Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[David Greene]

The primary other reason other than cost I can think of in favor of 3A is end-to-end travel time

- Good reverse commute access for communities that have none currently
- Development at Van White (and Penn, though probably less so)
- Avoiding problems with historic properties such as Peavy Plaza
- Avoiding major disruption to the Midtown Greenway

[Tyler]

The primary other reason other than cost I can think of in favor of 3A is end-to-end travel time

Is there any good data on this? Was there a study that looked at total travel time (including walking), for the average office worker (taking into consideration where offices are located).

[David Greene]

The primary other reason other than cost I can think of in favor of 3A is end-to-end travel time

Is there any good data on this? Was there a study that looked at total travel time (including walking), for the average office worker (taking into consideration where offices are located).

Sure. It's all in the DEIS and AA reports. It's averaged so I don't think there's a per-trip breakdown but Met Council most certainly has that data.

[mulad]

The primary other reason other than cost I can think of in favor of 3A is end-to-end travel time

- Good reverse commute access for communities that have none currently

Which community is that? Are you referring to parts of North Minneapolis? The benefits fall to so few people as far as I can see it, and again this would benefit far more people by going through Whittier, who also have pretty crummy reverse-commute access as things stand today.

[David Greene]

The primary other reason other than cost I can think of in favor of 3A is end-to-end travel time

- Good reverse commute access for communities that have none currently

Which community is that? Are you referring to parts of North Minneapolis? The benefits fall to so few people as far as I can see it, and again this would benefit far more people by going through Whittier, who also have pretty crummy reverse-commute access as things stand today.

Yes, North. Royalston and Van White will be big transfer points. Not as sure on Penn though a significant number of people live up that way.

Whittier will have a nice streetcar and/or enhanced bus to get to West Lake. Take a bus to the LRT. Just like the folks in North will.

[mulad]

So we're acting as though Bottineau will never exist? Wouldn't that suck up a lot of the transfer activity?

[Viktor Vaughn]

..the 2 biggest arguments for the 3A vs 3C were cost (which is now far more comparable given co-location options) and servicing North.

Every time I hear David making the argument that 3a somehow serves North (about a dozen times now) it sounds more ridiculous. If you wanted to serve the northside, run Bottineau down West Broadway instead of through 2 miles of parkland.

A SW stop or two in industrial no-man's-land just west of downtown is insignificant for North Minneapolis next to the preferred Bottineau travesty.

Please David, focus your (apparently unlimited) tenacity on that instead of wasting your time jumping through hoops to explain away the grave mistakes of the Southwest planners.

[David Greene]

So we're acting as though Bottineau will never exist? Wouldn't that suck up a lot of the transfer activity?

Bottineau does not go to the southwest suburbs. It will not catalyze the BCV redevelopment.

[David Greene]

<some rant>

Who say's I'm *not* working on West Broadway? The focus is currently on SW LRT because that's where the important decisions are being made at this time.

We aren't going to realign Bottineau either, much as I might want to. A streetcar on West Broadway seems like a good idea and North residents I've talked to seem to like it.

[mulad]

So we're acting as though Bottineau will never exist? Wouldn't that suck up a lot of the transfer activity?

Bottineau does not go to the southwest suburbs. It will not catalyze the BCV redevelopment.

No, Bottineau doesn't go that way, but people could transfer from Bottineau or the Broadway streetcar to Southwest at Target Field, Hennepin, or Nicollet Mall depending on the exact alignment of Southwest.

And I really don't give a rip about redeveloping all of the Basset's Creek Valley area. There's so much empty space elsewhere in the city that has better overall value. In my opinion, we need to reserve a decent chunk of that space for layover/yard area for intercity passenger service to The Interchange, and the rest has good value as park land. Though I suppose you're still thinking of points farther north than I am.

[Tyler]

Sure. It's all in the DEIS and AA reports. It's averaged so I don't think there's a per-trip breakdown but Met Council most certainly has that data.

hmmm... I have searched for this type of data before but could not find it. So based on your post I've spent the last hour or so searching again. I can definitively say data like this is not in the AA an I'm pretty sure it's not in the DEIS. I'd love to be wrong.

[David Greene]

No, Bottineau doesn't go that way, but people could transfer from Bottineau or the Broadway streetcar to Southwest at Target Field, Hennepin, or Nicollet Mall depending on the exact alignment of Southwest.

It would be Nicollet, which would be a significant time increase.

And I really don't give a rip about redeveloping all of the Basset's Creek Valley area.

I'm sure the residents of North will take that into account.

[David Greene]

hmmm... I have searched for this type of data before but could not find it. So based on your post I've spent the last hour or so searching again. I can definitively say data like this is not in the AA an I'm pretty sure it's not in the DEIS. I'd love to be wrong.

Since rider time factors into the CEI it had to be modeled. I don't know how it's presented in those documents, exactly. I guess I assumed there is some table comparing trip times. I've seen them on other projects. I know I saw such things for Southwest, though those were at hearings and open houses. Maybe they didn't get put in the reports as such.

[sad panda]

DEIS Chapter 11 page 2 has the end-to-end trip times for the routes. It can be found at: http://metrocouncil.org/getattachment/c ... 9716/.aspx

[Tyler]

The DEIS claims "shorter travel times to downtown" for 3A as the justification for higher ridership in certain sections. They say 3A has the "best" travel time to downtown at 31.5min. But when you look at the data provided, you see they are directly comparing travel times to Target field on 3A with travel times to 4th St on 3C. But, as I'm sure you're thinking, that makes no sense. 3C would have already stopped at 12th st and 8th st, and 3A would take another 5 minutes just to get to Nicollet Mall/ 5th (and still not the center of the CBD). No one with half a brain would use the data in "Table 6.1-1. Light Rail Travel Times" to justify their projections. So where's the real data?

[Tyler]

DEIS Chapter 11 page 2 has the end-to-end trip times for the routes. It can be found at: http://metrocouncil.org/getattachment/c ... 9716/.aspx

Right, this is the same crap. It has nothing to do with how long it will actually take people to get to work. Which is my question.

[mulad]

3A, at 28,700 passengers per day has an aggregate time savings of 6,726 hours, while 3C-2 is listed at 28,850 passengers per day with time savings of 6,654 hours -- a whole 1.1% smaller than the 3A number, basing overall time savings on artificially-depressed ridership figures.

[MNdible]

Since everybody apparently thinks there was some sort of conspiracy that doomed 3C, who do you think was behind it? What was their dark secret motive to choose the clearly inferior 3A routing?

Was it the Illuminati? The Freemasons? Henry Kissinger?

Perhaps it was Nick, knowing that snubbing the 3C routing would generate thousands of angry and self-righteous posts, thus boosting UrbanMSP's pageviews.

[Tyler]

What was their dark secret motive to choose the clearly inferior 3A routing?

Incompetence?

[FISHMANPET]

All these estimates are based on models, and I think when it comes down to it, a lot of people disagree with the models.I'm sure that when 28,850 passengers per day per for 3C was calculated, that it was done perfectly. But if the model is bad, the result will be mad. If there's disputes over expected ridership then it's a bad model.

Our model for Hiawatha was bad, which is why we keep smashing ridership predictions. Now that we know the Twin City's rail bias the models should be better, but we'll see how quickly Central exceeds expectations.

But when it comes down to it, if you don't like the ridership numbers the study produced, then you don't like the model they used.

Cost is a whole other thing, but I don't think anybody here is making cost based arguments directly, rather they're being made as a response to something else.