Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

[EOst]

I remain deeply skeptical that you could run LRT down Broadway without making it a worse street than it currently is, or at least without locking in its current deep hostility to people walking. As great as the Green Line is, the University Ave that came out of it just isn't a good street for how wide it is.

[SurlyLHT]

They're replacing the bridges at W. Broadway/Theo Wirth/Bottineau/Victory Drive at the cost of $50 Million. As far as I know there aren't any plans to make these LRT ready? Lyndale to Lowry to Bottineau would be easier, less population up there however the area could densify. It is also well connected to NE.

[alexschief]

I remain deeply skeptical that you could run LRT down Broadway without making it a worse street than it currently is, or at least without locking in its current deep hostility to people walking. As great as the Green Line is, the University Ave that came out of it just isn't a good street for how wide it is.

University Ave is a bad walking street because it's 120' wide, and because two car lanes were kept in each direction. Still, the version with the LRT is an improvement over what previously existed.

Broadway would be a tighter fit, with just about 80' of width. But that's an excuse to remove two lanes and narrow the others, for an overall increase in safety. This design is a slower street, with wider sidewalks, smoother vehicle flow, and light rail:

[SurlyLHT]

I remain deeply skeptical that you could run LRT down Broadway without making it a worse street than it currently is, or at least without locking in its current deep hostility to people walking. As great as the Green Line is, the University Ave that came out of it just isn't a good street for how wide it is.

University Ave is a bad walking street because it's 120' wide, and because two car lanes were kept in each direction. Still, the version with the LRT is an improvement over what previously existed.

Broadway would be a tighter fit, with just about 80' of width. But that's an excuse to remove two lanes and narrow the others, for an overall increase in safety. This design is a slower street, with wider sidewalks, smoother vehicle flow, and light rail:

This might work, a lot of the traffic on W. Broadway is just passing through onto Bottineau and if you want an LRT they can just ride that. With that said a lot of people park on Broadway and people wouldn't like losing those slots. There would also be fears of gentrification.

[Bakken2016]

This might work, a lot of the traffic on W. Broadway is just passing through onto Bottineau and if you want an LRT they can just ride that. With that said a lot of people park on Broadway and people wouldn't like losing those slots. There would also be fears of gentrification.

I have always felt we shouldn't worry about if we build transit, gentrification will happen. It is already happening anyways.

[Silophant]

True enough. The refusal to plan even a Central Avenue aBRT, much less an actual rail line, isn't slowing Northeast down at all.

[Tcmetro]

I think it's more nuanced than that. The Green Line seems like it's really driven a gentrification process in Midway and Frogtown. Blue Line had much less gentrification pressure because so much land around the Cedar-Riverside, Franklin, and Lake St stops is institutional. 38th, 46th, and 50th are predominantly SFH (and I'd have to check, but likely more owner-occupied).

Northeast and Midtown seem to have followed the stereotypical "arts district" gentrification pattern, while the North Side and Frogtown/Midway may be lower cost areas that gentrify from infrastructure improvements.

I think it's hard to route LRT through the north side in any case. The Penn/Queen plan for BLRT was terrible, and pretty much any on-street option isn't going to be preferable. Most of the North Side is SFH, so any route should be chosen where development is most likely to happen. I doubt a tunnel is feasible, but IMO any north side routing should stop at Broadway/Emerson-Lyndale and Broadway/Penn. The Olson Hwy plan does have merit because the stop at Olson/Van White mostly serves public housing.

[EOst]

University Ave is a bad walking street because it's 120' wide, and because two car lanes were kept in each direction. Still, the version with the LRT is an improvement over what previously existed.

Broadway would be a tighter fit, with just about 80' of width. But that's an excuse to remove two lanes and narrow the others, for an overall increase in safety. This design is a slower street, with wider sidewalks, smoother vehicle flow, and light rail:

A 6' sidewalk (even with a 4' buffer) on a major commercial and pedestrian corridor is just inadequate, full-stop. In many respects that is a worse walking environment than currently exists. And Hennepin County would never build 10' curb-adjacent lanes with no gutter zone/curb reaction zone. Those lanes would be 12' minimum, and there's no hand-waving that would make it otherwise.

[alexschief]

I think the 'transit leads to gentrification argument' leads to really problematic conclusions; namely that we shouldn't build nice things in poor neighborhoods because they might then become more desirable. I also think the case for Green Line gentrification is easily overstated. To my knowledge there has not been a single market rate or unsubsidized housing project built along University to the east of Hampden. The primary problem in the University corridor neighborhoods is still poverty, not yuppies moving in, and these neighborhoods need more investment, not less.

University Ave is a bad walking street because it's 120' wide, and because two car lanes were kept in each direction. Still, the version with the LRT is an improvement over what previously existed.

Broadway would be a tighter fit, with just about 80' of width. But that's an excuse to remove two lanes and narrow the others, for an overall increase in safety. This design is a slower street, with wider sidewalks, smoother vehicle flow, and light rail:

A 6' sidewalk (even with a 4' buffer) on a major commercial and pedestrian corridor is just inadequate, full-stop. In many respects that is a worse walking environment than currently exists. And Hennepin County would never build 10' curb-adjacent lanes with no gutter zone/curb reaction zone. Those lanes would be 12' minimum, and there's no hand-waving that would make it otherwise.

The sidewalk width isn't ideal, but it's an improvement over the existing condition. By comparison sidewalks on Nicollet are 10-14', sidewalks on Grand are 12', and you can create more commercial sidewalk space by working with developers to set commercial buildings back a couple feet, which commonly occurs on both of those corridors.

The issue with the gutters can be solved by being creative with the LRT bed. In many cities, rail runs on permeable right-of-way planted with grass, and the 15' LRT lanes that I've assigned are generous (copied from University, which includes gutters). It's a snug fit, but I believe the design issues can be overcome.

And the benefit of actual frequent transit that serves an extremely transit-dependent part of the city is really significant and worth the tradeoffs. Imagine the benefits of a line on the Lyndale N/Broadway alignment with stops at Plymouth, Emerson/Freemont, Penn, and North Memorial. The alternative is to build a line in which none of the four stops that ostensibly serve North Minneapolis are easy to access and proximate to where most people live and work.

[MNdible]

Note that Broadway is in fact less than 80' in width for a critical stretch, and also that you've cut the street section where there isn't a station. And the magical thinking that you can have a 10' drive lane smacked right up against the curb without accounting for the gutter and snow storage is a streets.mn classic.

Smart people studied putting LRT on Broadway. There's a good reason that it was dismissed as on option.

[mattaudio]

And the magical thinking that you can have a 10' drive lane smacked right up against the curb without accounting for the gutter and snow storage is a streets.mn classic.

(Not that it was a good thing) This was permissible all over the city when engineers wanted to cram in Four Lane Death Roads all around the city.

[amiller92]

They're replacing the bridges at W. Broadway/Theo Wirth/Bottineau/Victory Drive at the cost of $50 Million. As far as I know there aren't any plans to make these LRT ready? Lyndale to Lowry to Bottineau would be easier, less population up there however the area could densify. It is also well connected to NE.

For all of the discussion these things get, it can often really be simplified to "where did the streetcar go." That's where the housing is denser, because it grew up around the streetcar, and that's where the destinations are.

We can debate mode, I guess, but if it's going on a street, they were probably right about the routing the first time.

[MNdible]

Sure, and a streetcar on Broadway makes all kinds of sense. But the infrastructure and spatial demands of LRT make it a bad fit.

[mattaudio]

I do actually agree that at-grade LRT on Penn or Broadway would probably be bad. Broadway could be at-grade on the stroady part until North Memorial / Victory Parkway, but then ideally it could head underground. An underground section from where Broadway de-stroads just east of Victory to where 7th Stroad begins at Van White/Emerson/Fremont is about 1.9 miles. This section should be tunneled.

And don't tell me we can't tunnel... our first LRT line included a bored tunnel of about 1.5 miles including an underground station.

[alexschief]

I mean, the central problem that's illustrated here is that we design our streets by first thinking about what the green book tells us that cars need, and then trying to jam other modes in the space that is left over. It's telling that impinging upon car travel in various ways is unthinkable, even on this forum, while impinging upon transit by having a $2B train get stuck in traffic is considered by some to be the Good and Wise compromise solution.

What I'm saying is that, instead of designing billions of dollars of transit investment with the primary objective not to make AASHTO mad, maybe the first priority should be to make the transit really really good.

[amiller92]

If there was a way to make Broadway one way, and thus eliminate the "need" for a travel lane in one direction, that should be on the table. But part of what makes Broadway the choice for where this should go is that it diverges from the grid (and it's where stuff is), so there's no obvious way to do that.

[tmart]

Note that Broadway is in fact less than 80' in width for a critical stretch, and also that you've cut the street section where there isn't a station. And the magical thinking that you can have a 10' drive lane smacked right up against the curb without accounting for the gutter and snow storage is a streets.mn classic.

Smart people studied putting LRT on Broadway. There's a good reason that it was dismissed as on option.

Those smart people were also working under the assumption that locating in railroad ROW would be significantly easier, cheaper, and faster to complete than elsewhere, and that these advantages would justify choosing less-practical station locations. Now that that assumption no longer holds, it makes sense to reassess.

Re: the specific widths, IMO it would be entirely reasonable in the most constrained sections to cut to one car lane each way, with no turn lane and no parking. Banning left turns on major arteries, particularly transit-supporting arteries, is a relatively common practice, and most of the affected area on Broadway is surrounded by a well-connected, functioning grid that softens the blow. That would leave ample space for LRT tracks, one 10' lane each way, a gutter, a buffer, and a generous sidewalk.

Perhaps it would take some political courage to remove the parking in particular, but as a practical matter, the area is already a sea of underutilized surface parking and a number of cross-streets also serve as alternatives.

[mattaudio]

Smart people studied putting LRT on Broadway. There's a good reason that it was dismissed as on option.

Are those the same smart people that got us a mile-long $160 million tunnel along Southwest LRT so that freight trains can operate above light rail trains?

[SurlyLHT]

It's probably best to just put it on W. Broadway. Do a parking study and probably find out they'll be fine with parking on the cross streets. A lot of the congestion is people passing through and they can either find another route to the NW Metro (55, 100, 94) or get on the LRT. Treat the businesses on W Broadway well and make friends with the most influential ones like Cookie Cart, Juxta and Cub Foods and then build the darn thing and make sure the new bridges across Theo Wirth Parkway can handle LRT. Bottom line is this will serve the folks in North well and the suburbanites passing through will get upset but oh well. (Putting LRT in would also be an opportunity to remove some lights. ) I also would like to see some sort of actual stations where this intersects the C an D lines. The one near Emerson and Fremont should maybe have a police substation.

[twincitizen]

BP Mayor Jeff Lunde is going to run for Opat's seat on the County Board. Despite his status a member of the Republican party, Lunde is quite popular in Brooklyn Park and I think most people have been happy with his run as mayor. He came around to supporting light rail and would almost certainly make it a huge priority on the county board to continue on with the current alignment and station locations in Brooklyn Park. Lunde will be a formidable candidate in this race...the only way to beat him will be with a candidate who already has name recognition in the area and could get a DFL endorsement. Hopefully one of the current state reps/senators in this district is considering a run (for reasons that extend well beyond Bottineau, obviously)