B Line Lake St Rapid Bus, Midtown Rail Transit

[RailBaronYarr]

Wow. Awesome. I was shocked at how little disruption to the biking/ped portion of the Greenway there would be for the entire length.

What's holding them back from being able to finish the single-track sections off to double, now or in the future? ie what would it take in the future to get the streetcar running every 7.5 minutes (or less)? Seeing how much of this is double-tracked really excites me.

[Tom H.]

Yeah, it's a little strange to see that none of the single-track pinch points are in the trench itself, but rather on the bookends of the line near the LRT stops.

[MNdible]

I'd suspect that having the single track segments at the end make it very easy to manage, since you always know exactly how trains will be interacting at those two segments, which wouldn't be true in the middle segments. It's very easy to hold a train at the terminal station a bit longer if necessary. In effect, having ony the two end segments double track probably has very little impact on the capacity of the line.

Talindsay, I'm not sure that I read the plans the same way you do regarding the integration of the two lines. It's a bit difficult to tell at these scales, but I'd be very surprised if they were going to interline at the Hiawatha/Lake station. Even at West Lake, where it would make sense to have the ability to connect to the SW LRT trackage to enable shared use of the maintenance facility, I'd guess they would want separate station platforms.

[talindsay]

Interesting, looking at the renderings it looked to me like they were bringing it actually on to the Hiawatha tracks just south of 28th, but perhaps you're right - on a closer zoom it is shown *next to*, and not *on* the Hiawatha ROW, so maybe they're still thinking of bringing it in underneath the Hiawatha tracks. In the past that's always been what they discussed, but then in the past it always looked way less LRT-like than this version of the plans. I'll be optimistic that you're right.

[papazim]

At the SWLRT meetings, Jim Alexander explained that they have managed to engineer the SW tracks so that a potential Midtown track could interline at West Lake (under either the shallow tunnel or deep tunnel option). It is not possible to interline at Hiawatha/Lake due to the differences in grades.

There would be separate platforms at West Lake -- especially if there are tunnels in which case the West Lake station would be a subway station.

[RailBaronYarr]

^..is that assuming a tunnel design? What about at-grade co-location options?

[papazim]

It's even easier to interline them when they are both at grade (at West Lake). The idea is to preserve the option to move Midtown vehicles onto the SW tracks in order to do occasional heavy maintenance at the new OMF.

Regular light maintenance would take place at a separate facility whose location is yet to be determined.

[RailBaronYarr]

Also, another question: I thought they were planning on combining the Nicollet and Orange Line/35W stations in to one? The stretch including Nicollet, Orange xfer, 5th Ave, Chicago Ave is the only section where stops are spaced less than 1/2 mile from each other. Seems like at least one could be dropped.. Nicollet and Stevens/Orange are only 650' apart but serve meaningful connections. What is the purpose of the 5th Ave stop as proposed? Are there plans for major development here?

[twincitizen]

I agree that we should find a way to combine the Nicollet and 35W-Orange stops into one long station along the Greenway. I like the idea of people being able to transfer between all modes at one combined station, awkward as it may be. The 35W Station isn't going to be directly under 35W anyways, since the '35W Transit Access' project decided against a station that would be directly accessible from the Greenway. The Lake Street Orange Line Station will be accessible only from Lake Street. There will be a "green crescent" constructed between Stevens Ave and the west side of 35W to provide Orange Line station access from the Greenway. That leads me to believe the "35W Station" on the Midtown Corridor would actually be closer to Stevens than 35W...providing an even stronger argument to combine the stations. Just make a long station (650') between Nicollet and Stevens. What an amazing opportunity to connect the Orange Line, Nicollet, Midtown, and Lake St (via re-opened Nicollet and via green crescent) transit modes into a single, mostly contiguous facility!

Having a stop at 5th Avenue isn't the worst thing ever. It's an at-grade crossing and won't require vertical circulation (read: cheap). It's probably not the worst idea to have trains stop here, rather than having gate arms come down and having trains sail through. It provides pretty direct access to the Wells Fargo campus, which becomes even more important if we do indeed combine Nicollet & 35W stations into something entirely west of 35W.

[RailBaronYarr]

I looked back at the Orange Line/35W Access cardboard model pictures (that I thought I remembered) and yeah, one continuous connection from the Lake St Orange Line via the 'crescent' to a Midtown station that's somewhere between Nicollet and Stevens (with vertical circulation to Nicollet Ave for that corridor connection) makes a whole lot of sense to me. It won't be a quick walk from the stop over to the Orange Line station the way you typically think of a transfer, but would be grade separated (and could be made pleasant with shelter and heating along the way). Good points on the 5th Ave stop, the only thing I could think of in the area was the WF building, but it being a cheap stop to build is a good point.

[ProspectPete]

Regarding the timeline: when is the earliest that we would see LRVs in the trench?

[exiled_antipodean]

One huge benefit of a Midtown station under the existing Lake St station is better pedestrian circulation at the street level. Hopefully there will be greater public and private interest in improving the pededstrian connections under 55. The bridge is high enough and the ROW wide enough that the pedestrian experience doesn't have to be as awful as it is.

[Silophant]

Does anyone have any insight as to what this line would be called? If it connects to the Blue and Green lines at either end, and uses LRVs, it would seem proper to give it a METRO color (Teal Line?) It'd certainly make more sense than the Red Line.

[RailBaronYarr]

It does seem like the frequency, capacity, speed, and stop spacings would be worthy of a colored line. My vote would be Yellow, and way down the line if E Lake St and Grand Ave areas get built up a little bit they can connect them and have a true inter-city transit line of that color.

[twincitizen]

Yellow or Purp all the way!

While one could make the argument that this line is of lesser stature than the Green or Blue Lines, it is going to be seamlessly integrated into those systems (at West Lake and Hi-Lake). It's certainly going to have higher ridership than the Red & Orange Lines...

I suppose one could argue that it belongs in the aBRT tier, (A-line, B-line, etc.) but it has much more in common with METRO service than arterial BRT.

If this thing ends up using LRVs, you can bank on it getting a color.

[David Greene]

YWhile one could make the argument that this line is of lesser stature than the Green or Blue Lines, it is going to be seamlessly integrated into those systems (at West Lake and Hi-Lake)..

Per the CAC meeting last night, it will NOT interline with Hiawatha. I guess it depends on how one looks at the line. Is it a streetcar like on Nicollet or something more? I think it is something more and should get a color. I'm not sure that holds up if it's extended to run on East Lake, however.

[mattaudio]

Now if it could only share platforms at West Lake and Midtown stations.

[Anondson]

Is there no plan to locate a maintenance facility along the line? Wonder which neighborhood gets to win that lottery.

[MNdible]

I've always thought that the trench level of the north old Sears warehouse building would be perfect. I have no idea if it would actually work or not, but there's an awful lot of space there, and nobody would ever notice it's there.

[twincitizen]

No need for a maintenance facility on such a short line, especially with the Southwest facility going in Hopkins. Whether this uses a 66' streetcar or a single 90' LRV doesn't really matter.

How long is a round trip from West Lake to Hi-Lake, 40 minutes? Planned service every 10-15 minutes? You can do the math if you want, but the answer is this line will not require enough vehicles or operators to demand its own maintenance facility. We're talking about 4, 5, or 6 single-car trains in service at any given time. Someone should probably make sure the Hopkins SWLRT facility has room though, given the failure to coordinate things in this region.

Methodology:
20 min one-way trip x 2 = 40 min round trip.
+20 minute recovery* / operator break = 60 minutes of service time
60 / 10min headway = 6 operators & vehicles needed
60 / 15min headway = 4 operators & vehicles needed

*In reality, this number is closer to 10 minutes than 20, so it would actually be 50 / 10 = 5 operators & vehicles during peak. I was being generous.