Nicollet Mall

[mattaudio]

I wonder how much a true north-south transit tunnel would have cost when Nicollet already got a utilities-up reconstruction. I dreamed.

[twincitizen]

So why is this under serious consideration now but was not a decade ago when the state and city spent $5 million per block to rebuilt Nicollet?

Reason #1 is there was no capacity to add local buses on Marq2 in ~2014 when the rebuild was being planned. Metro Transit was struggling to get express buses through the Marq2 corridor at the speed that was projected in the Marq2 rebuild just a few years prior. There was absolutely some level of interest in moving buses off the mall then, it just wasn't an option. Hindsight being 20/20, if Hennepin had been rebuilt first, with bus lanes, maybe the conversation about transit on Nicollet would have gone differently. At the very least it would have been more realistic to keep buses on Hennepin since they had to be moved there for 2+ years anyways.

[angrysuburbanite]

When your community engagement presentation has words like "mixed reaction" and "lots of uncertainty", and the top option is "no change," I think it becomes abundantly clear that something is wrong with your proposal.

Downtown Minneapolis is not in a state that can facilitate both a transit-only corridor and a pedestrian-only corridor, and it all comes back to a lack of storefronts and things to do, neither of which are addressed with a pedestrianization project. There is little to do on Nicollet other than going to Target and riding buses, and getting rid one of those two means there is literally no reason to be on Nicollet. Only once this has been addressed can pedestrianization be considered, and either on another, newly "activated" street or coinciding with a transit tunnel. I would like to see a storefront requirement on some high percentage (70-80%) of street-facing buildings on not just Nicollet, but also the new transit corridor, otherwise transit will grow more inconvenient and feel less safe in a completely barren streetscape.

[BigIdeasGuy]

- That same mayor's favorite constituency is the downtown business community who equate "I can see a poor person from my office" with "crime is out of control."

I generally appreciate your point that you are trying to make here but comments phrased like this are completely unhelpful and unproductive both in this conversation about DT and about crime and policing in general.

Almost everything and everyone in this world is some shade of grey including the challenges facing downtown. Comments like this imply that one person, group or side is entirely bad and therefore their perspective or input isn't valid or worthy of listening to. That approach isn't going to move any conversation forward and likely put people on the defensive rather vs having an open mind.

In this case the statement implies that rich people are entirely at fault for being uncomfortable without spending a second to ask why they might are. Is it a person experiencing homelessness keeping to themselves or is it someone doing hard drugs in the open or somewhere in between, I think most reasonable people would have completely different responses to those two situations. This is really no different from the conversation we've had about LRT a few times.

The larger point I'm trying to make we aren't going solve any of DT challenges with an all or nothing approach or simply by following one stakeholder strategy. Solutions are going to have to end up being a blend approaches and idea from everyone at the table. Starting out unilaterally dismissing and assuming the worst in any group isn't going to get any closer to addressing the problems DT faces

[thespeedmccool]

- That same mayor's favorite constituency is the downtown business community who equate "I can see a poor person from my office" with "crime is out of control."

I think this is the key reason. They keep talking about making Nicollet Mall into "Minnesota's Main Street" and clearly transit riders don't fit into that idyllic picture.

Providence, RI just went through this with their downtown bus hub. Essentially, one big property owner in that city (Joe Paolino, look him up) could see the bus station from his office and didn't think it was good for property values. In the end, I think they cancelled the idea of moving the busses because any theoretical move was astronomically worse for riders. Sounds familiar.

There's a lot of anxiety about getting downtown office workers back and reinvigorating private investment, and a certain kind of person thinks "transit=crime" and won't come downtown anymore if they see a bus. Frey is caving to that kind of person because they have money he'd like them to spend downtown (oh, and they're his campaign's biggest supporters.)

If we can get bus lanes on Hennepin out of this, it might be worth it, but the reaction from most regular riders has been pretty negative. I think a pedestrian mall downtown would be cool but it's a little too transparent that the people pushing this are mostly concerned with those plebs who take the bus mucking up their white-collar office amusement park.

[Silophant]

I made it to today's public meeting at the IDS center. There was very good turnout for a midday meeting, and the vibe seemed fairly mixed between support and opposition for the move - a good reality check from the Bluesky consensus that the current state of transit on Nicollet is ideal, actually, and the proposed changes are just step one in Rainville's grand scheme to ban poor people from downtown.

A few thoughts after talking to the various MT and city planners for an hour or so:

- Nothing's finalized yet, obviously, but they are intending to move the Nicollet and 7th/8th BRT stations to Marquette if either of the Marquette/2nd options is chosen, to preserve quick transfers from the N/S routes to the E/W routes. No change if the 3rd Ave option is chosen, since there's BRT stations between 3rd and 4th already.

- Similarly, they are looking at bus lanes on Hennepin as well, since that would become the busiest street for buses in downtown with the E Line, 4, 11, 25, and 6.

- Many of the drivers really dislike operating on Nicollet Mall - the ubiquitous midblock pedestrian crossings and bikes weaving in and out is pretty stressful to operate a large vehicle through.

- It's really easy to say "Simply implement TSP, so buses never have to wait for a red", but nigh-impossible to actually implement it on a corridor that has a bus moving through every 80 seconds during the PM peak. You could do it, if you accept tremendous backups on the cross streets that are barely ever going to get a green during rush hour, but that's... not really workable when the cross streets also carry high-priority transit lines.

- I think people who are used to the Nicollet buses detouring for a few blocks at the drop of a hat are underestimating the legibility/usability hit that comes with that. It's bad enough with the local routes, it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have the F Line (or future Rt 18 BRT) move away from its normal stations because of Holidazzle, or the Farmer's Market, or an office building getting a rooftop unit replaced, or whatever. The issue with Nicollet only being two narrow lanes wide is that even single-lane closures require detouring one direction of buses - when a lane needs to be closed on Marquette or Hennepin or Washington buses can just go around without a whole detour.

- With express bus services probably never returning to their 2019 peak, this is about as good of an opportunity as we'll get to reimagine Marquette and 2nd in a way that doesn't backslide on the amount of downtown street space dedicated to private vehicle traffic. We've avoided it this long because downtown traffic just hasn't been that bad, but eventually there's going to be some pretty reasonable questions about why the city is maintaining the existing Marq2 setup that's only running at like 10-20% of its design capacity.

All in all, this strikes me as a well-considered proposal that's going to improve just about every non-express bus route passing through downtown. Is removing buses going to restore Nicollet to its 1960s heyday? Of course not, but keeping them isn't going to do that either. Nicollet is going to live or die based on the businesses and attractions located on it, not because people are or aren't waiting for a bus on it. While I don't necessarily buy that the Downtown Council's plan is going to be super successful in revitalizing Nicollet, they're at least on the right track in wanting Nicollet to be busy because it's a place people actually want to be, versus the status quo of Nicollet being busy because that's where bus riders have wait while they're trying to go somewhere else.

[BikesOnFilm]

In this case the statement implies that rich people are entirely at fault for being uncomfortable without spending a second to ask why they might are. Is it a person experiencing homelessness keeping to themselves or is it someone doing hard drugs in the open or somewhere in between, I think most reasonable people would have completely different responses to those two situations. This is really no different from the conversation we've had about LRT a few times.

I'm directly referring to the Michael Rainville anecdote where a business leader sat him down next to his office window and points out how gross the people on Nicollet he can see are. My comment wasn't trying to be a nuanced reflection of the entire DT business community, it was a joking reflection of that one particular moment that's been elevated by a guy who thought it was important enough to share with the public.

Though it's also worth asking - does any crime/discomfort/etc get better if we treat the symptoms (ie., someone rich has to see it) and not the cause (lack of bathrooms leading to people going on the street, lack of treatment options and shelters leading to public drug use etc.) by moving it one street over? Like even just focusing on something like public defecation, how is Marquette better equipped to fix this?

The answer - it isn't. And once it's out of sight, there's going to be even less pressure to put in the public restrooms that are badly needed, because the people made uncomfortable with having to look at poverty already got what they wanted. They don't have to see it, so they no longer have to acknowledge it exists.

If the rich are uncomfortable, it's fine to ask them why. But generally speaking, I don't like their proposed solutions. Because they mostly are "hide it from me as cheaply as possible and lower my taxes."

[Nick]

a good reality check from the Bluesky consensus

So no one's really learning any lessons from the past decade, huh?

[twincitizen]

- I think people who are used to the Nicollet buses detouring for a few blocks at the drop of a hat are underestimating the legibility/usability hit that comes with that. It's bad enough with the local routes, it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have the F Line (or future Rt 18 BRT) move away from its normal stations because of Holidazzle, or the Farmer's Market, or an office building getting a rooftop unit replaced, or whatever. The issue with Nicollet only being two narrow lanes wide is that even single-lane closures require detouring one direction of buses - when a lane needs to be closed on Marquette or Hennepin or Washington buses can just go around without a whole detour.

- With express bus services probably never returning to their 2019 peak, this is about as good of an opportunity as we'll get to reimagine Marquette and 2nd in a way that doesn't backslide on the amount of downtown street space dedicated to private vehicle traffic. We've avoided it this long because downtown traffic just hasn't been that bad, but eventually there's going to be some pretty reasonable questions about why the city is maintaining the existing Marq2 setup that's only running at like 10-20% of its design capacity.

All in all, this strikes me as a well-considered proposal that's going to improve just about every non-express bus route passing through downtown. Is removing buses going to restore Nicollet to its 1960s heyday? Of course not, but keeping them isn't going to do that either. Nicollet is going to live or die based on the businesses and attractions located on it, not because people are or aren't waiting for a bus on it. While I don't necessarily buy that the Downtown Council's plan is going to be super successful in revitalizing Nicollet, they're at least on the right track in wanting Nicollet to be busy because it's a place people actually want to be, versus the status quo of Nicollet being busy because that's where bus riders have wait while they're trying to go somewhere else.

Excellent points made here. The first one is a really undersung reason to move buses off the mall. How was that all supposed to work with a streetcar again (rhetorical question). Frankly the issue of needing to detour buses off the mall for so many events should have been a bigger discussion point during reconstruction planning. Nicollet is so unserious as a transit corridor when buses get bumped during rush hour for a weekly farmers market.