Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[Korh]

I just thought of something that would probably piss off everyone.
the Met Council decides to delay the line west of bryn mawr or W 21st till they get additional funding a la northstar/st. cloud so after years of waiting all we get is maybe a mile of new line with a stop at a farmers market and two empty fields.

[DanPatchToget]

I highly doubt that would happen since construction west of Minneapolis has made substantial progress. While the tracks are already laid between Big Lake and St. Cloud, they're owned by a private railroad operating a lot of trains on those tracks, and building additional track plus running commuter trains on them would require sending BNSF a big paycheck. One of many reasons why our railway network should be nationalized, but that's a topic for another thread on another day.

[Trademark]

Life gives you lemons proposal:

1. convert the Hopkins OMF to be able to run a commuter type service from Southwest Station to West Lake.

2. Riders get two choices to continue. First, an extended 21 or reinstallation of the 12.

3. Or at Wooddale station buses could run a BRT service hoping on 7 to 100 on the 394 Center lanes. To downtown Minneapolis where the currently closed Ramp B transit center could be opened to provide connections to the Green and Blue Lines. (Possible pop up micro BRT conversion of those lanes to all day 2-way HOT lanes. Possible West End Stop. But that's fantasy map territory).

4. Start off with 30 minute peak 60 minute off peak single car. That can be run with vehicles to spare with 5 LRV so as not to overload the Hopkins pop up OMF.

5. If maintenance is needed use a Northstar diesel engine to pull trains or ay a freight company to move it to the Franklin OMF. A tie in on the Southwest corridor and one on the Greenway spur that crosses east river rd to connect to the blue line.

Us Minnesotans were promised something. We suffered thru a bad routing and a stupid tunnel. Now the ship has sailed but we can still adapt and have a service like this run for 3 years until we can finally get the whole green line. If 2/3 of the line is complete. Then run what's complete! Make an effort!


Sidenote: If only.plans were made to activate midtown rail on the Greenway to route all the way to west lake and Eden prairie via subway ala an old proposal I saw circa 1960-1980.

[twinkess]

So instead of the Hennepin Avenue Subway we get... nothing till 2027...

Side note the tunnel works are now visible on satellite view: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.951599, ... a=!3m1!1e3

[COLSLAW5]

It was eliminated entirely at some point. The 100% plans still show a "Rail Support Facility" at that location, but it must just be for track maintenance trucks or something, there's no rail connection to the building.

Hmm...no rail connection to the building but I do see there is a pocket track included. I wonder what that's about. Looks just long enough (600') to hold two three-car trainsets. I'm unsure what that means though. Would a limited number of drivers be able to begin a shift here / shift changes throughout the day? I suppose that would require those trains being left there unattended all night. Seems more likely the pocket track is only for emergency purposes like equipment failures and whatnot.

it will be similar to the building along the blue line near 26th street, a "rail support facility". It will house more of the track and power maintenance people, extra rail, ties gate arms, etc. The side tracks are there more to load things onto the track or to store extra trains for special events.

[minntransplant]

ANY hope of getting more light rail politically just went out the window.

Agreed. We are already seeing comments from GOP state reps and gubernatorial candidates about this. They are going to use this as the reason the state can't fund any other train lines.

[Nick]

My guess is that the very smart people who’ve repeatedly fucked up this project over the past fifteen years are going to hear creative ideas like running the trains between Eden Prairie and Beltline or West Lake and roll their eyes so hard their retinas detach. “Internet commenters just don’t understand how things work in the real world, unfortunately.”

[tedlanda2571]

ANY hope of getting more light rail politically just went out the window.

Agreed. We are already seeing comments from GOP state reps and gubernatorial candidates about this. They are going to use this as the reason the state can't fund any other train lines.

If you want to give yourself a good chuckle, just picture for a moment the general reception to be received by any Minnesota state legislator stepping up in support of the <next> light rail line.

[Trademark]

It was eliminated entirely at some point. The 100% plans still show a "Rail Support Facility" at that location, but it must just be for track maintenance trucks or something, there's no rail connection to the building.

Hmm...no rail connection to the building but I do see there is a pocket track included. I wonder what that's about. Looks just long enough (600') to hold two three-car trainsets. I'm unsure what that means though. Would a limited number of drivers be able to begin a shift here / shift changes throughout the day? I suppose that would require those trains being left there unattended all night. Seems more likely the pocket track is only for emergency purposes like equipment failures and whatnot.

it will be similar to the building along the blue line near 26th street, a "rail support facility". It will house more of the track and power maintenance people, extra rail, ties gate arms, etc. The side tracks are there more to load things onto the track or to store extra trains for special events.

If it can store extra trains for special events. Could it not store trains for service. A single car 30 minute service would not take many vehicles.

[Trademark]

ANY hope of getting more light rail politically just went out the window.

Agreed. We are already seeing comments from GOP state reps and gubernatorial candidates about this. They are going to use this as the reason the state can't fund any other train lines.

If you want to give yourself a good chuckle, just picture for a moment the general reception to be received by any Minnesota state legislator stepping up in support of the <next> light rail line.

We'll likely find out soon with the $200 million for the Blue Line EXT being proposed in the budget.

[alexschief]

A 2027 opening date is really wild. I don't really get how it's possible.

Civil construction is supposed to be complete in July of 2025. Then there would be at least eighteen months of systems construction and testing, with the line opening sometime in early 2027.

This five year timeline, starting today, is longer than the entire construction period of the original Central Corridor (2010-2014) or the original expected construction period of the Southwest Corridor itself (2019-2023). This is despite the fact that civil construction on the Southwest Corridor is currently 63% done. So in essence, the remaining 37% of construction and systems work on the Southwest Corridor will take longer than 100% of the construction and systems work on the Central Corridor, or the 100% of the construction and systems work originally expected for the Southwest Corridor itself. How is that possible to do a substantial portion of the work and still end up further in time from the finish than when you started?

The length of time for the systems work specifically really confuses me. At last night's meeting, project staff spoke about how they are speeding up some of the process by completing civil construction on sections of the line and then starting systems work on those sections before the entire line is fully complete. Yet the eighteen months budgeted for that systems work appears to be longer than the time that was originally expected for systems work from the October 2022 end of civil construction to the start of revenue service sometime in 2023 (thirteen months at the most). How is it possible to save time and end up spending more time than before?

Construction issues are not my area of expertise, but what's going on with the timeline of this project seems more confusing than it ought to be.

What's also nuts (and this is a point that project staff made in their presentation) is that despite all of this, the project will still be cheaper than the US average for similar projects. The entire cost of this project will be much cheaper than the overruns alone on Maryland's disastrous Purple Line project. The entire time of construction on this project will be much less than the delay alone on Honolulu's HART project. There are big systemic issues here.

[thespeedmccool]

I can hope they're leaving all that time between construction completion and operations so they can underpromise and overdeliver. Either that or they're leaving wiggle room in there for potential future delays.

The third option, which I really hope it isn't, is that they're anticipating that the tunnel just isn't gonna work out. Leaving 18 months for "testing" is really leaving 18 months to see if the tunnel becomes a leaky failure as soon as it's completed. 18 months from July 2025 gives them a chance to test the tunnel the following spring with no pressure that the line would have to be operational in just a couple months.

I didn't realize LRTs nationwide were so incredibly expensive and poorly implemented until the Met Council made that point yesterday. There's clearly some systemic underestimation of these projects complexities and costs. Whether it's a lack of engineering expertise or, more cynically, transit authorities knowingly underestimating so they can get buy in early when it's cheap and let the cost creep up when they've already gone through all the planning, there needs to be a top-to-bottom reform of transit projects nationwide. They take too long, cost too much, and are rarely planned with transit best practices in mind.

[Tyler]

Yep, there just gonna try to get a win at the end by saying "opening a year early" or whatever (hopefully)

There is some major issue with infrastructure costs in the US. I don't know enough about it but MTA in NYC just said it would cost 55 million per station just to add platform doors. I mean, lol.

[Trademark]

I can hope they're leaving all that time between construction completion and operations so they can underpromise and overdeliver. Either that or they're leaving wiggle room in there for potential future delays.

The third option, which I really hope it isn't, is that they're anticipating that the tunnel just isn't gonna work out. Leaving 18 months for "testing" is really leaving 18 months to see if the tunnel becomes a leaky failure as soon as it's completed. 18 months from July 2025 gives them a chance to test the tunnel the following spring with no pressure that the line would have to be operational in just a couple months.

I didn't realize LRTs nationwide were so incredibly expensive and poorly implemented until the Met Council made that point yesterday. There's clearly some systemic underestimation of these projects complexities and costs. Whether it's a lack of engineering expertise or, more cynically, transit authorities knowingly underestimating so they can get buy in early when it's cheap and let the cost creep up when they've already gone through all the planning, there needs to be a top-to-bottom reform of transit projects nationwide. They take too long, cost too much, and are rarely planned with transit best practices in mind.

Id recommend looking into the work of Alon Levy. He has done a ton of deep-diving research into why transit costs so much in the United States.

[twincitizen]

I can hope they're leaving all that time between construction completion and operations so they can underpromise and overdeliver. Either that or they're leaving wiggle room in there for potential future delays.

The third option, which I really hope it isn't, is that they're anticipating that the tunnel just isn't gonna work out. Leaving 18 months for "testing" is really leaving 18 months to see if the tunnel becomes a leaky failure as soon as it's completed. 18 months from July 2025 gives them a chance to test the tunnel the following spring with no pressure that the line would have to be operational in just a couple months.

Scary thought, but yeah this probably shouldn't be ruled out as an outcome.

[COLSLAW5]

I can hope they're leaving all that time between construction completion and operations so they can underpromise and overdeliver. Either that or they're leaving wiggle room in there for potential future delays.

The third option, which I really hope it isn't, is that they're anticipating that the tunnel just isn't gonna work out. Leaving 18 months for "testing" is really leaving 18 months to see if the tunnel becomes a leaky failure as soon as it's completed. 18 months from July 2025 gives them a chance to test the tunnel the following spring with no pressure that the line would have to be operational in just a couple months.

Scary thought, but yeah this probably shouldn't be ruled out as an outcome.

They never waterproofed the tunnel at the airport appropriately and have just been fixing that the past few years, so I could see this as an outcome, but also something that could probably be fixed after the fact too

[thespeedmccool]

Imagine the firestorm that will erupt when in 2028 the Met Council needs $100 million to properly waterproof the tunnel.

[Bakken2016]

I can hope they're leaving all that time between construction completion and operations so they can underpromise and overdeliver. Either that or they're leaving wiggle room in there for potential future delays.

The third option, which I really hope it isn't, is that they're anticipating that the tunnel just isn't gonna work out. Leaving 18 months for "testing" is really leaving 18 months to see if the tunnel becomes a leaky failure as soon as it's completed. 18 months from July 2025 gives them a chance to test the tunnel the following spring with no pressure that the line would have to be operational in just a couple months.

Scary thought, but yeah this probably shouldn't be ruled out as an outcome.

They never waterproofed the tunnel at the airport appropriately and have just been fixing that the past few years, so I could see this as an outcome, but also something that could probably be fixed after the fact too

I believe the way they are constructing and sealing this tunnel will make it waterproof, there’s a video on their YouTube about it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tom H.]

At the risk of reopening old wounds, remember when the 3A / 3C debate was won by essentially saying "we can't reconsider 3C, the planning process would restart and add years to the timeline"? I don't think even the most pessimistic estimates back then would have pushed opening out to 2027, even if all the LPA studies had had to be redone to accomodate 3C.

[DanPatchToget]

Considering the relative speed they're taking with choosing a new route for the Blue Line Extension, I think it's well within the realm of possibility that had we reconsidered and ultimately chosen the Uptown route it would've opened in 2027 or earlier than the current Southwest LRT routing.

Of course this is all would've/could've/should've. Since we're stuck in this mess, I hope the Met Council will consider some way of opening part of Southwest LRT before 2027.