An Amazing Race 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Silophant]

As many of you probably remember, on the Green Line's first weekday of service last year, the Star Tribune did an empirical test of the fastest way from downtown to downtown. The results, from the State Capitol to the Star Tribune building (may it rest in peace):

Car, via I-94: 26 minutes
Bike: 31 minutes
Green Line: 42 minutes
Route 3: 47 minutes
Route 94, via a transfer from the 62: 59 minutes

Twincitizen and I were talking about this about a month ago, and it seems like, now that the Green Line has had most of the kinks worked out, it would be a fun idea to redo the race for a streets.mn post, with a few modifications to better reflect a more normal DT-DT trip. For example, the start and endpoints the Strib chose meant that the car driver avoided both downtown cores, and the sloow traffic that goes with them, while the 94 rider started by hopping on an eastbound bus to transfer to the 94. Additionally, their race didn't start until 8:30 on a Friday, which means that the car missed the worst of the rush-hour traffic on 94. (So did the bus, but the contestant missed her transfer, adding a 20-minute penalty to her trip.) We could instead start at 7:30 from some point in St. Paul that ensures that all contestants are 1-2 blocks from their stop or parking stop, and end at a similar point in Minneapolis.

So, does anyone have the desire/ability to help me out with this? I figure we need a minimum of three people - one for the train, one for the 94, and one to drive. It would be cool to have someone bike it again, but I'm a strong believer in not asking anyone to do something you're not willing to do yourself, and since I don't have a shower available at my office, I'm not willing to bike ten miles before work. As for the Route 3... I'm not really sure why anyone would take that all the way between the downtowns when the Green Line (or the old 16, even) is available. I can do just about any weekday morning. It would be cool to do this within the next couple of weeks, so that when my entire office goes to a three-day convention at RiverCentre in mid-November, I (hopefully) have some evidence to point at when I'm trying to convince all the normal express-bus riders to hop on the 94 instead of driving in and complaining about paying for parking.



Also, how does one send out stuff to the streets.mn mailing list? Is it done via the website, or what?

[twincitizen]

Love it!
I could participate on a Friday (not this Friday) or every other Friday following that. I could drive, bike, whatever, since I'll have that day off work

[acs]

Try the race going west to east this time.

[Nathan]

I'm free most Fridays!

[twincitizen]

Could potentially have folks going in both directions, though that would require 8 participants (LRT, 94 bus, bike, drive)

I think the general framework of what Silophant described is good. The trips should originate and end at places (office or residential locations) that are a couple blocks from the LRT Stop. The car driver would have to retrieve the car from a garage and/or park on street in a constrained area.

Eastbound trip scenario:
North Loop resident works at Capitol Complex or Regions Hospital (or Met Council HQ if it must be downtown)

Westbound trip scenario could be:
Lowertown resident works at IDS or similar

[amiller92]

Could potentially have folks going in both directions, though that would require 8 participants (LRT, 94 bus, bike, drive)

I think the general framework of what Silophant described is good. The trips should originate and end at places (office or residential locations) that are a couple blocks from the LRT Stop. The car driver would have to retrieve the car from a garage and/or park on street in a constrained area.

Eastbound trip scenario:
North Loop resident works at Capitol Complex or Regions Hospital (or Met Council HQ if it must be downtown)

Westbound trip scenario could be:
Lowertown resident works at IDS or similar

How about banker/lawyer needs to visit St. Paul client: IDS to Ecolab or Securian?