urbanMSP

Have we considered a tunnel under the portico?

At an absolute minimum, and assuming no topography changes, you need 350ft for a tunnel approach, and that's with the steepest rail grade feasible. 350ft also happens to be roughly the size of a downtown city block. So a tunnel is not really feasible.

Given the continued growth of Old St. Anthony into a residential neighborhood with future density possibly greater than Uptown and the North Loop, is anyone else concerned that a little starter streetcar with shared right of way and, likely, relatively low headways will be lacking in capacity from day one?

It is a true shame that we're not contemplating true rapid transit in dedicated ROW along this stretch.

Given the continued growth of Old St. Anthony into a residential neighborhood with future density possibly greater than Uptown and the North Loop, is anyone else concerned that a little starter streetcar with shared right of way and, likely, relatively low headways will be lacking in capacity from day one?

Well, the headway they've used for the studies is 7.5 minutes. Maybe that'll get cut, who knows. But let's assume it here.

A streetcar has a capacity of 92, give or take (depending on how many are willing to stand). Assuming that none of the people who got on at any of the three-ish stops on the St. Anthony side are headed for other destinations there, that works out to a notional capacity of 736 people per hour headed downtown.

To fill that, you'd need around 30 people waiting at every stop for every single trip. I'm hopeful for high ridership too, but I think that might be a little optimistic.

Just to clarify, 7.5 minute headways at peak, 10 minutes midday. To be sure, this is actually better than our LRT lines, and from Central/1st Ave total bus/streetcar trips per hour into downtown would go from 13/6 (peak/midday) to 22/14. That's a substantial capacity increase, and you'd be seeing transit come by every <3 minutes during peak hours. Not bad. The starter streetcar operating weakness is terminating the 18 at Nicollet & Lake.

The Transport Politic recently made the case against mixed traffic streetcars.

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2015 ... -movement/

I've said many times on this site that putting down rail without it's own right-of-way is an unproductive mismatch of spending between financial capital and political capital. I'm not trying to reignite a tired streetcar debate, just share Yonah Freemark's compelling take on the issue.

Those arguments, which mostly boil down to "only dedicated lanes lead to reliability!", would be a lot more compelling when discussing Nicollet-Central if the 18 didn't have a 90+% on-time record.

Well, if 1 out of 10 buses is more than five minutes late that's not so great. The 10 bus (relevant for Central) only has an 82% OTP. And, that's after the scheduled run time sandbagging for rush hours (when things get the worst). I'm not saying the world is on fire or that dedicated lanes are the only way to chop that rate down, but let's be honest about that 90% number.

Sure, I don't think anyone would dispute that service could always be better. But if your main argument against streetcars is reliability concerns, this really doesn't look like a corridor where that will be a major issue.

Why do we consider dedicated bus lanes when they can maneuver around obstructions, but not for streetcars/trolleys? Not trying to troll, just curious as to why they're beneficial to the one mode, but possibly not the other.

Though this corridor could easily have dedicated ROW with a center-running gauntlet track alignment.

It could, but as someone with motion sickness, I was looking forward to less swerving.

Why would it have to swerve?

Maybe I'm a bit fuzzy on the gauntlet concept you had in mind--I always envisioned it as a single track in in the median of Nicollet, with double tracks for passing at intersections. The move from the single to double would be a lateral movement.

That would be ideal operationally, even though it involves a lateral movement. Since it's rail in dedicated ROW, it could be a very gradual turnout with constant acceleration/deceleration. I don't think it would be nearly as bad as your average bus stop, where lots of the lurching in/out and speeding/braking fast is to get the bus in and out the travel lane on a busy street.

I don't know, the turn the Green Line makes to head onto its own tracks out of downtown is pretty jerky and lurchy.

Yeah, if it were as bad as the Green-Blue junction every block, I'd pretty much have to not ride it.

I would assume a gauntlet track curve would be smoother than a junction like the Blue-Green line one. The curve just west of the 10th St station in downtown St Paul is pretty smooth.

Interesting/very creative idea, but I don't think taking over this pedestrian route with transit would be a good call. Looking at this view, though, I do really wish the pedestrian connection across Washington was stronger and prioritized. I think if the portion of the Mall between 3rd and Washington were closed to traffic, then it could be a true pedestrian corridor and really emphasize the route to the river across Washington (if that makes sense).

It's a fine Idea, pedestrians just have to be smart.

Example Neuss Germany...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuss#/med ... .Neuss.jpg
http://www.wz-newsline.de/polopoly_fs/1 ... Image.jpeg

As say whenever I get the opportunity "if Australians are smart enough to do it", I'm pretty sure Americans can.

http://www.streetsblog.org/wp-content/u ... _jul07.jpg

MASS HYSTERIA!