Green Line LRT

[Didier]

The family of the woman who was killed by the Green Line train has set up an education fund for her 14-year-old son, if anybody is interested.

http://www.youcaring.com/other/educatio ... nan/229833

[Mdcastle]

There was at least a proposal for a grade separation at Snelling years ago- I don't know if the NIMBYs and anti-car types threw a fit of if there was no funding.

[mplsjaromir]

Mostly agree with a_t_c_c, my only quibbles would be the thoroughly debunked talking point that the Green Line is slower than the buses it replaced. The Green Line is faster than both the 16 and 50 streets. End to end time should not be the only metric.

Quibble quibble: Does anyone else feel like "well, no one rides it end to end" isn't a satisfying reply to "the line runs slower than it was supposed to"? If it's slower than it's supposed to be, it impacts everyone who rides it from any station, whether it's Nicollet Mall to Snelling or West Bank to the Capitol.

My stated quibble was in regards to criticisms of the scheduled times of the Green Line, 48 minutes from The Interchange to SPUD while making 21 stops along the way is a good time. Criticizing sub-par performance is perfectly valid.

[Scott Wood]

The green line barely squeaked in under finding limits as is, where were we gonna find piles of money for grade separation, even at only a few places.

Sure it'd be faster grade separated, but I've never seen that idea stated along with any idea how to pay for it.

I was mainly responding to the notion that it wouldn't have even been much of an improvement -- but perhaps those funding limits should be questioned. I fully understand an answer of, "This was the best we could do without increasing transportation funding, cancelling other projects or postponing them for decades, and/or violating Bush-era cost effectiveness requirements." But I think it'd be helpful to sometimes show realistic estimates of what could be done with more funding, to help with making the political decision of whether to make it happen.

Plus, it seems a bit strange that the Central Corridor was barely fundable as is, when Southwest is going to cost substantially more, for fewer projected daily rides.

[Minneapolisite]

I know: nearly double the price for less riders. Huh??? If you're for it you're worse at math than I am and math is no friend of mine.

[Scott Wood]

I didn't mean that as a complaint against Southwest -- at least the St Louis Park and Hopkins portions seem like they'd be useful, and we'll see what happens in Eden Prairie. I just meant that if doing Southwest is an option, then that means we weren't exactly scraping the bottom of the funding barrel with Central.

[FISHMANPET]

Thanks to the way funding mechanisms at the time favored new riders over improving the route for existing riders, yes, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[Minneapolisite]

It's as though routes with existing ridership will never see higher numbers, so why spend money for the same amount of riders? The Green Line has already proven that improved service has seen notably higher ridership than the 3 bus routes combined which used to run this route, but I'm sure this is lost on the geniuses over at met council.

[EOst]

It's the cost-to-new-rider ratio, Minneapolisite. The CC has seen a lot of new riders, sure, but the great majority of them are existing riders, which means the cost-per-rider is pretty high. Since most of the projected riders for eg. the SWLRT are actually new riders, they have more wiggle room. Doesn't take a "genius" (how condescending!) to figure that out.

[mattaudio]

Doesn't take a genius to figure out that's an awful way to prioritize transit investments, as well.

[EOst]

I don't really disagree, I'm just saying, that's what the process is.

[ECtransplant]

Thanks to the way funding mechanisms at the time favored new riders over improving the route for existing riders, yes, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That just speaks to how broken our funding mechanisms and politics are. Not how optimally we built the line.

[nate]

I think we built the line as optimally as possible, within the funding constraints of the time (many of which still exist). I am certainly happier with an at-grade University Ave alignment versus an I-94 alignment (which would probably be the only feasible grade-separated alternative, within those funding constraints).

[David Greene]

It's not about new riders. I don't know why I have to keep explaining that. It's roughly dollar per rider-hour saved over the other options. Whether that rider came from a car or a bus does not matter one bit. If anything, a rider coming from a slow bus would get weighted higher than someone coming from an open freeway. The metric does tend to favor *longer* trips because the time savings is cumulative. That's where the "suburban bias" comes in, if anywhere.

And SWLRT is not double the cost of CCLRT, not even close. Keep in mind that we have like a decade of inflation contributing to the cost here. SWLRT probably is more expensive in real dollars but it's not *that* much more expensive.

[FISHMANPET]

The fact that we've got a funding model that funds tunnels through parks but won't fund tunnels through dense urban areas should tell you that maybe the current funding model is indefensible, be it the common misperception that it's favoring new riders over favoring existing riders, or "cost per hour of user benefit" whatever the hell that means.

And whatever the technical definition, it's hard for a lay person to look at Central and how we were barely able to fund that, and look at SW and see that we apparently have an infinite amount of money to tunnel through parkland, it looks to me like we're prioritizing new riders over existing riders.

And as Peter Wagenius says:

“There are folks who are extraordinarily invested in validating the process that has brought us to this point.”

[talindsay]

It's the cost-to-new-rider ratio, Minneapolisite. The CC has seen a lot of new riders, sure, but the great majority of them are existing riders, which means the cost-per-rider is pretty high. Since most of the projected riders for eg. the SWLRT are actually new riders, they have more wiggle room. Doesn't take a "genius" (how condescending!) to figure that out.

No, that's not it at all. The CEI for Southwest is substantially worse than the CEI for Central was. The difference isn't that the federal government likes Southwest more than it liked Central, it's that Bush's transit funding left no space for things other than CEI and set a very tight CEI limit, while Southwest reached the same funding decisions at a time when Obama's administration is allowing for lots of wiggle room based on things other than CEI. The Southwest line would *NOT* have advanced during the Bush administration. If Central could have gone through the same process that Southwest is following (i.e., the Obama process) then we'd have tunnels at the U and it would have breezed through the approval process.

It's about the TIMING that the lines hit the key federal benchmarks, not the relative merits of the two lines compared with each other.

[BoredAgain]

What are the chances of a future expansion of our growing rail network to include a limited-stop, grade-separated connector directly from downtown Minneapolis to SPUD? This could follow the 94 route, or some other grade separate path with no real destinations, allowing for direct service (I'm thinking of some connection following the old potential 94 "Northern Route").

There is obviously still demand for a limited stop fast connection. This could also tie into the slightly mythical high speed rail from points South-East that would hit SPUD, but hopefully not terminate there because most of the passengers would probably be destined for Minneapolis instead.

I realize this would be quite expensive, but no-one will look for funding if the potential line is never even considered.

[Silophant]

Not even being officially looked at to my knowledge, but I think a connection from Target Field Station to SPUD is inevitable in the long term. I doubt it would happen on its own, though. Probably be more likely as an extension of another service that would otherwise terminate in one downtown, as you said, though whether that would be NLX, ZipRail, or the mythical Chicago HSR is totally up in the air. I know there was another thread on this, long ago. I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: Here it is: https://forum.streets.mn/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=280&start=20

Looks like it might, in fact be being officially looked at. Additionally, if that second daily Empire Builder ever happens, I could imagine that going to TFS, since it wouldn't be going further than the Cities anyway. But that would only be once per day, not really useful for commuters.

[FISHMANPET]

There's about a billion rails between the downtowns, just take a look at Google Maps. Mostly north but there's one route south (I think back before Amtrak one of railroads used that southern route, Milwaukee Road?) I think right now the biggest impediment is running cost, there just isn't demand for a service with a full locomotive and passenger cars right now. I think you could make a fairly decent case for a route that leaves Union Depot going north, stops at Snelling Ave (connect to the A line and Hamline Univ), University of Minnesota (in the stadium area) and then downtown via Target Field. If the FRA ever implements the kind of reforms that allow DMUs to be run in this country, I think the math could change a lot on a route like that.

[nBode]

So today there were some guys filming on the train from CNN Online doing a piece on the new green line because "Minneapolis is a really innovative city" which I thought was cool to hear.