Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
tmart
Rice Park
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby tmart » January 14th, 2021, 11:17 am

SWLRT pushing back its opening date, now 2024 at least, due to construction issues (somehow they are still discovering new soil problems on the chosen alignment).

There were some other clues that the schedule might be pushed back, now we've got confirmation.
I read the official press release, and it only says potential delays, and the tweets never said 2024, I was always under the assumption the project would open Spring 2023, could it just get pushed back to Fall 2023?


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I think the 2024+ date is based on this part of the Twitter thread:
#SWLRT will most likely not be meeting it’s opening day projection of 2023

DanPatchToget
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby DanPatchToget » January 14th, 2021, 12:47 pm

Does poor soil conditions mean poor for construction, or did they find nasty surprises in the soil from when that land was a rail yard?

So much for Kenilworth being the cheap and easy alignment. :roll:

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Nick
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Nick » January 14th, 2021, 3:54 pm

That does it,
Nick Magrino
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Cat349F
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Cat349F » January 14th, 2021, 3:58 pm

Soil conditions means removing contaminated soil, removing soil that is insufficient for bearing the load that will be placed upon it, or adding a mechanical solution to amend the soil. (Piling, grout columns, soil nails, etc)
Unsustainable fossil burning fool.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby DanPatchToget » January 20th, 2021, 11:43 am

For anyone interested, you can get a pretty good view of the tunnel construction along Dean Court just south of Cedar Lake Parkway. You can also get a good view of the new railroad bridge (and eventually the new light rail and trail bridge) over the Cedar Lake Channel by simply walking (or skiing) on the channel since the water is frozen.

exiled_antipodean
Landmark Center
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby exiled_antipodean » January 20th, 2021, 12:15 pm

Probably too late to abandon the tunnel idea, and lay the rail on the surface.

We are spending more than $100 million dollars on this tunnel to avoid either
* a short section of dedicated single track operation for the LRT, or
* having freight rail share track in the same direction no more than 3 times a day on average.

https://transportist.org/2014/10/26/a-one-track-mind-2/

HuskyGrad
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby HuskyGrad » January 20th, 2021, 12:22 pm

Probably too late to abandon the tunnel idea, and lay the rail on the surface.

We are spending more than $100 million dollars on this tunnel to avoid either
* a short section of dedicated single track operation for the LRT, or
* having freight rail share track in the same direction no more than 3 times a day on average.

https://transportist.org/2014/10/26/a-one-track-mind-2/
TriMet is currently planning to spend $200 million to remove their single track bottlenecks.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/ ... f81c2ebe53

DanPatchToget
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby DanPatchToget » January 20th, 2021, 12:59 pm

Probably too late to abandon the tunnel idea, and lay the rail on the surface.

We are spending more than $100 million dollars on this tunnel to avoid either
* a short section of dedicated single track operation for the LRT, or
* having freight rail share track in the same direction no more than 3 times a day on average.

https://transportist.org/2014/10/26/a-one-track-mind-2/
Or demolish the townhouses that should never have been built so close to the tracks in the first place.

uptownbro
Rice Park
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby uptownbro » January 20th, 2021, 1:07 pm

Moral of the story: This is the mess many thought it would be and the blue lines next phase should avoid all of these obvious points...... And the swlr is still worth building even if the chosen path is a mess.

exiled_antipodean
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby exiled_antipodean » January 20th, 2021, 1:41 pm

Huge difference between lots of single track, and one point. And if they were willing to consider the radical railroad operation idea of ... checks notes ... signaling and switches they could double track it on the surface, and do the co-location idea. We are, after all, talking about at most a few trains a day on that freight line.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby DanPatchToget » January 20th, 2021, 3:14 pm

Huge difference between lots of single track, and one point. And if they were willing to consider the radical railroad operation idea of ... checks notes ... signaling and switches they could double track it on the surface, and do the co-location idea. We are, after all, talking about at most a few trains a day on that freight line.
Keep in mind those few freight trains can be a mile long, and I believe the maximum speed through the Kenilworth Corridor is 25 mph, but I think they operate at around 15 mph for safety reasons. Also while it's normally a few freight trains per day, it can vary widely from the line being silent for the whole day to 5 or more trains per day. It all depends on demand from shippers.

SurlyLHT
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby SurlyLHT » January 20th, 2021, 3:50 pm

In Economics relating to Externality costs...there is a concept called, "Willingness to Accept Compensation." I'm thinking in this case making payments to compensate for not having the tunnel would have been cheaper.

I wish the Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Willingness to Accept Compensation (WTAC) concepts would become part of the decision-making and conflict reduction framework for big project. It wouldn't mean always giving private individuals direct payments. It could mean providing money for another neighborhood need or amenity. I'm not saying, this would be the entire solution, but should be part of the decision-making.

amiller92
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby amiller92 » January 21st, 2021, 10:04 am

Huge difference between lots of single track, and one point. And if they were willing to consider the radical railroad operation idea of ... checks notes ... signaling and switches they could double track it on the surface, and do the co-location idea. We are, after all, talking about at most a few trains a day on that freight line.
Keep in mind those few freight trains can be a mile long, and I believe the maximum speed through the Kenilworth Corridor is 25 mph, but I think they operate at around 15 mph for safety reasons. Also while it's normally a few freight trains per day, it can vary widely from the line being silent for the whole day to 5 or more trains per day. It all depends on demand from shippers.
When I've seen freight trains there, they looked to be going slower than 15 mph to me.

talindsay
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby talindsay » January 21st, 2021, 11:40 am

The tunnels may seem kind of ridiculous given that we haven't built them where they're more appropriate - downtown Mpls, under the Snelling intersection, etc. But transit reliability is generally better in a tunnel, and this is already funded and rolling forward so I can't imagine any logic in revisiting the decision at this point. It points more to the absurdity that those other tunnels *weren't* built that to the absurdity that this one *is* being built, in my opinion.

If the region were given a hypothetical $6 billion in one shot to have transit experts design the four core lines of a transit system, it's plausible that the Blue Line, Green Line, Green Line Extension, and Blue Line Extension would be the four core routes (though there's a case for the Riverview line in that scenario). It's not likely that the tunneling money would be invested primarily in the Green Line Extension; such investment would probably be made at the Airport, DT Minneapolis, the UMN campus, and maybe the Snelling intersection, and some bridging decisions would be made in a variety of places where they weren't.

But of course that's not the way it worked. The Hiawatha Line was designed as basically a cheap experiment to see if the region was really interested in light rail, and the Central Corridor was designed as the core backbone of a transit system when we had no dedicated regional money and no obvious path to get it, and the Bush administration was reluctant to make speculative transit decisions. Southwest, designed with a much friendlier federal administration in power, ample regional transit funds, and a core transit system already in place that was drastically exceeding ridership projections, made the possibility of solving arguments with tunnels politically desirable. It's not a bad outcome, it just makes the infrastructural investments a bit lopsided compared to the justifications for those investments.

Bakken2016
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Bakken2016 » January 27th, 2021, 5:04 pm

So I'm looking at the Eden Prairie Town Center Station, does anyone know if there will be a pedestrian connection to Costco or will you have to walk all the way around?

DanPatchToget
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby DanPatchToget » January 27th, 2021, 6:35 pm

Based on what I looked at on the Met Council website, there does not appear to be any way to access the station from the north without making a big loop around Lake Idlewild, which is a shame. I don't know how useful it would be for Costco and Emerson but better to have that access than not have it.

Bakken2016
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Bakken2016 » January 27th, 2021, 7:07 pm

Based on what I looked at on the Met Council website, there does not appear to be any way to access the station from the north without making a big loop around Lake Idlewild, which is a shame. I don't know how useful it would be for Costco and Emerson but better to have that access than not have it.
The only thing I can see is that, the little forested area between the lake and the station based on google maps has a pedestrian path through it.

Silophant
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Silophant » January 27th, 2021, 7:32 pm

Hm... according to the Hennepin tax parcel map, that driveway with the wide median that goes to Emerson's parking lots is actually public right-of-way. So as long as they don't put a big fence along the north side of the LRT ROW, it should be possible to get through there.
Joey Senkyr
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Bakken2016
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Bakken2016 » January 27th, 2021, 7:34 pm

Hm... according to the Hennepin tax parcel map, that driveway with the wide median that goes to Emerson's parking lots is actually public right-of-way. So as long as they don't put a big fence along the north side of the LRT ROW, it should be possible to get through there.
Would you be willing to mark that on a map and post it?


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Silophant
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Re: Southwest LRT (Green Line Extension)

Postby Silophant » January 27th, 2021, 8:40 pm

Image

The blue highlighted parcel is Emerson's, and the parcels directly south (where you can see the construction) are owned by the Met Council.
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