urbanMSP

The fact that American Blvd station and Bloomington Central station share the same LRT substitute bus stop makes me question once again why we had to build two separate stations within walking distance in Bloomington......

To buy off Bloomington? Maybe that'll work for Southwest/St. Louis Park, give them an extra redundant LRT stop at Lilac Park/Hwy 100?

Adding stops seems an amazingly effective way of quelling opposition in our region.

To buy off Bloomington? Maybe that'll work for Southwest/St. Louis Park, give them an extra redundant LRT stop at Lilac Park/Hwy 100?

Um, you mean like Beltline and Wooddale?

Are you serious is saying that SLP residents will be fine tearing down homes and businesses if we give them anohter stop?

Adding stops seems an amazingly effective way of quelling opposition in our region.

Source?

You ever think about taking it down just a notch?

To buy off Bloomington? Maybe that'll work for Southwest/St. Louis Park, give them an extra redundant LRT stop at Lilac Park/Hwy 100?

Maybe we buy off Minneapolis by putting a station at Cedar Lake and for good measure another at Lyndale?

LRV 115 is featuring new paint job and destination sign.

Nice! I wonder how long it will take to replace all the destination signs.

And, looking more closely at the picture, I wonder how well the signs will distinguish their blue and green boxes?

In my experience, LEDs don't always photograph very well. What it looks like in that picture on the previous page may not be a good proxy for what it will look like in person.

Drove down Hiawatha today and they were doing some major work at the 38th and 46th street stations. Route map kiosks were covered with plastic and it looked like concrete forms were being placed for pouring. There were concrete pumper trucks at both stations, blocking a lane of Hiawatha. Anyone know what's happening?

I talked to one of the workers last night. They're removing the pavers on the platforms and pouring concrete. I guess the pavers have been too hard to maintain. Eventually they're going to do all the stations. He also mentioned they'll be testing two 3-car trains on the Central Corridor tracks this weekend.

I saw them testing the trains today, one was being pulled by a hi-rail vehicle and the other was under it's own power. I saw them go as far as Robert Street. It looked like they were also activating the signals where the Green line splits.

Live wire testing downtown St Paul Saturday.

Looks like Metro Council is planning a new platform at Nicollet Mall Station, on the north side, adjacent to the Nic on 5th project:

http://www.metrocouncil.org/getdoc/391d ... umber.aspx

Does anyone know what the ridership on this line is today, compared to what they projected when the line was built?

Does anyone know what the ridership on this line is today, compared to what they projected when the line was built?

http://www.metrotransit.org/facts-about ... ction.aspx

"Ridership: Since opening in June 2004 through 2012, customers have boarded METRO Blue Line light-rail trains 83.4 million times. Ridership in 2012 was 10.5 million and average weekday rides totaled more than 31,300."

And

http://www.metrotransit.org/metro-trans ... 81-million

"Average weekday ridership on the Hiawatha Line exceeds projections for the year 2020 by nearly 30 percent." (Posted 1-15-13)

Whether it is doing better than forecast depends on which forecast. The Alternatives Analysis predicted ridership of 37,000, the Final EIS lowered this number.

See Table 7 http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/NSPA2007_Final(1).pdf

The Alternatives Analysis, it should be noted, was completed in 1982. Adding the ridership from the Hiawatha alternatives analysis to that projected for the system of four lines studied by the Met Council in 1981 would have resulted in 186,500 daily rides on LRT. Assuming the sky is in fact blue and everything we know about how land use orients itself around transportation investments would have held true for this system of 5 LRT lines, we certainly would have seen at least 100,000 more daily transit trips than we do today, and probably several hundred thousand more.

In other words, policymakers have had the planning support to make the right decision and consistently have not done so. There should be a public shaming of everyone who was on the TAB, the Met Council, and Mndot from 1982 through at least 2010, if not today.