urbanMSP

Well, today I could have went from the Raymond Station to Westgate by bike, but wanted to ride the train: a good ten minutes late before I saw it approach. Once again, this certainly makes you think twice about stopping somewhere before your final destination. In this case, after reaching Westgate by LRT the Dunn Bros was closing at 6PM anyway (?). It would be nice if businesses would re-evaluate their hours for the new LRT line: that's the only coffee shop I know of for a good distance in any direction: actually that's about the only thing there: no bars nearby and Egg & I is about the only restaurant and closes early in the afternoon. Oh well, just rode my bike to Dinkytown and spent my money in Mpls instead.

You should try Cupcakes that is not too far from the Westgate Station. They have coffee and excellent eats. Not sure on their hours, but they sure are another coffee house as well as the coffee house at the 29th street station. Can't remember the name of it, but it is right on the corner with a nice patio and all.

Overflow is at the Prospect Park station.

To that end, couldn't they improve accessibility for the visually impaired by announcing train arrival at stations with multiple services? I've heard that in other cities. "This is a Green Line train to St. Paul Union Depot"

One would hope that the automated NexTrip software would allow for that... I really hate an overhead sign that tells me to "See Schedule".

I operated the Green Line westbound down Ceder St this afternoon without stopping for a bar signal. It was the first time I was able to go 25 MPH woohoo.

I operated the Green Line westbound down Ceder St this afternoon without stopping for a bar signal. It was the first time I was able to go 25 MPH woohoo.

LRV Op Dude, have you noticed continuous progress on the signaling issues? Many of us only use a small portion of the line a couple times a day, so and I am curious if someone who travels the entire line numerous times a day would have a better feeling on the progress being made.

To that end, couldn't they improve accessibility for the visually impaired by announcing train arrival at stations with multiple services? I've heard that in other cities. "This is a Green Line train to St. Paul Union Depot"

Those exist. They tend to only work on some days at random. Messages I've heard are similar to "A Blue Line train toward Minneapolis is arriving on Track 1," "An out of service train is approaching on Track 1. Please stand back. You will not be able to board." and also 2-minute warnings. I hope they get that working every day sometime...

Clearly you should have gone to the dubliner.

Just did that Monday. And then I went to Tracks...kinda like a weird small town bar that somehow got plopped onto University. It was OK, but like the Dubliner better.

To that end, couldn't they improve accessibility for the visually impaired by announcing train arrival at stations with multiple services? I've heard that in other cities. "This is a Green Line train to St. Paul Union Depot"

One would hope that the automated NexTrip software would allow for that... I really hate an overhead sign that tells me to "See Schedule".

Hell, I'd take a "Next Estimated Train At _:__" . At least that way you don't have to play "find the schedule", which is no one's favorite game. And that way when they announce delays it's easy to figure out the difference.

To that end, couldn't they improve accessibility for the visually impaired by announcing train arrival at stations with multiple services? I've heard that in other cities. "This is a Green Line train to St. Paul Union Depot"

One would hope that the automated NexTrip software would allow for that... I really hate an overhead sign that tells me to "See Schedule".

Hell, I'd take a "Next Estimated Train At _:__" . At least that way you don't have to play "find the schedule", which is no one's favorite game. And that way when they announce delays it's easy to figure out the difference.

Which happens to be exactly what NexTrip does!

There were audible messages being played at Union Depot this afternoon saying something like "The train on track 2 is out of service" and "All trains to Minneapolis are boarding on track 1." Unfortunately, that "not in service" train was causing backups getting into/out of the station -- one eastbound train was stuck waiting to get in until the one I took westbound passed through the switches at TPT.

Things moved much more quickly for me getting out of downtown St. Paul today -- I think there was only a brief stop on 4th at Robert Street, and no other extra stops in downtown.

A police officer started checking tickets after getting on at Central, and was using one of those flip-phone-style readers on cards. He mentioned something about a new type of reader coming soon.

Mulad, I think you and I were on the same train this afternoon:D It was certainly nice to have a smooth ride out of St Paul.

I wrote Russ Stark, my city council member, and asked him to advocate for better signal priority. He wrote back within a few hours, and said he, too, rides the train daily, and that the city of St Paul continues to work with the Met a Council to make sure the trains are moving efficiently while maintaining pedestrian safety. I have to admit I hadn't considered the pedestrian safety angle, but it makes some sense...and it's an extra layer of complexity when trying to get the signals right.

Yeah, the pedestrian signals put a limit on how fast the signals can change. On Snelling at University, they do a 25-second countdown in the blinking Don't Walk phase (that's in addition to a few seconds of yellow for cars at the end, and probably another few seconds of a Walk phase at the start). A train moving along at full speed will travel 1/4 mile in 20 to 25 seconds -- many intersections are spaced 1/4 mile or less apart, so the signal priority system needs to be thinking ahead a bit.

I've seen 3 car combos, 2 car combos, and today I even saw a lonely one car LRT headed west with passengers.
Any idea why they split them up like this?

I've seen 3 car combos, 2 car combos, and today I even saw a lonely one car LRT headed west with passengers.
Any idea why they split them up like this?

I have 2 theory's neither of which I have any evidence to support them with:

1) Since trains are not always running on schedule yet, they throw a couple single or double car train sets out to try to maintain a 10 minute schedule.

2) They are retrofitting the old Bombardier cars and therefor have fewer cars in service.

When I saw the single car I just thought it accidentally got separated from a 3 car and kept making all of it's stops;-)

I've seen 3 car combos, 2 car combos, and today I even saw a lonely one car LRT headed west with passengers.
Any idea why they split them up like this?

I have 2 theory's neither of which I have any evidence to support them with:

1) Since trains are not always running on schedule yet, they throw a couple single or double car train sets out to try to maintain a 10 minute schedule.

2) They are retrofitting the old Bombardier cars and therefor have fewer cars in service.

Oddly enough, they've used Bombardiers on the Green Line a few times now. They always seem to have messed up signage of sorts when they do, heh.

Average daily ridership beats 2015 goal:

http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/ ... 0drgdEa.97

My sense is that ridership in week 2 is a little lighter than week 1, but it is good news indeed that we're hitting those numbers already, without school in session.

From the little I've heard so far it seems as though the line's ridership has exceeded expectations. I wonder if they set those ridership #'s a bit on the low side, or if they subtract say 10% for margin of error just to be safe. It's seemingly always better to exceed a budget/goal when it comes to revenue generation than to fall short (and vice versa for cost center activities).

It feels like the estimates might have been low to me - just current ridership on the various buses in the corridor seemed likely to achieve the ridership numbers without much new. However, given the strenuous New Starts process, and the fact that the feds rejected the original ridership estimates since they didn't believe the model was good enough to accurately model Hiawatha's current ridership (this was in 2006), leads me to believe that the feds required the model to be as realistic a representation as they could get. And of course CEI was calculated based on ridership, so a worse ridership number would have hurt the competitiveness.

I will note that the statements about "expected" ridership have revised down since the line was funded: it was ~43,000 at funding time, and now they're talking about ~40,000. That may be partly due to the three additional stations being added after funding, and it may be partly due to the longer end-to-end time, but the downward-revised forecasts haven't been given the same scrutiny as the old CEI forecasts received.