urbanMSP

I'm not really surprised, Amtrak has been more aggressive in trying to find ways to cut long distance service ever since Anderson was appointed president (maybe even since Moorman to an extent) and I think is still true with Flynn. Question is does the Twin Cities make the cut for Amtrak's other go...

I'm always fine with a tunnel, of course, but it's expensive and takes longer and might lead to stops being placed less conveniently to cut costs. This project is already expensive. Granted it would be more expensive with a tunnel, but lets not pretend the Blue Line Extension running almost entirel...

I know the politics of cars are nothing like the reality, but from a geometry perspective I really don't find the argument that Broadway is too narrow to be particularly compelling. It's part of a mostly grid-like structure so flow changes from cutting down to one slow travel lane each way and banni...

The current Green Line is great for connecting people to destinations like the U and Midway, but it doesn't effectively solve the problem of a fast trip between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and that in turn really diminishes the value of treating SWLRT as an extension. There are lots of great ideas for...

Not to say that it wouldn't be useful, but doing something on Selby has much more significant impacts than on the others: A 12' cycle track, a 3' curb buffer, an 11' travel lane, and an 18' travel/parking lane seems more than adequate and consistent with city width guidelines (and even leaves a cou...

Not to say that it wouldn't be useful, but doing something on Selby has much more significant impacts than on the others: - Selby is 46' (ish) curb to curb, so on 3-lane sections a cycletrack means removing both sides of parking in a busy commercial district - The trail comes out on the north side ...

I think there are real opportunities for bike improvements on Jefferson, St. Clair, Grand (to connect to Summit), and Hamline. This part of Hamline in particular is part of the city/county 4-3 study. Selby is probably the least likely/most difficult to make improvements on. Any of those would be pr...

There will be trail spurs at each ramp (Jefferson, St. Clair, Grand, Hamline, Selby) connecting the trail up to the surface. But there is a need for more work to make those streets comfortable when you're up there. Yeah, as much as I think better (and more frequent) connections on/off the new trail...

The abundant green of the Midtown Greenway trench isn't an incidental quality, it's key to the success of the trail as a recreational amenity and intimately connected to its appeal as a commuting option. You can see that in the very different use that a trail like the Hiawatha trail. Sometimes ther...

My 2¢: I think our collective vocabulary around historical preservation is pretty lacking and it shows in discussions like this one. Our laws and processes and organizations are very good at protecting specific structures and encasing them in amber. They're much worse and finding graceful ways for n...

I do not disagree with this, and that is why I would prefer to be as precise as possible with terms. Because the distinction between dedicated ROW and non-dedicated ROW is one of the most important that exists for any transit service, it's a natural place to draw a line. It is true that San Francis...

Ultimately even a heavily spoke-based or trunk-based system benefits enormously from having feeder lines serving its stations--and feeder lines need to be relatively high-frequency or else you lose the benefits of the trunk line frequency. And a system built in this way ends up looking a fair amount...

If we really want light rail on the Nicollet-Central Corridor there will need to be grade-separation for a large portion of the route. We’ll see what happens with West 7th and Riverview LRT but I think after that there won’t be enough political and public willingness for another light rail line on ...

Let's try to be clear about terms. If it runs entirely in an exclusive right-of-way, it's light rail, not a streetcar. Tbh the terms themselves aren't that clear. There's a spectrum from the most "streetcar-like" (runs in mixed-traffic; small, single-car vehicles; street- or curb-level st...

Just curious if anyone's seen any documents or plans around how bus service will change when this thing finally opens. I'm hoping we'll see high-frequency feeder buses serving the stops in St. Louis Park and Hopkins, but that area is not at all conducive to direct routes because of highways, railroa...

I am not optimistic about the city's seriousness about the climate emergency. Well, unlike so many of the city's problems on this front (interstates, county/state roads, etc.) they really have nothing holding them back this time. They own the land and have no obligation to preserve anything on the ...

I'm pessimistic, but open to being proven wrong, about the reopening. I think an extended Mall from the River to Lake St. would be an enormous asset to the city and a concrete commitment to their goals around Complete Streets and VMT reduction goals. But I also think that, if they had any appetite t...

LRT/streetcar have some real benefits; the biggest one is capacity, but also public trust, navigability, lack of detours, rider comfort, effectiveness in snow, etc. Many of these benefits disappear if you ask a transit consultant to model your network with graph theory and then optimize the graph fo...

Note that Broadway is in fact less than 80' in width for a critical stretch, and also that you've cut the street section where there isn't a station. And the magical thinking that you can have a 10' drive lane smacked right up against the curb without accounting for the gutter and snow storage is a...

As much as I would love to see this concept implemented myself, the US regulations are not really tram-train friendly, as safety is mostly regulated by (i) temporal and spatial separation between FRA-compliant equipment and non-compliant ones, and by (ii) equipment crashworthiness standards. That m...