Green Line / Central Corridor construction thread (archive)

[twinkess]

Finance & Commerce has a paywalled article about the Lowertown O&M facility. Here's one detail I know folks have asked about -- The facility can handle up to 35 LRVs, so most of the Green Line vehicles will be stored there, but some (12, according to the article) will be stored at the Franklin Avenue facility.

F&C's photo set from a tour of the new Lowertown facility is on Flickr (low resolution, but better than nothing):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/financeand ... 489434138/

Are those the same 12 that are assigned to the blue line as part of the three car set project?

[mulad]

I believe that would be an additional 12. Last I heard, 59 Siemens LRVs are on order -- 12 for the Blue Line and 47 (= 12 + 35) for the Green Line.

[MSPtoMKE]

Hopefully the O&M facility for the Southwest corridor is large enough to handle all the rest of the LRVs for the full buildout of the Blue and Green Lines. It seems wasteful to have 4 facilities for 2 (long) light rail lines. Franklin could transistion to being only for the Blue Line, Lowertown only for the Green, and the Southwest facility could handle a mixture of Green Line and the Blue Line LRVs needed for Bottineau that don't fit at Franklin.

[twincitizen]

Completely agree MSPtoMKE. Whatever facility is built for Southwest should be done with Bottineau in mind. However, the City of Minneapolis seems to prefer a bunch of vacant land back behind Metro Transit HQ/Heywood Garage and in the Bassett Creek Valley over creating a ton of well-paying jobs in the City. I really hope the Southwest facility is not way out at the end of the line in EP. There are plenty of sites in SLP/Hopkins that would work too, but I'd prefer it closer in.

[mattaudio]

The problem is that LRT facilities are so anti-urban (even the St. Paul one will create a wall that prevents potential development eastward). I would however support an LRT facility behind Heywood or between Royalston and 94 if most of it were built below grade and air rights development was offered.

[RailBaronYarr]

How about under 394 when it goes above grade? No better place for to put something that would otherwise block off the area for development than under something that is already doing this.

[Tcmetro]

Bottineau will need it's own OMF too. Its not very logical to have to send trains out every few minutes at 3:00 in the morning from the other side of town so they can make the rush hour for the downtown commuters. The only way to solve this issue would be to have a huge OMF downtown, the best option would be Linden Yards or the North Loop. However, land is expensive, and there are redevelopment hopes/plans in place, so it isn't very viable. And we already have Franklin, St. Paul, and the Hopkins/EP sites in place.

There is plenty of land in the fields of BP, so IDK why it wouldn't be placed up there.

[mulad]

I think the city of Minneapolis wants to do some development near I-394 (Basset Creek Plan?), though I'm not sure exactly what spot you're thinking of. And there's a desire for a layover facility for NLX and other intercity trains to be built in that area near Linden Avenue (which probably isn't a bad idea since it had been a rail yard in the past and has been appropriately flattened).

Farther southwest of there might also work, but there would be big fights with the folks who have put effort into adding/restoring plant life in a park-like way along the bike paths.

[mulad]

This might more appropriately go in the Saints stadium thread, but it's happening right next to the Green Line O&M facility, and will be built by the same contractor doing the OMF work (PCL), according to F&C. Since the ballpark will take out 5th Street in Lowertown, the city wants to add another connection to 4th Street to maintain a link in the area. Prince Street will be extended eastward and a segment of Willius Street will be added. I'm guessing it will look like this, but I haven't been able to find any specific plans. The F&C article also mentions the construction of a new Lafayette Street between Prince and Kellogg, but I'm a bit confused by that since there already seems to be a segment of John Street remaining. That might actually be private property at this point, though.

[Le Sueur]

^^^ Isn't there a good sized rail loop out the back of the OMF that will take up a large portion of the rectangle framed by 4th, US52, and your blue line?

[mulad]

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how everything will fit, but I'm assuming for the moment that the new Willius Street will be just barely east of that rail loop.

[UptownSport]

Rode the 21 downtown SP- Took forever as there was a fight-
Didn't see much progress besides MPR stop rails were no longer supported by wooden blocks!
Only saw a couple guys monkeying with some pedestrian alert thingys, otherwise no work.
Smash-up already:

[commissioner]

That's been like that since last winter, From the looks of it some snowplow driver nailed it (there was a pile of snow in front of it). They were stringing catenary near 280 today and bases for signals went in.

[UptownSport]

(There was a pile of snow in front of everything not so long ago)

Thanks for the update!!!!!!!
I worry progress is in the 'forget' column.

[West Coast]

The Outside of the OMF

[Suburban Outcast]

I just drove on University from Hamline to Rice on my way home this afternoon and the Green Line is looking nice, but will the catenary wires be fully installed anytime soon? Has the constant rain in the past few weeks affected that part of construction?

[mulad]

Some rail grinding going on today in downtown Saint Paul. Caught this as my bus was stopped in front of MPR:

[helsinki]

The state is spending $22 million to build two parking ramps two blocks and one block away from the Capitol/Rice Street and Robert Street stations respectively.

http://finance-commerce.com/2013/06/lev ... s-project/

Apparently, the redevelopment of the Sears site (which will also see the construction of a parking ramp) will result in the loss of 625 spaces (all the way over west of Rice street; I highly doubt that Judicial Center staff walk that far), so the state is building a total of 880 new spaces within a less than 5 minute walk of two LRT stations.

Retrograde, unnecessary, wasteful infrastructure, for $22 million and almost zero debate.

[mulad]

It's weird to think about, but the capitol area is much like a suburban office park.

[David Greene]

Retrograde, unnecessary, wasteful infrastructure, for $22 million and almost zero debate.

I tend to agree. I hope these ramps will be open to the public. Right now it is very difficult to find parking relatively close to the Capitol or SOB.

But > 800 spaces? Dang...