urbanMSP

That's why it should go under 6th

Is there a specific reason it's on 5th? It seems if you went down 6th or even 7th you'd be much closer to the center of downtown (though north/south circulation might become more important then).

You could loop it south of the stadium rather than north and still have a stadium station.

5th Avenue was a grand compromise at the time of routing -- there was much back-and-forth about it. I don't remember everything that went into the decision, but it was definitely not taken lightly.

I guess at this point if went down 6th or 7th, you'd have to do something to get it to hook back up with the Interchange. Though if you're tunnelling underground already how hard is it to just curve the tunnel and blast out an underground cavern below the Interchange?

My guess is that 5th was chosen because it didn't serve as a freeway ramp at either end, unlike most of the other streets. The westbound ramp from I-94 lost effectiveness with the Dome curves, and now we're moving that exit to flow into 7th instead. On the west end, it's a normal street into the North Loop. Much easier to sacrifice 5th than 6th or any others.

With the assumption that Central LRT will get much better ridership than projected, I would prefer that a downtown tunnel take an entirely different route. It should still stop at the Government Center, but then proceed in more of a west-southwest direction to stop at Nicollet & 8th, then around 12th & Hennepin, then down Hennepin to somewhere around the Basilica. It could rejoin the Southwest Corridor somewhere around a reconfigured Van White station. I don't expect the Interchange to be an important trip generator for the Green Line, but if so, an additional commuter rail platform could be built at Van White.

I am not sure where I saw this, but wasn't the IDS built with a subway station? Or easy conversion to one? Sounds crazy, but I swear I read that somewhere.

I've heard it was Wells Fargo Tower that was built to accommodate a subway, but I would imagine one could be easily integrated into the IDS, as they do have a fairly large underground area that is used for a college.

I'd hope that the Nicollet Mall station would someday become the main hub downtown, connecting four lines operating as two services under Nicollet Mall with the two services operating under 5th or another street. I'm curious to know the status of this urban legend about the WF tower and/or IDS being transit-ready... Does that mean footings are spaced to a certain distance? Etc? I always assumed that most of the floor plate under each building was loading dock and parking garage. But if the east-west spine went under 6th, WF lower levels could become the concourse connecting the two. If the spine was under 7th St, IDS could serve the same function.

Is ABRT supposed to replace the idea of underground rail, or is it an interim solution to the busy urban routes while underground rail (or elevated rail) is a concept to be looked in the next few decades?

The Orange Line eliminates the idea of underground rail on Nicollet, and streetcar/ABRT on Nicollet would be the final nail in the coffin to that proposal, but for Routes 5 and 6 I see a better chance of having underground rail even though the D Line between MOA, downtown, and Brooklyn Center is coming in the next couple of years. I'm surprised nothing has been looked at for Route 6 between Southdale and downtown.

ABRT, in general, is an improvement to heavily used existing bus services, nothing more. Some corridors in the initial study (B-Line/Riverview) are planned to be rail eventually, but I don't think there's any indication that the Snelling corridor, for example, would ever have a train (unless Riverview LRT was to cross the Intercity Bridge).

I agree with you that it is strange that the aBRT study's Hennepin line only looked from Lake to the river, instead of from Southdale to campus. Someone wrote a Streets post a while ago pointing out that Southdale is by far the largest jobs cluster in the metro that has no transit improvements whatsoever planned.

It'll probably take the aBRT getting crowded for rail (underground or otherwise) to be seriously considered in some of these places, save for lots of transit money suddenly falling out of the sky.

Taking the "D Line should be subway instead" debate to this thread, I do think there is at least one corridor in the Twin Cities region that has subway potential: Nicollet-Central (or Lyndale through South Minneapolis so its farther from the Orange Line). Already existing high ridership, higher density land use, and diverse populations. IMO, the streetcar proposal won't upgrade transit in this corridor, it will only incentivize development.

Taking the "D Line should be subway instead" debate to this thread, I do think there is at least one corridor in the Twin Cities region that has subway potential: Nicollet-Central (or Lyndale through South Minneapolis so its farther from the Orange Line). Already existing high ridership, higher density land use, and diverse populations. IMO, the streetcar proposal won't upgrade transit in this corridor, it will only incentivize development.

Agree, the streetcar is useless for actual transit investment!

IMO there are a couple places where targeted investments in tunnels (or other grade-separation) would intrigue me:

1. North-to-South across downtown Minneapolis.
2. A corridor through South (probably Nicollet but Hennepin or Chicago would be viable candidates depending on network design), probably terminating at the Greenway on one end and the hypothetical Downtown tunnel on the other.
3. An extension of the Downtown tunnel North across the River (probably by bridge? It was surprisingly difficult to find data on the riverbed and any prior attempts at tunneling) and a short distance into Northeast.
4. East-to-West across downtown Minneapolis (probably resembling the existing Blue/Green Line route)
5. Improvements to facilitate more rapid travel between Minneapolis and St. Paul, which would probably mean bringing key slow segments of the University Ave LRT underground. (You could also do something along I-94 if you were more ambitious.)
6. Across downtown St. Paul, serving the end of Riverview and part of the Green Line.

(These aren't all equal in either importance or specificity; just the options I think would be worth studying.)

In addition to mostly serving relatively dense urban environments, they would also give us the spines that would enable future (above-ground LRT or streetcar) extensions and other nice network effects. That, IMO, is what would justify the investment when the population of these areas alone might not. For example, the expanded North-South corridor (#1-3) would have good ridership on its own, but would also greatly improve the viability of projects like proper rapid transit along 35W, a rerouted SWLRT, and possible streetcar service along arteries (Central, Nicollet, France, Chicago) where the transit outcomes actually would be substantially better than existing bus. East-West would likewise be a huge improvement to travel times on the Blue and Green lines (and their extensions).

The idea, basically, is similar to how other cities (my working example is the San Francisco Market St. Tunnel) have made subways and streetcars/LRT work together: tunnel through the most constrained (and usually most important!) segments, use these tunnels to support multiple routes, and extend those routes using streetcar in the areas where ROW is less of a concern and lower density means costs need to be an order of magnitude lower.

Since we already have LRT from downtown Mpls to the Airport & MOA, why not have underground rail following the old Como-Harriet Streetcar line, but with a southern dip?

Downtown Mpls->Hennepin->Uptown->Linden Hills->44th & France — but here, instead of going west (which SWLRT does today), go south along France — 50th & France->Fairview Southdale Hospital->Southdale Area->through Richfield & Bloomington->MOA.

The Southdale area is already exploding with density.

At this point, I'd argue that a north-south bus tunnel would be far more useful than a rail tunnel.

Since we already have LRT from downtown Mpls to the Airport & MOA, why not have underground rail following the old Como-Harriet Streetcar line, but with a southern dip?

Downtown Mpls->Hennepin->Uptown->Linden Hills->44th & France — but here, instead of going west (which SWLRT does today), go south along France — 50th & France->Fairview Southdale Hospital->Southdale Area->through Richfield & Bloomington->MOA.

The Southdale area is already exploding with density.

I can see NIMBY's in Edina now protesting this.

But it would be a great route!

At this point, I'd argue that a north-south bus tunnel would be far more useful than a rail tunnel.

Seattle has a tunnel that accommodates both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_ ... sit_Tunnel

Granted, they're going to be removing bus service and turning it into a rail-only tunnel, but at the time they built it they didn't have the rail built out to justify a rail-only tunnel.

Do we have any upcoming projects to fully reconstruct a prime north-south downtown corridor with a $5 million per block budget? That seems like it would be an opportune time to tunnel. Plz let me know thx.