Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[Tcmetro]

It was proposed for 7th and 8th; however, I believe the Saks Fifth Avenue didn't want buses stopping in front of their store. As a temporary resolve for capacity issues Route 19 buses no longer stop at Nicollet Mall and 7th St.

With the BRT plans, I hope that 7th and 8th do get bus lanes.

Other cities that have tried different options for downtown bus circulation include Denver (terminate all express routes on the downtown fringe and transfer to a shuttle), Seattle (build a bus tunnel), and Pittsburgh (remove buses from the central core area altogether). Obviously none of those ideas are going to work here, but hopefully LRT will take pressure off of the bus network.

[FISHMANPET]

I don't remember if I dreamed it up here or in a transit planning class, but I once had the idea to put two large transit stations on the north and south side of downtown, with a streetcar running between them on Nicolett [sic] Mall (or maybe somewhere else). All express buses would terminate at one of those stations, and you'd get on the streetcar to circulate about downtown. Maybe then local buses could go down Marquette and 2nd.

[mattaudio]

Weren't the Gateway and Leamington ramps intended for such a thing? I am thankful we don't have that. I can't imagine a transfer to a circulator would help ridership.

[Minneapolisite]

Well according to The Journal the city is asking for input for improvements we'd like to see through the next 4 years. I say a converting one existing bus line to a high-frequency line each year would be a top priority: we're expecting to add another 100,000 when existing high-frequency transit doesn't serve the existing population in large swathes of the city.

East-west service is especially sub-par: why is the 2 not high-frequency, but the 515 between two suburban malls The 2 should so be high-frequency: I'd go to Seward a lot more if it was, but living Downtown I can't expect high-frequency bus service to Seward. The 23 covers lots of new and some old quality destinations on 38th (Kingsfield & numerous Powderhorn neighborhoods), but no high-frequency service means no high-frequency spending of disposable income there on my end and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

NE has poor coverage so I'd vote for the 11 or 17 in NE; while the 10 is fine and dandy it goes nowhere near the 13th Ave business district which is my and many other peoples' favorite corner of the neighborhood. The 11 should act as the 13th Ave connector, but it's too bad it's not marketed as such for visitors to use and not frequent enough anyway. That and there's no gateway treatment letting people know that there's a lot more on 13th than just what you're passing by on 2nd, but lacking gateway treatments for business districts is endemic in the Twin Cities and getting off topic. Again, I live Downtown, but no high-frequency NE service outside of Central.

The other one would have to be the 22 or 14 which need to provide high-frequency north-south for the eastern half of Phillips/Powderhorn/Nokomis. I'd prefer the 22 since it's right on Cedar where a number of destinations are and not as close to Chicago where the 5 runs, although the 14 could maybe alleviate the crowds on the 5 since it's centered on Bloomington only a few blocks away.

As a carless city slicker I know it doesn't sound as cool and you can forget spinoff TOD development (and UrbanMSP threads), but for the everyday experience it would multiply the walkability of this city to a slew of establishments in neighborhoods for residents like myself who now very rarely visit at least 4 months out of the year because I can't expect to reach them without a long bike ride on slick roads or having to stand outside much longer than I'm willing to wait for a transfer off of, say the high-frequency 18, which is great for the one block of Franklin and 38th it passes through. If we could expect a short wait at most for a transfer there's so much more of the city opened up to those of us living an urban lifestyle.

[Silophant]

A Wednesday at 10am. That'll ensure they get a good cross-section of the city.

[FISHMANPET]

Seward doesn't have a ton of room for development but I bet we could fit a few more buildings here. There's a grassy area in front of my apartment that could fit a few units on it. As for most of those other areas I'm sure there's plenty of room for infill. I think the higher frequency the 2 is the cheaper housing becomes for U students, because it becomes easier to live in the neighborhoods that it serves that aren't always walking distance to campus.

[Tcmetro]

There's a webcam for the Noble/610 park and ride ramp. How exciting.

http://oxblue.com/open/knutson/highway610

--

Also found this blurb about the B Line (7th St BRT).

B Line (West 7th Street) BRT planned for 2016 launch

Metro Transit is also advancing the B Line on West 7th Street between downtown St. Paul, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America. The B Line is scheduled to open in late 2016. More information on B Line planning and design will be available in mid-2014.

[Tcmetro]

Any inputs on Metro Transit's long-range Service Improvement Plan are due by Friday. Anything ranging from general comments to detailed route proposals are welcome.


http://www.metrotransit.org/sip

[mplsjaromir]

Yonah Freemark examines ridership gains on public transportation. He posits that new rail attracts more riders than new bus lines. At least that how I interpreted the article.

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2014 ... ridership/

[NickP]

I thought this was a good read.
http://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-blog- ... ss-transit

[FISHMANPET]

Classic Nick.

[Tcmetro]

Metro Transit is proposing to cancel the 67H branch and convert all existing 67H trips to 62D (this segment of the 67 will become the 62 with the Green Line changes) trips for the June service change.

http://www.metrotransit.org/proposed-route-change

[David Greene]

I thought this was a good read.
http://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-blog- ... ss-transit

Unfortunately, it misses all the complexity, the interesting parts, the actual problems that need real solutions. The comments contain more information than the article. It's fine to rant about the perfect but to criticize people for getting the good is just insulting and frankly, simplistic.

Sure, SWLRT would have been cheaper to build in the '80's. But go back and *read* those articles and it becomes clear that it would have been built in Kenilworth. No magical time machine will put that line through Uptown. That was the plan 30 years ago and it's the plan now. Nick does have a point that the freight issue would have been avoided altogether, but (he doesn't note) probably at the cost of the Midtown Greenway.

It's all about the money. We don't have any. We don't really have a way to get more except through a regional sales tax. I fought for that tax in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 before we finally passed a crippled version of it under a Republican governor. We cannot pass such a tax under a Democratic governor, not because the DFL "negotiates with itself" but because the DFL is not monolithic. For all the dumb things Democrats do, at least they make room for disagreement and compromise.

We do not have the money and never have had it. It's taken miraculous work by a lot of different people to cobble together what we do have.

[Nick]

David have you ever disliked a movie? Like a big Hollywood movie.

[David Greene]

David have you ever disliked a movie? Like a big Hollywood movie.

Wut?

[Nick]

Do you think that someone needs to understand exactly how CGI works to know that a lot of Michael Bay movies are shitty? Do you need to know how to repair a lawnmower engine to criticize someone's badly mowed lawn?

Alex just used this word a couple days ago and I don't want to look like I'm copying him, but at a certain point, "you just don't understand how complicated this is" is pretty smarmy when you're defending a process that is clearly and objectively broken. There are ways to defend 3A that I acknowledge and that make sense. But it's ridiculous (and perhaps the source of some of your potential angst) to act frustrated that people who didn't go to a bunch of meetings in 2004 have no hope of fully grasping this project.

[David Greene]

Do you think that someone needs to understand exactly how CGI works to know that a lot of Michael Bay movies are shitty? Do you need to know how to repair a lawnmower engine to criticize someone's badly mowed lawn?

Alex just used this word a couple days ago and I don't want to look like I'm copying him, but at a certain point, "you just don't understand how complicated this is" is pretty smarmy when you're defending a process that is clearly and objectively broken. There are ways to defend 3A that I acknowledge and that make sense. But it's ridiculous (and perhaps the source of some of your potential angst) to act frustrated that people who didn't go to a bunch of meetings in 2004 have no hope of fully grasping this project.

Not sure what this has to do with SWLRT specifically, that was just one example given. The article's larger point seems to be: our transit system sucks due to incompetence. I am simply pointing out that that is a completely useless argument. Someone who expects perfection at rock-bottom prices is always going to blame incompetence. That doesn't solve any actual problems. It's a puff piece.

[Nick]

Of course it's a puff piece, anything written about SWLRT by anyone other than Peter McLaughlin and like four other people is a puff piece. The important part of it, for me, was the third and fourth paragraph. Something like 50 to 75 percent of your total SWLRT-related body of work here, on streets.mn, and MinnPost is either A.) name dropping a very, very important project person or B.) telling everyone else that you're the one who understands because you've talked to the people at meetings or wherever. If you took some person from New Mexico and had them search "David Greene + Southwest Light Rail" it would quickly come together that this entire line is being built for you, specifically. I'm 100% sure that you're a very good person with good intentions, but implying that other people's opinions don't matter (which you have done) because they didn't chit-chat up Jim Alexander for half an hour in October 2011 is ridiculous.

[MNdible]

Seems like there are two different issues at play -- one is David Greene's opus of work generally, and the other is a very specific criticism of an article that you wrote. No fair conflating the two.

[talindsay]

I think it's a great piece, largely because one of the only two embedded links in it is to the only Wikipedia article I ever wrote from scratch