Green Line LRT

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
intercomnut
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby intercomnut » June 13th, 2015, 11:16 am

Going through Stadium Village, I noticed that the city closed Washington Ave from Oak to Walnut to install a variable message sign. I'm pretty sure that means the Green Line Bus Bridge has to detour around that. More fantastic timing...

MSPtoMKE
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby MSPtoMKE » June 13th, 2015, 11:35 am

It's a lot easier to detour a bus than a train! I assume this work was planned at the same time, otherwise why would the Green Line close all the way to Stadium Village, if the work they are doing is only downtown?
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Nick
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby Nick » June 13th, 2015, 11:52 am

Can we all go to Best Steak House for a $10 steak?
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Silophant
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby Silophant » June 13th, 2015, 12:19 pm

I'd do that.

Also, it's been a while since we had an UrbanMSP Happy Hour. This would probably be a good week, at one of these locations.
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widin007
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby widin007 » June 13th, 2015, 3:21 pm

Northern Spark is tonight and seems to be a pretty big deal. Maybe they can do some art with the empty tracks

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LRV Op Dude
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby LRV Op Dude » June 13th, 2015, 3:38 pm

It's a lot easier to detour a bus than a train! I assume this work was planned at the same time, otherwise why would the Green Line close all the way to Stadium Village, if the work they are doing is only downtown?
They are also doing cement work at West Bank
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FISHMANPET
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby FISHMANPET » June 15th, 2015, 7:56 am

Got my button at DTE around 8:30. There were plenty left, but the guy giving them out was absent. Luckily when I sat down one was waiting for me on the bench, and then before I boarded the train I saw the box and grabbed a second for my wife. Then as the train pulled away I saw the Metro Transit guy come back to the box.

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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby Silophant » June 15th, 2015, 8:30 am

I walked through Nicollet station to get one today. Got one upon walking in on the Nicollet end, then was given another on the Marquette end, despite my protest that I already had one. So... I've got a spare button if anyone missed out and wants one.
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mattaudio
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby mattaudio » June 15th, 2015, 8:41 am

I doubt I'm going to make it up to DT in time today, so I'd take it!

mlseim
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Strange GPS Coordinates for Green Line Light Rail

Postby mlseim » July 7th, 2015, 7:43 pm

Hi,

I've been playing with this:
http://svc.metrotransit.org/NexTrip/Veh ... ormat=json

It's the NexTrip API ... in this case showing some last reported locations of the Green Line Light Rail.

Has anyone ever used the API's before?

I punched in some of the GPS locations (latitude, longitude) on Google Maps, and the markers are all over the place. None of them end-up on the light rail line. Some are close, some are not.

Is it possible that the light rail vehicles do not actually post a GPS location? Perhaps those showing are a mistake, and they are some data from a bus?

My project has been to use PHP along with Google Maps to show Green Line locations. As you can imagine, the markers are not on the rails.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby FISHMANPET » July 7th, 2015, 8:19 pm

If it's anything like the bus locations, it's accurate at "check points" and then between those checkpoints it's estimating where the vehicle is. It's not actually tracking the actual location of the vehicle.

Source: someone on Twitter was trying to use the api as of it was reporting actual locations and having troubles.

Sent from my phone

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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby mulad » July 7th, 2015, 8:20 pm

I've played around with the NexTrip API a little bit, but never quite got around to trying the GPS coordinates that it provides. I think that would be a nice addition to any transit app, though last I checked, there was no timestamp on the GPS info -- tough to know if it's one second old or a couple minutes old, which could be pretty important.

The Blue and Green lines were very late additions to NexTrip, only coming online during this past winter. I'm not sure if they have regular GPS receivers on the trains or try to determine the location some other way, which might explain the trouble.

Alternatively, the coordinates might be given in a different map projection that isn't directly compatible with Google Maps. I know some Met Council data is provided using special localized projections that will cause things to not line up as expected.

You might try gathering more data points and mapping them out (say somewhere in the range of 20 to 100) -- if they appear to be in the right overall shape, but just shifted away from where they're supposed to be, that would enforce the idea that it's a map projection problem.

There are other possibilities too, like fishmanpet said.

mlseim
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby mlseim » July 8th, 2015, 7:57 am

The entries have timestamps which seem to be currently updated.

This is an entry in the API:
"Bearing": 0,
"BlockNumber": 69,
"Direction": 3,
"LocationTime": "/Date(1436363281000-0500)/",
"Odometer": 0,
"Route": "902",
"Speed": 0,
"Terminal": "",
"VehicleLatitude": 44.9479,
"VehicleLongitude": -93.163703

This value: 1436363281000-0500 is a UNIX timestamp.
The first 10 digits: 1436363281 converts to 07/08/2015 @ 1:48pm (UTC) Which is Universal Time
The value -0500 is our timezone, which is 5 hours less than UTC.

So the timestamps are within the 5 minute update time that they discuss on the API.
Direction in this case is West (value of 3)
and the train is the Green Line (902)

The API page says the odometer and speed are 'future' additions.

I'll try to figure out the GPS part ... [sigh] ... that's really the most important part. Go figure.

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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby mulad » July 8th, 2015, 10:46 am

Good to know about the timestamp! I hadn't looked at the API for a couple years, so they must have added that at some point (or I was just blind, which is entirely possible too).

nate
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby nate » July 9th, 2015, 4:19 pm

Anecdote. The quality of the LRT operators varies widely. Some are great at starting and stopping smoothly, others jerk their way into nearly every station. The smoother operators also seem to hit green lights mre consistently....at least as far as I've observed. What do you think?

Minnehahaha
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby Minnehahaha » July 9th, 2015, 6:25 pm

I was thinking the exact same thing on my ride home this afternoon. Stops were jerky, we were slow to leave many stations for no apparent reason, and we missed many green lights that we normally don't miss. It added a good five minutes to a Nicollet-Snelling trip.

Mcgizz
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby Mcgizz » July 9th, 2015, 6:45 pm

Nothing makes me more aggravated than getting on a train after 8 hours of some mind-numbing job to have some train operator use the brakes like they just learned to drive. Makes me want to lose my dinner on the train. That said in the same situation getting on a train with an operator that knows how to enter a station is truly amazing. Up there with ice cream on a hot day.

In all seriousness I wonder if any of the training staff coaches the operators on how to properly apply the brakes without making all the passengers motion sick or falling over all the time.

BlueShine
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby BlueShine » July 10th, 2015, 8:48 am

I've definitely noticed an overall improvement as drivers get more accustomed to the route. It also seems like weekend drivers are typically much less seasoned than weekday drivers (despite the difference between 2- and 3-car sets).

mlseim
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Re: Green Line NexTrip API GPS

Postby mlseim » July 13th, 2015, 10:52 am

I wanted to show everyone what I discovered about the NexTrip API, specifically using this:
http://svc.metrotransit.org/NexTrip/Veh ... ormat=json

After plotting several GPS coordinates, a strange thing becomes apparent:
All GPS locations West of 35W are on the tracks, appearing OK.
All GPS locations East of 35W are offset south and a bit west.

It seems consistent. I could offset all markers East of 35W so they all line-up on the rails.
BUT ... why would this strange offset occur? I emailed different people that I thought might have some connection to NexTrip, but didn't get any answers. It appears to me like it should work, but they have a bug or something that is offsetting the GPS.

Here is my plotted test page:
http://www.catpin.com/greenline2.php

I'll keep plotting more markers and get the definitive offset I need to line-up the markers on the rails.

Then, I suppose I should check the Blue line as well.

I wish someone at NexTrip would be interested enough in this to reply to my emails, or offers answers about this issue.

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FISHMANPET
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Re: Green Line (Central Corridor LRT)

Postby FISHMANPET » July 13th, 2015, 10:57 am

Man, that's just bizarre. When you said offset I was thinking a few feet but nope, that's way off.


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