think we were still pulling up rails 15 years ago.

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/244132131.html