urbanMSP

Reviving this long unused thread for the 494 project. There is a layout on this INFRA Grant application page from SRF Consulting for the 494 Bloomington project: https://www.srfconsulting.com/i-494-infra/ News article yesterday about 494 receiving a $60 million grant: https://www.startribune.com/mn...

I tried to sketch out a "moderate" plan that would still allow good travel times with no underground stations and without going fully elevated (and in particular, without a big viaduct running down the main commercial street): https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1uZYz-N6BbGkmSXIpEw_i9nQ...

How long will the bus only lanes be on Lake Street Here's the "Balanced Bus Priority" concept which they are pushing forward. It will be complicated, they are trying to not just speed up the bus but also add bicycle facilities and slow general traffic. From the latest report (page 116): •...

I understand the geographic and political argument for spreading the wealth around. But that argument is weak! The single best way to justify future transit spending is to plan, build, and operate transit lines that are successful. If you can show that the money is being well spent, you will get mo...

IMO the most interesting possibilities in this corridor would to be focus on the eastern half, via a short extension of the existing Blue Line connecting MOA to one of the future Orange Line stations, or perhaps York or France. .... The trickiest part would be potentially reconfiguring the existing...

For several years I've thought about what to do for transit improvements along the I-494 Corridor between Mall of America and Eden Prairie. As some of you know aBRT was considered along American Boulevard when Metro Transit did their aBRT study in 2012. That route was recently dropped from consider...

Can everyone agree to retire the word boondoggle? It's use and meaning has been contorted and has ended being used negatively about any large scale project that the government pays for that an any individually doesn't see I don't see any value in. Literally anyone could argue that almost project is...

Instead of a Snelling station wouldn’t Pascal st. Station hold more value? The roadway is less car focused and has bike lanes already. Plus more redevelopment opportunities closer to the station I remember walking south on Snelling from the green line station and feeling like I was walking on the s...

I have a friend who lives near 35W and 38th who was disappointing he wasn't going to have a station nearby. I wonder if a station at 38th would pass today. The Orange Line is a bit of an unusual beast. It's been in the works in some form or another for over 15 years; the planning was done by MNDot ...

I'd be interested in seeing some type of service running to Buffalo, Northfield, Rochester, St. Michael/Albertville, Hudson and Red Wing I know Northfield Lines runs a reasonably good shuttle between Northfield and Minneapolis a few times a day, and I imagine between various airport shuttles, obscu...

I remain very skeptical that either walk-ups or local (low-frequency) bus transfers will be a significant source of ridership, so it's not a great sign that there's only one high-frequency route on that entire map. But to clarify, I'm not criticizing the plan or the planners; I'm not sure I could co...

Inconvenience of transferring is another issue, for example 46th St & 35W which never worked as intended because riders preferred the one-seat ride on the 146 instead of transferring. Feeder lines need to have good frequency to be effective; there's no use having buses come every 3 minutes if t...

Interesting article! I recognize a lot of familiar names on the two committees :) Getting streetcars across the river would require using the existing Highway 5 bridge or building a new one. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has raised concerns about the impact a mass transit route ...

Aren't they moving operations to Texas? Companies aren't that easy to move. I expect Mr. Musk is now a Texas resident for tax purposes, and I believe there's a factory being built there, and perhaps they'll start hiring some engineers in Austin as well. But they have an enormous factory in the Bay ...

Tesla is hiring in... travel demand management? Seems so weird given their outward corporate culture. https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2488393533/ This is just about getting people to and from their physical offices and factories, not really about the product. Most big Silicon Valley companies ha...

Q2 Could we see an elevated station and track on Broadway? SWLRT and the Hiawatha Line have decent amounts of elevated rail and these tricky parts of Broadway are super long. I'm not sure elevated stations would take up significantly less space than at-grade, or cost significantly less than undergr...

The idea that they've already ruled out any underground stations is disappointing, short-sighted, closed-minded, frustrating, and lots of other words I won't use on this forum. But at least they're being very unambiguous about it, so the question now is what's the best alignment that doesn't have an...

https://ccxmedia.org/news/two-hennepin-county-commissioners-say-blue-line-extension-funding-could-be-in-jeopardy/ "Lunde says the changes outlined in the transportation omnibus bill would require counties to pay for the operation and maintenance costs of existing and future light rail lines, e...

Freeway caps should be built as 50% private 50% public in exchange for development rights above the cap. Freeway caps should only be built when the taxes make it back. We need more money for transit so less people have to drive in the first place. That also cuts down on particulates I very, very ra...

While I'm mainly curious about how the West 7th stretch is going to turn out, it's interesting to see possible changes to the MOA stop in the presentation slides (page 13 of the pdf), especially as they just renovated that station. The Bloomington segment has always been far from ideal, and interli...