urbanMSP

Over one hour to travel only 11 miles. :/

As others have noted, it will not take this long by the time the line opens.

More importantly, the shock expressed by the long time required to travel such a seeming short distance betrays, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of how people will use the line. Certainly some will board at the Interchange and get off at the Union Depot stop; most likely, however, this will be a relatively small number of overall passengers. Most people will get on somewhere in between and get off somewhere in between.

An analogy might help: it's less than 11 miles from Wall Street to the Bronx. A subway ride will take more than an hour. Urban rail systems are meant for moving huge amounts of people very efficiently while requiring little space. It's an upside if it goes super fast, but going super-fast isn't the sole determinant of success.

there are too many stops. is this that difficult to figure out? too many stops people.

Actually it has very little to do with the number of stops. The extra 3 stops that were added in 2010 only added ~2 minutes to the overall time. The deceleration and dwell time at each station is something like 45 seconds. The deceleration time is actually less than it is on the Blue Line because the trains only reach 30MPH in the first place, rather than 45MPH like Hiawatha.

It's clear that signal timing is the number one issue here. Followed by permitted top speed. Aside from the Wash Ave. Bridge and trench, is the train even permitted to travel more than 30MPH along the route? What's the speed limit on University for cars? For LRVs?

I'm not saying the reported trip times are ok...that's a potential disaster. But it's not really the number of stops.

I'll admit to commenting before I read the article, which I now regret. This really should have been an article titled "Central Corridor signal timing work ongoing." They could have used most of the same text, and even the same interviews and investigation (timing the train, though it would have no point in a revised article) to explain that engineers are working on getting the signals working properly. If they want to talk about problems they're having getting it to work, or reasons it might not be fixed on time, but the article makes it sound like engineers fucked up big time and "working as intented" the line takes over an hour, which just isn't the case.

C- reporting MPR.

"Central Corridor signal timing is off, but you'll never believe what happened next!" CLicK HeRe!

I'll admit to commenting before I read the article, which I now regret. This really should have been an article titled "Central Corridor signal timing work ongoing." They could have used most of the same text, and even the same interviews and investigation (timing the train, though it would have no point in a revised article) to explain that engineers are working on getting the signals working properly. If they want to talk about problems they're having getting it to work, or reasons it might not be fixed on time, but the article makes it sound like engineers fucked up big time and "working as intented" the line takes over an hour, which just isn't the case.

C- reporting MPR.

Yeah, exactly why I posted that quote above. I think it's a little useless to be even reporting on it right now – St. Paul only just installed the necessary equipment and it's not up and running properly yet.

I'll admit to commenting before I read the article, which I now regret. This really should have been an article titled "Central Corridor signal timing work ongoing."

...and would anyone have clicked to read?

Not saying that they weren't trying to goad people a little with the headline, but outside of this forum most people aren't transit experts. With trains now running throughout the day, it's not a bad time to be writing stories about it since many people are now seeing these empty trains roll by and affect traffic. So it's likely that someone from MPR called up the Metro Transit folks and was talking about the line and the testing and the PR person mentioned that the line is currently not running at full speed due to signal/timing/whatever issues (but giving the usual government assurance of, "we're working on this issue and hope to have it sorted out by the time the project launches"). Really it's just holding feet to the fire for accountability...with a headline meant to generate clicks.

An analogy might help: it's less than 11 miles from Wall Street to the Bronx. A subway ride will take more than an hour

It takes 35 minutes to get from the Bronx to Wall St on the 2 or the 5 train. http://goog.gl/maps/vI9Kd

Given MPR's less-than-stellar history of demonstrating their ability to be disinterested, objective reporters on this project, I'm not at all surprised that they chose to run with the first negative thing they could find. I've generally liked MPR but their political axe against the Green Line is really disappointing and I have a hard time seeing this article as anything more than a pot shot from that vantage point.

An analogy might help: it's less than 11 miles from Wall Street to the Bronx. A subway ride will take more than an hour

It takes 35 minutes to get from the Bronx to Wall St on the 2 or the 5 train. http://goog.gl/maps/vI9Kd

Are those express trains, though? Makes a huge difference.

Yes it's express. Which is why the stretch of University should have been a transit mall or tunnel.

An analogy might help: it's less than 11 miles from Wall Street to the Bronx. A subway ride will take more than an hour

It takes 35 minutes to get from the Bronx to Wall St on the 2 or the 5 train. http://goog.gl/maps/vI9Kd

Are those express trains, though? Makes a huge difference.

Those are indeed Express trains, which really isn't a fair comparison. It takes much, much longer than that on a local train.

Would it be nice if our LRT infrastructure could accommodate express trains and the like? You betcha. But end-to-end speed just isn't the point of all this.

Yes it's express. Which is why the stretch of University should have been a transit mall or tunnel.

Would it really be worth spending twice as much money for the Target Field -> Union Station trip to be 30 minutes (or 25, maybe) instead of 40?

I measured a roughly 11 mile segment of the 6 train (a local) from Brooklyn Bridge to the Bronx and it is scheduled at roughly 50 minutes. And even that isn't a fair comparison, since it is comparing a grade separated subway to a surface light rail line. I am sure Metro Transit will be able to shave time off the current speeds. It is something to be concerned about, but not yet time to say the sky is falling.

Wasn't the published 40 minute travel time from Central Station to Nicollet Mall, or am I making that up?

Since anecdotes = data, I drove back to Dinkytown from Midway on University at 2:00 today. Waiting for the first of the 3 cycles that it took me to get across Snelling, a train overtook me. I was not able to catch up to it all the way to Stadium Village, so the train is faster than at least some car trips.

So besides this MPR NON-story, I was driving along Uni today and noticed that most of the railings on the station areas are stainless steel. Well, they already look like crap from salt spray and the like with blotches and rust spots. Why oh why can't we just design good, easy to maintain transit stations? (Also, it took my 20 minutes from Prior to Lex...)

"We continue to work on the testing and signalization," Haigh said.

She also pointed out that most transit riders will be making trips within the corridor, rather than traveling the length of it like a commuter rail line. "This is really about station-to-station service," she said.

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_ ... source=rss

I realize I need to take a step back and remind myself that there is still a month to fix the trip time issues.

However this quote really bothers me. While I am only one "choice" rider and that may not make that big of a deal in the whole scope of things. I remembered reading that this line was going to re-connect the link between both down towns. Putting in rail how much each core means to each other. I took that to mean being able to park in one of the large ABC ramps and train it to StP for any number of events. I guess in a months time we will see just how fast it takes from dt to dt.

I made some travel time graphs of the 50 for comparison (based on the schedule) since I couldn't verbalize the variation in trip length very well. I hope to add the 16 soon. By comparison, the Green Line travel-time matrix I've posted in the past says 41 minutes end-to-end, 35 minutes Central to Nicollet. 4th & Minnesota (for westbound buses) and Cedar & 5th (eastbound) are roughly equivalent to Central station in St. Paul.





This is the spreadsheet.

However this quote really bothers me. While I am only one "choice" rider and that may not make that big of a deal in the whole scope of things. I remembered reading that this line was going to re-connect the link between both down towns. Putting in rail how much each core means to each other. I took that to mean being able to park in one of the large ABC ramps and train it to StP for any number of events. I guess in a months time we will see just how fast it takes from dt to dt.

Isn't parking generally cheaper in Stp? Or does it become pricier during events?

And I'll agree that most trips aren't going to be between Target Field Station and Union Depot. If you want to go downtown to downtown the 94 is a faster option, even though it's a crappier experience. Most people will be going between neighborhoods along the corridor or to/from a single downtown from/to a different neighborhood. But it's still a pretty shitty justification for long travel times. Point to point the Green Line should take as long as driving, and preferably be faster.

yes too many stops. adding those 2 extra stops means close to 8 - 10 extra minutes

Um, no?