Nicollet-Central Streetcar

[mattaudio]

Aren't there still taxi stands on most of the cross streets between Nicollet and Marquette? Doesn't seem like a big deal to walk a block for a taxi stand. Honestly the current situation is a mess anyways, with taxis lurking and getting in the way of buses later in the evenings.

[trkaiser]

Aren't there still taxi stands on most of the cross streets between Nicollet and Marquette? Doesn't seem like a big deal to walk a block for a taxi stand. Honestly the current situation is a mess anyways, with taxis lurking and getting in the way of buses later in the evenings.

Taxi stands?

[mulad]

Just curbside parking that is dedicated to taxis, like this:

http://goo.gl/maps/qRXos

[woofner]

I think you'll find cities in the UK are going back to trolley sytems, cities like Croydon, Oxford, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, & Leeds (and the list keeps growing) have all in recent year built small (but growing) trolley system that have proved very popular.

These are all more like what we would call light rail than what is being considered for Nicollet-Central (which is being called modern streetcar). They mostly run on reserved right-of-way, and even those that have fairly extensive shared ROW have either widely spaced stops (1000-1500') or periodically have short segments of reserved ROW that preserve the transit advantage (this is what Strasbourg's system does so successfully in the city center) or both (see Croydon).

I have yet to see a city that has developed something like the American modern streetcar system from scratch. Any cities outside the USA that have modern streetcars have replaced legacy streetcar systems, and frankly many of those resemble more what we call light rail. Enhanced bus, on the other hand, is used extensively throughout the world both to supplement and replace local bus systems. It has spurred development in places like Albuquerque. I could spend a bunch of time listing all the advantages that have been attributed here to streetcars, but I'll just say that every single one could apply to enhanced buses, too. I will welcome a streetcar as a needed if minor improvement to transit service on Nicollet and Central, but I cannot agree that it's a better decision to build 3 miles of streetcar than to build 9 miles of enhanced bus.

It would be completely unacceptable to have the streetcar delayed behind buses on the Nicollet Mall segment. It would defeat all of the arguments in favor of streetcar (level boarding platforms, off-board fare collection, all-door boarding, signal priority, etc).

Anyone know what percentage of total Nicollet Mall boardings & alightings are on the 10 & 18? The other Mall-running routes are 11,17, & 25. Where should those routes go? Marq2? Hennepin?

In my opinion, this is one of the arguments against streetcar service. As currently planned, these routes would continue to run on Nicollet Mall. At the open house I mentioned MNdible's point about the limited stop overlay planned in both alternatives being unable to pass the local service on 2-lane segments of Nicollet, and it seemed that this hadn't occurred to the planners. This issue would affect Nicollet Mall service as well if the attributes listed by twincitizen didn't apply to other bus routes as well during this segment, and it doesn't seem that this has been considered at all in this process yet.

But if we're fantasizing that reasonable decisions will be made at some point in this process, I'd say that the Lowry Hill/Kenwood leg of the 25 should be taken over by the 2 so the northern leg can go down Hennepin and terminate at the 7th St garage. Similarly, the 17 should terminate at Uptown, with service hour savings going to extending the 27 to Uptown (this is the best of many good reasons to change 26th & 28th to two-ways). The northern leg could also terminate at 7th St garage, or it could jut east on Washington and go down Portland-Park for better service in this part of Downtown. The latter could also be done for the 11, which could then proceed down Portland/Park to jut over to 4th Ave at Lake or so. This option would be better if Portland was a two-way.

Taxis should be banned from the Mall regardless of whether streetcar or enhanced bus is chosen.

[UptownSport]

At the open house I mentioned MNdible's point about the limited stop overlay planned in both alternatives being unable to pass the local service on 2-lane segments of Nicollet, and it seemed that this hadn't occurred to the planners.

I though this was the Raison d'être for Marquette and fourth bus lines- One bus could pass another.
Not at all a Nicollet mall rider, but I'm fully aware that buses stack up due to it being a NPZ (No passing Zone)
How could this have NOT occurred to planners?

I'd say that the Lowry Hill/Kenwood leg of the 25 should be taken over by the 2 so the northern leg can go down Hennepin and terminate at the 7th St garage. Similarly, the 17 should terminate at Uptown, with service hour savings going to extending the 27 to Uptown (this is the best of many good reasons to change 26th & 28th to two-ways). The northern leg could also terminate at 7th St garage, or it could jut east on Washington and go down Portland-Park for better service in this part of Downtown. The latter could also be done for the 11, which could then proceed down Portland/Park to jut over to 4th Ave at Lake or so. This option would be better if Portland was a two-way.

To me, these one-ways are very efficient. Could you explain why you'd want to revert back to two-ways? There are plenty of those in existence right now.

[Silophant]

Mayor Rybak is scarily enthusiastic about streetcars.

[talindsay]

The man can drive me crazy sometimes and I think he gets tunnel-vision of his proposals more often than he should. But you've got to give the guy credit, he's optimistic, he has a vision, and he's really passionate about Minneapolis.

[woofner]

To me, these one-ways are very efficient. Could you explain why you'd want to revert back to two-ways? There are plenty of those in existence right now.

The number one reason would be to make them more useful for transit. One-way pairs make transit illegible, especially if they're separated by a block in the middle. Also they make route spacing awkward, which is true for Portland & Park, where Park is 2 blocks from the 5 service on Chicago but Portland is a less duplicative 4 blocks. But it's especially true for 26th & 28th, where the two-way pair inhibits the creation of the half-mile transit grid that would be necessary for this dense area to allow transit riders to locate anywhere within it (as opposed to right now, where transit users are much better off locating near either Lake or Franklin to take advantage of service in any of the cardinal directions, because locating near 26th makes it much more difficult to go east or west). Transit has the potential to move a significant percentage of trips on these roads, so a responsible engineer would take into account the design's effect on the transit network, something the engineers of the 60s who created the one-way pairs were clearly not doing.

But there's also no question these roads are also overbuilt. Last year's restriping of Park and Portland has shown that only two lanes are needed in each direction on that corridor; it's likely that two three lane streets would do just as good a job handling the existing traffic. 26th & 28th have even less traffic than Park and Portland so the same conclusions should apply to them. As for efficiency, recent research has suggested the one-way pairs actually lead to longer trip lengths due to the extra distance that must be added to a trip to use them.

There are also a number of debatable livability impacts of one-way streets, which should be considered when running them through residential areas as these pairs mostly do. It has been shown in most cases that one-ways have higher average speeds than two-ways, and since speed is already an issue in this country (lethal speeds being commonplace) one-ways should therefore be used sparingly if at all. Certainly how convenient they feel for drivers shouldn't be a factor in whether or not they're built.

I couldn't think of a way for this to relate even remotely to Nicollet-Central, sorry.

[MNdible]

I will respectfully disagree with your conclusions regarding the utility of 26th and 28th as one ways (which is not to say that I think they are ideal in their current state), but am curious as to whether you believe that Minneapolis actually needs / could support an additional east-west bus line at this location?

Was there a historical streetcar line in one of these locations? [He asks, creating a tenuous connection back to the Nic-Central streetcar topic.]

[woofner]

I think that a city with a substantial transit mode share needs to have a half-mile (or so) transit grid. The reason being that it's too time-consuming to have to walk more than a quarter-mile or so every time you need to go in a certain direction. Traditionally engineers have assumed that a quarter-mile is the maximum people are willing to walk to a transit service, and while I think there is wiggle room there for the quality of service (apparently Metro Transit has found that a significant number of riders walk closer to a half-mile to Hiawatha stations), there is no getting around the time penalty that starts to become substantial after a third-mile or so (a 7-8 minute walk time, and about a third of the amount of time the average Metro area resident spends commuting).

No, there wasn't a streetcar line here historically, as indeed there were very few crosstown transit lines historically. Lake St didn't have crosstown service until most of the rest of the system was completed, and it was likely built to sell real estate on East Lake and Marshall as much as to provide utility for transit riders. 38th and Lowry got crosstown bus service sometime in the 20s I think, I suppose because by that time there was political pressure for the transit system to be functional for transportation purposes, but to the TCRT it was always a mechanism for selling real estate and they built or neglected to build the lines accordingly.

[MSPtoMKE]

Continuing off topic...
Metro Transit has a standard of having a crosstown bus every mile, and a radial route every half mile. They achieve that through much of the area south of Downtown Minneapolis, and next year it will hold true west of Downtown St. Paul with service on Lexington. But they are nowhere near meeting that standard anywhere else. North of Minneapolis, the only 2 crosstown routes don't run evenings and weekends. The 27 is something of a crosstown route on 26th/28th, but it is basically a shuttle. I think a 2-way 26th could support a route from at least Hiawatha to Hennepin, as it is one of the densest parts of the city, but there are other gaps that need to be filled in before we think about adding more half mile crosstown routes.

[FISHMANPET]

Traditionally engineers have assumed that a quarter-mile is the maximum people are willing to walk to a transit service, and while I think there is wiggle room there for the quality of service (apparently Metro Transit has found that a significant number of riders walk closer to a half-mile to Hiawatha stations), there is no getting around the time penalty that starts to become substantial after a third-mile or so (a 7-8 minute walk time, and about a third of the amount of time the average Metro area resident spends commuting).

I think it's commonly accept that people will walk 1/4 mile for standard bus service, 1/2 mile for LRT (and perhaps BRT or streetcar, despite streetcar having a similar operational profile to bus service) and 1 mile for a subway/elevated line.

[twincitizen]

^ I think that's all correct except for the mile walk to subway/elevated. I don't believe any transit ridership forecasts count on people walking a mile.

A mile (or more) is a perfectly acceptable walking distance...if the destination is your end destination. A mile walk to ANY transit service is a pain in the ass. Unless you're sprinting, it takes long enough to walk the mile (15-20 minutes or more) that you'd probably be equally served walking a shorter distance and getting on a slower transit mode (bus) to either reach your end destination or transfer to the faster mode.

[Andrew_F]

Personally, I think that half-mile spacing is too often. I am however, a pretty mobile person with no health problems, and I realize that for some people a half-mile walk is too much, and I would be interested in hearing about that from someone who has issues with walking.

But just personally, I would rather walk a half mile to a route with frequent service than a quarter mile to one where I need to look at schedules. That is, I think a single route with 6-minute headways is so much more useful than a pair of routes with 12-minute headways spaced a half mile apart. Perhaps 15 minute headways are fine for commuting, but for livability, to get people who could own a car to choose not to own a car, you've got to do better than that.

[mamundsen]

You know people are funny about walking...

This past Saturday I asked my friend/neighbor if he wanted to walk over to Target Field and check out the Interchange project, etc. He told me he was just thinking about driving over there to get a Coke and fill up his tank at the Holiday. I asked where else he was going. He said no where, the gas was just an excuse to drive instead of walk.

I just mapped it out, we live 0.9 miles from the Holiday. I walked, he decided it was "too far."

[woofner]

Yeah I don't think the half-mile crosstown spacing should be a priority, but I brought it up as a restructuring idea for relocating the 17. It would work nicely if the 2 took over the Kenwood segment of the 25, the 9 took over the Stinson segment of the 25, the 27 extended to Uptown to replace the 17's 24th St service, and a 26th St station were built on Hiawatha to connect with a 27 that would then take over the Longfellow segment of the 9. I don't think the extended 27 would ever merit very high frequency in the short term, but that's ok because it would be sandwiched between the higher frequency 2 and 21. The transit mode share in the neighborhoods between Franklin and Lake are already approaching 50%, so in the long term if (when, please) the transit mode share in the Metro gets into the double digits, I think an additional crosstown here could probably be supported at pretty decent frequency.

Addendum: And I believe it's only within the last ten years or so that it's become established in the US that people are willing to walk a half-mile or more to transit. I believe that's one of the reasons the initial ridership estimates for Hiawatha were so low, and why Metro Transit trumpeted those findings.

[MNdible]

This is no doubt stating the very obvious, but there is simply much less demand for crosstown service than arterial service. Besides Abbott Northwestern, what would be the major trip generators along this line? Hipsters who are sick of the CC Club and trying to get to the Hexagon? It's only helpful if it happens that you live on or near 26th and your destination is on or near 26th -- otherwise, you'd be just fine (better off) taking the higher frequency existing service. I'd speculate that there would be some very modest use of a 26th Street bus, and much of its ridership would be cannibalized from the 2 and 21.

[woofner]

The 27 is an existing bus line. Extending it west to Uptown Transit Station and concentrating it on 28th St would take a line that is completely useless for anyone who doesn't work at Abbott or Wells Fargo and make it a line that is occasionally useful for people who don't work at Abbott or Wells Fargo. Keep in mind, too, that something like 18,000 people live on or near 26th, and around 40% of them take transit to work. If just a third of that 40% used the 27 to transfer to whatever service they currently use, the line would have almost as much daily ridership as the 68, currently under consideration for a streetcar. The idea would not be that they would take it somewhere along 26th, the idea would be that they use it to access one of the rich transfer opportunities along the entirety of the route. Transfers are crucial to a successful transit system.

The other piece is even more digressive, but presumably the purpose of all the expensive transit investments our region is making is to increase transit's mode share. Half mile spacing of local bus routes is simply the standard for heavily used transit systems, thanks to the natural walkshed I mentioned. Obviously this won't happen tomorrow, but for it to be convenient for a wide range of people to use transit for a wide variety of trips, there will need to be a half mile grid in our densest neighborhoods. Maybe it sounds like a tautology to say this, but get on google maps and measure: all the big boys have approximately half mile grids (or closer, in their densest neighborhoods).

[UptownSport]

Metro Transit makes the assumption there'll be a streetcar (Future Midtown Greenway Streetcar Line) down the Greenway trench (essentially 28th 3/4 street)

Specific wording is in this .pdf :
http://www.35lake.com/maps/35LakeFutureImprovements.pdf

This would leave 24th closer to halfway between Franklin and 28 3/4 - Problem solved.

Interesting that one ways have higher speeds, but take longer.

[twincitizen]

While I agree that a 2-way 26th Street bus route extended westward to Hennepin is a good idea in theory (see next paragraph), it would almost have to come from stealing the service hours by ending the 17 at Uptown Station. I mean, the 17 between downtown and Uptown Station is basically duplicative service covered by the 6/18/21. Increase the already high frequencies on those just a little bit and you don't need that segment of the 17 anymore. Not where I meant to go with this post, but eff it...the 21 is going to be extended out to West Lake Station anyways (in addition to whatever Greenway streetcar/LRT), so at that point it would be best to reevaluate the entire existence of the 17. Once people can take a Minnetonka Blvd bus (or other local SLP route) to a SWLRT station, the current 17 is meaningless.

But back to the matter at hand, and to end this sidetrack, Midtown Streetcar/LRT will replace the 27, end of story. The point of the 27 is to connect commuters coming from 35-Lake and Hiawatha-Lake Stations to the employment destinations between. And it does that on the WAY cheap, operating with just 2 buses all day. (2 during peak, and a single bus off-peak) It probably has terrible ridership, but it doesn't cost much at all to run. Extending it to Hennepin would at least double the cost.