Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[RailBaronYarr]

Couldn't they save some cash by ending it at SW Station rather than Mitchell?

One would think so... but then again there is a ton of land on mitchell that is just waiting for development. I'm sure eden prairie would prefer it to end there so that area could be sold off to developers as a more high density mixed use development area.

SO Eden Prairie thinks
1. we could spend a lot of money making the SW station able to handle much more traffic, or
2. Make minimal expansion/renovation to the SW station, extend the rail another mile and then have 40+ acre clean slate to create any LRT terminus they so choose.

I'd pick option 2 too if I was EP.

Both of these options show why the SWLRT line is so frustrating. You're talking about investing more to handle a crapload of car traffic for commuters and Twins game (maybe Vikings??) attendees, or talking about investing relatively little to handle the same amount of car traffic (dispersed) while developing on greenfield locations. Instead of all the possible incremental development that could occur within Mpls/StP with the same amount of money spent across multiple aBRT or Streetcar lines. And even if the development is mixed use, living in EP it will still be very car-dependent (like the apartment currently near the SW station).

[TWA]

Yes, for the near term (and probably beyond) places like EP will be car-centric. However, I think that ridership on an LRT would be very good. It's disingenuous to say that other projects should take priority because who cares about suburbs? If you are serious about making a whole metro area use public transport- not just a couple urban neighborhoods- then you have to invest in an entire network. And this LRT spur would add an arm to one of the more populated areas of the metro area. I like this project and think it sets the tone that the entire MSP metro area is serious about public transport and I think ridership will be great.

[UptownSport]

I'd ask you use a different word than disingenuous.

As the old saying goes, there's more good ideas than there is money.
My recollection of MSP density maps is that the 'spur' wouldn't pass thru them, excepting possibly the first two stops.
Obviously there's other reasons to build rail besides passing thru high density areas.
I think serving the high density areas first would build the best foundation for this/other lines.

[mattaudio]

Yes. We need to move towards a system of incremental improvements based on viability rather than large scale projects based on political will. That means the suburbs may have to wait, but the suburbs haven't shown themselves to be viable without massive subsidies to develop in a way different than their pattern for two generations.

[TWA]

It should also be noted that the higher density areas in the metro area already have public transportation options while much of that SW corridor does not. Expanding the public transportation customer base if you will.

You are right, there are more good ideas then money. I am happy to see that LRT, BRT and streetcars are all being looked at right now.

[mattaudio]

Higher density areas have public transportation options precisely because it's viable with that choice of land use. And the land use in certain areas, including Uptown, is dense enough to support even better public transit options.

I don't think a certain area deserves public transit. It's too costly to think that way. We need to focus on what is viable, not what we ought to do. If people choose to live in a far flung suburb, they know it's not transit friendly. So why try. The only thing that seems to work are express buses, and even those are subsidized so that people can park in fancy new P&R ramps without paying for their decision to park at the P&R.

[MotorCity2TwinCities]

So this is probably a dumb question but why won't this line get its own color? Is it because you will be able to go all the way from Eden Prarie to downtown St. Paul and vice versa without ever having to get off/transfer trains? And the Bottineau is going to be the Blue line extension, so is that because you wouldn't have to get off the train going from Brooklyn Park all the way to Mall of America? I feel like this line and the Bottineau, it it ever gets built in 2048, should get their own colors as they seem to be more than just an extension of each existing line.

[RailBaronYarr]

Yes, for the near term (and probably beyond) places like EP will be car-centric. However, I think that ridership on an LRT would be very good. It's disingenuous to say that other projects should take priority because who cares about suburbs? If you are serious about making a whole metro area use public transport- not just a couple urban neighborhoods- then you have to invest in an entire network. And this LRT spur would add an arm to one of the more populated areas of the metro area. I like this project and think it sets the tone that the entire MSP metro area is serious about public transport and I think ridership will be great.

The fact that ridership on a suburban LRT line would be very good rewards people who CHOSE to live in far-flung areas (from their jobs and hobbies) while not rewarding and improving higher productive spaces.

It may be disingenuous to say 'who cares' about the suburbs. But honestly, very few of them are productive enough to support transit. We cannot and will not have an efficient transit network that covers our entire metro area unless we had somewhere along the lines of 10-12 MILLION residents. We need to stop funding low-productivity areas that have more space in roads and parking lots than buildings and housing. When these people living there (and the companies that reside there) realize the folly of their ways, they can choose to move to more productive places or make their own places more productive (which doesn't include $1+ billion transit to the core). The very few positives of this project are the fact that it gives access for North and NE Mpls residents to an area with a good amount of jobs and links up a few productive places (StLP, Hopkins, Downtown and to the Green/Blue lines east) and that transit (LRT or otherwise) would be environmentally better. I am for both of those, but I think a more productive and sustainable approach to environmental consciousness, equitable access to jobs/schools/etc, and social productivity is in order.

And for the record, I live in a very unproductive place right now and am doing everything in my power to get out. It's not my place to demand expensive transit serving my low density, car-dependent place simply because I chose to live here.

[Nick]

The very few positives of this project are the fact that it gives access for North and NE Mpls residents to an area with a good amount of jobs and links up a few productive places (StLP, Hopkins, Downtown and to the Green/Blue lines east) and that transit (LRT or otherwise) would be environmentally better.

Out of curiosity, are you Alex Cecchini from MinnPost? That whole argument about building Southwest so that North Minneapolis (I ask because he also threw Northeast in there like it was interchangeable, which it is not) has access to jobs in Eden Prairie still just seems super tenuous to me.

[RailBaronYarr]

Out of curiosity, are you Alex Cecchini from MinnPost? That whole argument about building Southwest so that North Minneapolis (I ask because he also threw Northeast in there like it was interchangeable, which it is not) has access to jobs in Eden Prairie still just seems super tenuous to me.

I am. I agree the point seems dubious, but David Greene seems to hammer it home. I still haven't seen the report linking North population/skills to SW jobs/skills required, but I'll take it as one of the few positives if it is true. It still doesn't justify (in my opinion) running the line through the woods and sea of under-freeway/rails with no population instead of passing it through the highly productive nodes of Uptown. Especially since both routes will give access to North residents via the Interchange and Royalston.

I don't think North and Northeast are interchangeable, but are more similar than other neighborhoods in Minneapolis in income, demographics, and business types located there (not to mention geographic proximity). On the MinnPost comment board I mis-read Mr Greene's comment to say Northeast and it was several comments later before I realized it.

[Scott Wood]

The fact that ridership on a suburban LRT line would be very good rewards people who CHOSE to live in far-flung areas (from their jobs and hobbies) while not rewarding and improving higher productive spaces.

It may be disingenuous to say 'who cares' about the suburbs. But honestly, very few of them are productive enough to support transit. We cannot and will not have an efficient transit network that covers our entire metro area unless we had somewhere along the lines of 10-12 MILLION residents.

The suburbs aren't going away any time soon, and not everyone who lives/works there does so by choice (is it really that much better to live in the city and drive out to a suburban job?). People go to where the jobs are.

No, we can't provide good transit to the entire sprawly metro area, but we can provide it to specific important corridors. Besides getting some commuter traffic off the roads, and providing better access to some suburban jobs for people who do live closer in, it helps to take growth that would have happened out there *anyway* and concentrate some of it along the transit line. SWLRT also improves service to closer suburbs such as St Louis Park and Hopkins, with significant TOD potential -- but what would truncating the line at Hopkins do to the ability to fund it, politically speaking?

[Scott Wood]

Oh, and the easier it is to get into the core from various parts of the metro, the easier it is to justify an employer locating downtown rather than in some suburb -- especially if it's a relocation from an area the line serves. LRT is a more efficient way of going about that than expanding freeways and downtown parking, provided it's built somewhere that will get adequate ridership.

[RailBaronYarr]

The suburbs aren't going away any time soon, and not everyone who lives/works there does so by choice (is it really that much better to live in the city and drive out to a suburban job?). People go to where the jobs are.

No, we can't provide good transit to the entire sprawly metro area, but we can provide it to specific important corridors. Besides getting some commuter traffic off the roads, and providing better access to some suburban jobs for people who do live closer in, it helps to take growth that would have happened out there *anyway* and concentrate some of it along the transit line. SWLRT also improves service to closer suburbs such as St Louis Park and Hopkins, with significant TOD potential -- but what would truncating the line at Hopkins do to the ability to fund it, politically speaking?

I don't doubt that we've built ourselves in to a country where some people live close to where they work while their spouse may work somewhere different. But saying people go where the jobs are ignores the vast number of people commuting from the burbs in to the core cities or even from one suburb to another one.

With better land-use rules, zoning, land vs building taxation, dropping subsidies for companies to build locations in given areas, and a refusal of federal or state money for infrastructure, those companies wouldn't locate there *anyway*. They have because they could and we as a society agreed to build the infrastructure to support their cheap land purchase and zoned the uses in a way that promoted sprawl.

Your final point about political will to fund a project highlights the screwed up way we deal with transit (or anything). Something like this shouldn't take building to low-productivity places to make it politically acceptable. If EP was a great node with a population that could do well to access jobs in Minneapolis (and vice-versa) via a high-speed transit option, then I would support it. But it is basically built for commuters to drive to a station ramp then commute in - and the reverse commute will leave people stranded when they disembark.

You use the term corridor. The SWLRT is not a corridor, it is a connection of multiple nodes - some productive, most not (at least today). We shouldn't strive to get commuters off roads. We should strive for people to commute shorter distances in the first place and have the option to drive, bike, walk to their job, and as the places become better we invest in transit. When these places become even more productive, then they can support the investment of a $billion LRT line. Today they cannot, and probably won't for many years even with subsidies for TOD around the stations.

[MNdible]

The SW LRT thread is like deja vu all over again. And again. And again.

OK, you (and by you, I mean a lot of people on the forum) don't like the routing. I guess Yarr has a somewhat more extreme take, in that he apparently feels that the line shouldn't be built at all.

But guess what? It is going to be built, and it is going to be built to Eden Prairie, and it isn't going to be routed through Uptown.

I'd be much more interested to hear how, given this routing, we can work through the engineering process to make the line the best possible it can be.

[Nick]

Out of curiosity, are you Alex Cecchini from MinnPost? That whole argument about building Southwest so that North Minneapolis (I ask because he also threw Northeast in there like it was interchangeable, which it is not) has access to jobs in Eden Prairie still just seems super tenuous to me.

I am. I agree the point seems dubious, but David Greene seems to hammer it home. I still haven't seen the report linking North population/skills to SW jobs/skills required, but I'll take it as one of the few positives if it is true. It still doesn't justify (in my opinion) running the line through the woods and sea of under-freeway/rails with no population instead of passing it through the highly productive nodes of Uptown. Especially since both routes will give access to North residents via the Interchange and Royalston.

I don't think North and Northeast are interchangeable, but are more similar than other neighborhoods in Minneapolis in income, demographics, and business types located there (not to mention geographic proximity). On the MinnPost comment board I mis-read Mr Greene's comment to say Northeast and it was several comments later before I realized it.

Cool beans, just checking. Something about that whole situation bugs me due to it being...incorrect. He was a user here for a hot minute but his last login per the "Members" page was last year. I think he got burned out by everyone disagreeing with him.

He never did link to the survey on MinnPost, but I'm going to go out on a limb and just say that people who live in Harrison or the rest of the Northside who already have the skills to get jobs (good jobs) in the Golden Triangle most likely aren't transit-dependent to begin with. And Harrison both A) Isn't even near the heart of what most people would consider the parts of the Northside that really need the help or B) All that closer to the Royalston station compared to, say, the Interchange. Not that any of those things are reasons to not try to serve a place well with transit. But this sort of retroactive argument about the Northside benefiting from 3A over 3C is just bizarre. It's not why the route was chosen, so whenever I see it I roll my eyes and get frustrated that people will buy into it if they aren't as acquainted with the history of the alignment choice.

The alignment horse is extra dead. So I'm trying to stop beating the poor thing, but something about the feigned outrage irks me. If people want to get upset about the Northside, please channel that angst at the terrible Theodore Wirth alignment for Bottineau--that's an actual missed opportunity for getting that neighborhood reconnected with the rest of the metro.

[UptownSport]

And I reject that Van White or Penn will serve any significant amount of people- If walking distance is 1/4 mile.

Just go stand at both these proposed stops, there's nothing there. I don't see Royalston in the middle of the highest density either.

I'm thinking they threw these in just so they could say it serves underprivileged, low income neighborhoods.

[RailBaronYarr]

The SW LRT thread is like deja vu all over again. And again. And again.

OK, you (and by you, I mean a lot of people on the forum) don't like the routing. I guess Yarr has a somewhat more extreme take, in that he apparently feels that the line shouldn't be built at all.

But guess what? It is going to be built, and it is going to be built to Eden Prairie, and it isn't going to be routed through Uptown.

I'd be much more interested to hear how, given this routing, we can work through the engineering process to make the line the best possible it can be.

Forgive me as I'm relatively new to the site and don't mean to beat a dead horse... I'm not actually against it being built at all. I'm sure spending this $1B to connect EP, Hopkins, etc to downtown and each other is better than widening freeways, expanding exchanges, etc at a similar cost (ex the 494/169 project x 3-4). I've stated the positives. I'm sure there will be SOME TOD around the stations, which is better than none. It's not that this line shouldn't ever be built, it's just so hard for me to get behind as a true game-changer for the area that will help fix the suburbs since my prediction is that it will largely serve people living on 0.5 acre lots who drive everywhere, all the time, and ride the LRT to work and nothing more. Even the Hiawatha line, which runs through much denser transit-dependent neighborhoods, has not delivered on much TOD (I know there are other factors at play for this but who is to say those won't also plague SW?). Hopefully I'm wrong, and of course I shouldn't be thinking the near 3-5 year future as a metric of success but 30 years out how will our area look and function. It's just that spending $1B on this line to help SPUR (hopefully smart, productive) development instead of spending $1B on 3 streetcar lines or 6 aBRT lines that serve EXISTING smart, productive places seems like a sad route to go. I'll get off my box and keep it to discussing the current state of events rather than what could have been.

[seanrichardryan]

This seems relevant to the discussion: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commut ... ving/4800/

[mattaudio]

Agreed. We need to prioritize transit as a way to increase mobility, not as a way to decrease congestion.
If we say that we're trying to reduce congestion, we end up with this: http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2013/01 ... ng-by.html
We just need to realize that reducing congestion is either not possible or prohibitively expensive, and other options have a higher ROI.

[RailBaronYarr]

Agreed. We need to prioritize transit as a way to increase mobility, not as a way to decrease congestion.
If we say that we're trying to reduce congestion, we end up with this: http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2013/01 ... ng-by.html
We just need to realize that reducing congestion is either not possible or prohibitively expensive, and other options have a higher ROI.

We also need to recognize that congestion isn't always a bad thing... Environmentalists touting higher throughput/speeds ignore that this only encourages more driving, further distances (which is much worse than cars sitting in traffic for half the distance). It also ignores that "congestion" in the sense of slow-speed is better for local businesses and pedestrian safety. This congestion can also convince people to make the choice to live closer to their needs - alleviating it may free up road space, further encouraging people to live where they do or even further out. Finally, we often think congestion is an inhibitor of productivity, although the Atlantic did a quick study showing GDP per capita and traffic congestion are positively correlated (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commut ... tion/2118/). I'm not saying congestion CAUSES higher economic output, but merely that its presence hasn't stopped places from being highly productive (or great places to live).