Page 66 of 74

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: June 8th, 2018, 2:37 pm
by amiller92
It's not even a good bus route, with the lights giving clear priority to cross traffic.

Noted the tree today though. A few dead/unwell but vast majority looked fine.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: June 30th, 2018, 8:18 pm
by Qhaberl
How do people feel about the level of pedestrian lighting on Nicolette [sic] mall? I walk this evening between Grant Street and 12th, and I feel like there just isn’t enough pedestrian level lighting. What do others think?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 1st, 2018, 6:34 pm
by karlshea
I like it. Feels like a forest or something, and I don't think it's excessively dark. I'll give you that stretch is one of the less-lit areas.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 1st, 2018, 7:20 pm
by Silophant
I also like it. It's certainly dimmer than standard street lighting, but it's more even - everywhere's the same dim illumination, with no areas that are truly dark.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 1st, 2018, 9:43 pm
by Chef
Am I the only one who thinks this lacks the punch of a $50M+ project? It's basically a glorified bus route
It is clearly a downgrade from what was there before. Doing nothing would have been better. The mall has become less attractive with each update.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 2nd, 2018, 12:05 am
by John
I think its a mixed bag of some things better and other elements not as nice. Yet that was true with the previous two versions of the mall. Definitely would have been better if they were able to afford the more elaborate pavers that were initially proposed. A budget of 50 million dollars doesn't go very far in this day and age.

Some positive outcomes from this current renovation: the infrastructure upgrade underneath the street will make the next rehab less complex and somewhat faster to complete. And the renovation has spurred a tremendous amount of new development to happen from the Dayton's Project to UP's Gateway proposal. These type of projects are what will make Nicollet Mall truly successful long term ... just in time for the next upgrade! lol.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 2nd, 2018, 11:06 am
by BoredAgain
Some positive outcomes from this current renovation: the infrastructure upgrade underneath the street will make the next rehab less complex and somewhat faster to complete.
I honestly hope that this is not true because the city realizes that they should bite the bullet and pay for a north-south transit tunnel located under the mall. They would then move all motorized traffic off the surface. This would almost certainly require them to re-work the utilities again.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 2nd, 2018, 12:09 pm
by HiawathaGuy
Some positive outcomes from this current renovation: the infrastructure upgrade underneath the street will make the next rehab less complex and somewhat faster to complete.
I honestly hope that this is not true because the city realizes that they should bite the bullet and pay for a north-south transit tunnel located under the mall. They would then move all motorized traffic off the surface. This would almost certainly require them to re-work the utilities again.
For the record, this would never be the City biting the bullet... it would be Hennepin County & State of MN money. Neither of which are likely to happen politically for over a decade, if not longer.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 2nd, 2018, 12:28 pm
by BoredAgain
Some positive outcomes from this current renovation: the infrastructure upgrade underneath the street will make the next rehab less complex and somewhat faster to complete.
I honestly hope that this is not true because the city realizes that they should bite the bullet and pay for a north-south transit tunnel located under the mall. They would then move all motorized traffic off the surface. This would almost certainly require them to re-work the utilities again.
For the record, this would never be the City biting the bullet... it would be Hennepin County & State of MN money. Neither of which are likely to happen politically for over a decade, if not longer.
Since we just re-did the mall, and this would be coordinated (at soonest) with the next "refresh", I would say at least 20 years. Also, if the city can round up 200 million for a streetcar (theoretically), then we should be able to round up the money for a transit tunnel which would greatly improve downtown transit movement and also improve the car crossings of Nicollet.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 2nd, 2018, 9:16 pm
by Multimodal
Elon is going to make tunnels cheap.*

*As long as he can monetize them with his own vehicles.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 3rd, 2018, 9:22 am
by MNdible
I suspect there's actually a pretty good parallel between the inflated costs of tunneling and the inflated costs of sending stuff into space. The incumbents have had the snot knocked out of them by SpaceX -- I'd say there's room for an ambitious player to change how we think about tunneling.*

*And of course, I know you just like to rip on Elon. And also, the technology he's looking at isn't really applicable for a location like Nicollet Mall, which wouldn't be a deep tunnel and where most of the cost would be in building out the frequent stations as opposed to the tunneling itself.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 3rd, 2018, 1:31 pm
by mplsjaromir
The only thing more unnecessarily expensive than Common Law country transit projects are defense contractor projects. SpaceX has done well because unlike all the other players SpaceX wasn't trying to grift at every opportunity. Nothing special, just ran by a rich guy who thinks space is cool.

Tesla is a "rich guy who wanted a car company". The automobile industry is much more competitive, and many professionals have serious doubts that Tesla will be a going concern. They are currently assembling cars in their parking lot and far behind productions goals.

Will the Boring Company be anything beyond a modified butane lighter company? I doubt it. But if they can deliver transit projects in US at Spanish prices then I would say it would be a success.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 3rd, 2018, 7:18 pm
by Tyler
That seems like a terrible take. Tesla's market cap is 54 billion.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 3rd, 2018, 7:49 pm
by mplsjaromir
Enron had a market cap of $60 Billion in 2000. Capital markets are far from perfect.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 4th, 2018, 9:13 am
by Multimodal
Tesla is a "rich guy who wanted a car company". The automobile industry is much more competitive, and many professionals have serious doubts that Tesla will be a going concern. They are currently assembling cars in their parking lot and far behind productions goals.
Many professionals thought the iPhone would be a flop, because Apple had no experience with carriers.

Tesla is now meeting its production goals. Later than they expected initially, but then that’s always been Elon’s over-optimistic guidance.

Enron, like Theranos, was all smoke and mirrors. Tesla has produced hundreds of thousands of vehicles that owners love. Doesn’t guarantee that they’ll ultimately succeed (look at Mercury, Dodge, Pontiac, etc.), but it’s no slam-dunk that they’ll fail.

Tesla is going larger scale to semi’s, while Uber & Lyft go to bikes & scooters. What will Waymo & Apple do?

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: July 27th, 2018, 2:01 pm
by Bakken2016
http://www.startribune.com/the-verdict- ... 489351121/

And all the comments are about the buses....

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: August 2nd, 2018, 8:39 pm
by bapster2006
I took this photo of the 16th Street Mall in Denver a few days ago.

Image16th St Mall Denver 7-28-18 by Matt Bappe, on Flickr

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: August 4th, 2018, 9:30 am
by seanrichardryan
Those poor trees. :cry:

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: August 4th, 2018, 9:36 am
by twincitizen
I’m eating a bagel on 16th St right now. The clearest failure of the new Nicollet is that $10-15MM was spent on design, when we should have copied Denver and put the savings into pavers and electric buses. That’s probably only about 50% of it though. Half of Nicollet’s problems are the lack of storefronts and entertainment options

Re: Nicollet Mall

Posted: August 4th, 2018, 10:07 am
by Silophant
Unpopular opinion, it is 105% fine that we went with patterned concrete instead of pavers. I didn't slip a single time this winter walking to work along Nicollet, compared to almost daily in previous winters. It's okay to have form follow function, even if it was a budget-cutting measure.