Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
VAStationDude
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby VAStationDude » February 5th, 2014, 8:45 pm

It's realistic to the extent it's been discussed on a message board and by nobody in the political or planning realm. Much like a Washington Avenue Multi way Blvd with one foot sidewalks in the transit loading area, Lindau MOA transit station or Bnsf alignment light rail to the West End, it will live on in a smug repetitive internet wanky kninda way. Good for making bored people feel important but not much else.

Mdcastle
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Mdcastle » February 5th, 2014, 9:38 pm

Four lanes on County 25 has nothing to do with the later idea for a freeway through uptown. My 1953 map shows it as four lanes, there was an effort in the 1950s to built "commuting corridors" as I like to call them, expressways ending at city limits. What is now County 81 is another example,as are Central and University

As far as getting rid of County 25, I like it in that you can have an interchange without crossroads at MN 100, don't like it on a selfish level in that it's my favorite way to get to Lake Calhoun, on a broader level that I-394 and the tunnel are so woefully inadequate for the traffic they carry now, to say nothing of the traffic they should if they were built properly to encourage traffic not to try to cut through uptown. Fix those problems, then go ahead and put something cute where 25 is.

David Greene
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby David Greene » February 5th, 2014, 10:19 pm

As far as getting rid of County 25, I like it in that you can have an interchange without crossroads at MN 100, don't like it on a selfish level in that it's my favorite way to get to Lake Calhoun, on a broader level that I-394 and the tunnel are so woefully inadequate for the traffic they carry now, to say nothing of the traffic they should if they were built properly to encourage traffic not to try to cut through uptown. Fix those problems, then go ahead and put something cute where 25 is.
Ok, throw in the Lowry Tunnel reroute, new underground exit ramps, Bottleneck traffic circles/roundabouts, land bridge north of the Bottleneck, close Hennepin to traffic, all as diagrammed by mister.shoes.

We're good to go!

Mdcastle
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Mdcastle » February 5th, 2014, 10:50 pm

No one ever excused the people on this board of thinking small.

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mister.shoes
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby mister.shoes » February 6th, 2014, 12:15 am

:D
The problem with being an introvert online is that no one knows you're just hanging out and listening.

Viktor Vaughn
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Viktor Vaughn » February 6th, 2014, 10:53 am

Looking at how things would be in an ideal world is a good place to start. There's every other step in the process to water things down and compromise away effectiveness.

Brainstorming and sharing ideas outside the confines of political & fiscal realities is a good thing. It doesn't mean the Virginia Triangle will ever get reconfigured to message board specs, but to call this process "smug" and "making bored people feel important" is mean-spirited, condescending, and...well... kinda smug.

I don't tend to geek out on all the details on the 'fetish maps.' But I'm very thankful for those who spend their own time reimagining a better city and sharing their ideas so they can be improved by others, and help those of us less gifted in this area to visualize how things could be different.

Maybe this board can't be accused of dreaming small, but in most other aspects of life we seem to be locked in to thinking small, short term, and often times are occupied by petty distractions. I find the big-picture view we sometimes see here refreshing.

I know the creative types on this board don't need my endorsement, but I just thought I'd show my appreciation anyway.

VAStationDude
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby VAStationDude » February 6th, 2014, 12:05 pm

There's nothing wrong with dreaming big. It is the internet after all. Repeating the same stuff over and over again, quoting yourself after no-one pays attention to your post (hi look at meeeeeeeeeee), drawing ridiculous analogies like SWLRT being Northstar to the Western Burbs doesn't add to the conversation.

I don't think anyone could possibly be as smug as the big dreamer here.

I think I'll just ignore SWLRT thread unless I want to get reaction to big news. Much of the response to the latest re-route was great.

Archiapolis
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Archiapolis » February 6th, 2014, 12:40 pm

Looking at how things would be in an ideal world is a good place to start. There's every other step in the process to water things down and compromise away effectiveness.

Brainstorming and sharing ideas outside the confines of political & fiscal realities is a good thing.

I don't tend to geek out on all the details on the 'fetish maps.' But I'm very thankful for those who spend their own time reimagining a better city and sharing their ideas so they can be improved by others, and help those of us less gifted in this area to visualize how things could be different.

Maybe this board can't be accused of dreaming small, but in most other aspects of life we seem to be locked in to thinking small, short term, and often times are occupied by petty distractions. I find the big-picture view we sometimes see here refreshing.

I know the creative types on this board don't need my endorsement, but I just thought I'd show my appreciation anyway.
^^^
This x 1000.

I'm done hammering away on why I think 3A is bad and 3C is better. I'm just a guy with an opinion - nothing more.

I love the time/passion/energy that people put into urbanmsp and if this ISN'T the place to "dream big" then such a place doesn't exist. Big ideas CAN make a difference. I'm up for mobilizing UrbanMSP!

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woofner
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby woofner » February 6th, 2014, 2:04 pm

As far as getting rid of County 25, I like it in that you can have an interchange without crossroads at MN 100, don't like it on a selfish level in that it's my favorite way to get to Lake Calhoun, on a broader level that I-394 and the tunnel are so woefully inadequate for the traffic they carry now, to say nothing of the traffic they should if they were built properly to encourage traffic not to try to cut through uptown.
The actual plan for CR 25 is to replace it with a four-lane arterial, which will of course have basically the same capacity as the existing four-lane divided highway. It's possible that the perception of reduced capacity will drive some traffic to I-394, but even if it was half of the current through traffic on CR25 (no more than 20k a day avg), it's a drop in the bucket for 394. And most of that would probably exit at Dunwoody rather than going through the tunnel if they're going to Uptown. I've always thought the Minnetonka/CR 25 intersection would work better as an elongated traffic circle, so if that were done CR 25 could possibly handle more traffic than today.
South of the RR however, France Ave is planned to be connected to Park Glen/32nd with a 4-way intersection, opening up some connections that don't exist today at a fraction of the cost of a France Ave bridge.
Do you mean a T intersection? Is there a plan to connect France at grade?
"Who rescued whom!"

web

Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby web » February 6th, 2014, 5:29 pm

South of the RR however, France Ave is planned to be connected to Park Glen/32nd with a 4-way intersection, opening up some connections that don't exist today at a fraction of the cost of a France Ave bridge.
Do you mean a T intersection? Is there a plan to connect France at grade?[/quote]

You can do this today although you drive thru a small parking lot to connect WB. Eb will require some tree removal etc

twincitizen
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » February 6th, 2014, 7:16 pm

Oopsies, woofner is right. I completely contradicted myself. Quick note: We do have a thread for MN-7/CR-25 if y'all want to keep talking about that. I know mister.shoes only brought it up because it is actually relevant to the whole freight rail discussion, but we're really digressing.

In other news, I'm kind of over 3C. If we couldn't somehow work that into the 3-month delay, it just ain't happening. What this means, however, is that I absolutely do not support tunnels in Kenilworth. I believe the Kenilworth corridor should be looked at as a "long-term interim" solution. For this reason, I would strongly prefer freight relocation, or co-location with single-tracking LRT, or even moving the bike trail.

Long, long term, I do believe there will be a tunnel built between Uptown and Downtown. It just has to happen and the Uptown/Whittier area will continue to grow and force that to happen someday. Mixed-traffic streetcars are not the answer now, or ever. In 20, 30, or 50 years, we will pull our heads out of our asses (because gas will be $10/gallon, or congestion will be insane, or both) and we will fund it. When that happens, well, mattaudio has already said it 1000 times, but the SW line will run in a tunnel through Uptown/Whittier. The Kenilworth segment will be used for peak-hour express trains and as a non-revenue connector between operating districts.

Building a tunnel through Kenilworth is a bad idea, not only because it's a bad idea, but because we'll never build a second tunnel through Southwest Minneapolis. We're only going to get one tunnel, and we shouldn't blow it on Kenilworth. That, and MNdible's really good point about how ridiculous it is to run two parallel freight corridors just 1 mile apart.

sad panda
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby sad panda » February 13th, 2014, 11:13 am

MinnPost wrote about the meeting in SLP last night. I wish I could find the full text of Jeff Jacobs speech or a video. This article is better than Pat Doyle's in the Strib but still doesn't seem to capture a lot of the 'event'.

http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy ... -rail-move

Ubermoose
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Ubermoose » February 13th, 2014, 12:48 pm

I was there last night and it was great to hear so many voices getting to have their say. The article in the Strib by Doyle was disappointing and the crowd estimate was absurd. The auditorium was about 90% full and had to be 3 times what Doyle stated.
Terry from Tran Systems was just a good ol' boy who seems to be making it up as he goes. He couldn't answer questions about the criteria used to screen the different proposals and was just plain conescending to some residents. He openly admitted his numbers are inacurate and his plan is far from complete.
It was good to hear Mayor Jacobs and the school board stand up and address the council representatives. His wording was much more pointed and direct than I've heard in the past. There will be no municipal consent for this, or as Jacobs put it, "it's about as likely as someone with a broken hand playing Bohemian Rapsody on the piano."

MNdible
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby MNdible » February 13th, 2014, 1:24 pm

"it's about as likely as someone with a broken hand playing Bohemian Rapsody on the piano."
I'm as much of a Queen fan as the next guy, but I suspect he actually said Hungarian Rhapsody.

twincitizen
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » February 13th, 2014, 1:31 pm

If the Met Council doesn't see that the freight re-route is dead right now...then I just don't know what to say.

They can either keep plugging away with the shallow tunnel option (which is where we were 3 months ago), or we can go back to talking about moving/elevating the bike trail. Or we can have a common sense conversation about single-track LRT through the pinch point, which does seem to be feasible. It's too bad that hasn't been part of the conversation all along.

sad panda
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby sad panda » February 13th, 2014, 1:45 pm

Or we can have a common sense conversation about single-track LRT through the pinch point, which does seem to be feasible. It's too bad that hasn't been part of the conversation all along.
Mark Fuhrmann was asked about single track. He said they had looked at it and ruled it out as an option. Something about not operationally viable iirc? He mentioned it works in San Diego for the most part but Baltimore it has a bad track record. Somewhere else too. Wish I had made an audio recording of the night.

seanrichardryan
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby seanrichardryan » February 16th, 2014, 8:17 pm

Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby FISHMANPET » February 16th, 2014, 9:06 pm

Can anyone give an executive summary of Transit Revolution that isn't, you know, written by a crazy person? Or is that even possible? I tried to read the intro to his "ebook" and it quickly just ended up being about thoe mayor's race.

Silophant
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Silophant » February 16th, 2014, 10:06 pm

I skipped to Chapter One, past all the mayoral stuff. Here's my summary of his summary (as near as I can tell - it's hard to follow):

Every Transit Revolution route will have five minute service. This will be possible because the Transit Revolution will get rid of all current large transit vehicles and replace them with 24-seat buses and 15-passenger vans that have spacious, coffee-shop-like interiors. This will require about 10x more drivers than Metro Transit currently has, but costs will not rise significantly, since all of the drivers will be part-time and paid $18/hr. All Transit Revolution vehicles will have absolute traffic signal priority, second only to that of emergency vehicles. GPS will be used to keep vehicle spacing at 5 minutes, and dynamically dispatch more vehicles to overcrowded routes. In addition, neighborhood taxis will be used to bridge the last quarter mile from a transit stop. They will start at market rate fares, but churches and other organizations will be encouraged to subsidize taxi service in their areas. This will all be funded through a utility model, where every adult in the service area is charged $15/month and receives a Go-To card. With a Go-To card, fares are 50 cents a ride. Phase 1 will include that part of Minneapolis south and west of the river, east of the chain of lakes, and north of Minnehaha Creek. Phase 2 is an undefined expansion of that service, and Phase 3 includes everything within the beltway. Phase 4 is a secret at this time, due to pending patents.
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Sara Bergen » February 20th, 2014, 8:22 am

There are some fun SWLRT meetings happening today at St. Louis Park City Hall. The Corridor Managment Committee (the advisory body to the met council regarding the southwest light rail) is meeting today from 3:15 until 4:30. These are usually pretty interesting.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, the Southwest Community Works Steering Committee is also meeting at st. louis park city hall today from 1:30 to 3:00pm. I have not attended one of these meetings but they also look pretty interesting:

http://metrocouncil.org/Transportation/ ... ittee.aspx

http://www.swlrtcommunityworks.org/steering-committee


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