Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby SkyScraperKid » September 20th, 2017, 1:15 am

They do run one car on the Blue Line late at night on the weekends. I always notice it on the bridge over Lake St. since it stands out so much.
Now i'm curious, does the driver have to keep switching from end to end each run? Or does he get to drive backwards one run? Doubt they would have two drivers, one on each end just for that short trip. Thoughts? (in regards to the airport T1 to T2 shuttle when the blue line is shut down)

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby LRV Op Dude » September 20th, 2017, 3:15 am

They do run one car on the Blue Line late at night on the weekends. I always notice it on the bridge over Lake St. since it stands out so much.
Now i'm curious, does the driver have to keep switching from end to end each run? Or does he get to drive backwards one run? Doubt they would have two drivers, one on each end just for that short trip. Thoughts? (in regards to the airport T1 to T2 shuttle when the blue line is shut down)
It would be kind of hard to operate backwards but yes the operator does switch ends at each terminal. Also I was mistaken, we are getting 5 new LRVs.
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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby DanPatchToget » September 24th, 2017, 10:41 am

Anyone ride the very late night/very early morning trains? I started to since my overnight job is close enough to Target Field to be walkable, and I noticed quite a few people sleeping on the train. I can't say for certain that they are homeless, but I know some homeless people will just ride the train all night. When I got to 28th Avenue there were two people sleeping on the 4th story staircase of the parking ramp. I debated whether to call Metro Transit police or not, but decided not to. Should I have?

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Tcmetro » September 24th, 2017, 12:34 pm

There are a number of homeless who ride the Green Line all night, and the #16 before. I think there's somewhat of an unofficial policy to just let them be during the overnight hours. MOA recently forced MT to close the transit center at night because they didn't want homeless sleeping there.

There's a few hundred homeless in Chicago that sleep on the Red and Blue lines, mostly because of safety concerns (and probably capacity issues as well) in the shelters.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby talindsay » September 29th, 2017, 8:45 pm

Let 'em get a good night's sleep. They're not hurting anything if they're asleep.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby DanPatchToget » December 15th, 2017, 8:05 am

Seems like there's been an uptick in cars blocking the Blue Line and causing delays. I think three days in a row there were delays in the morning.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Scottie » December 15th, 2017, 8:10 am

It has been yesterday and today for sure. As a rider who was stuck waiting 20+ minutes today and yesterday it still drives me crazy how bad Metro transit is at making station announcements when there are delays.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Bakken2016 » December 15th, 2017, 2:08 pm

It has been yesterday and today for sure. As a rider who was stuck waiting 20+ minutes today and yesterday it still drives me crazy how bad Metro transit is at making station announcements when there are delays.
Those who run Social Media are good about putting it out on Facebook and Twitter, our rail department lacks communication skills needed for customer service in my opinion, and do not make announcements when they are most needed.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby mplser » December 15th, 2017, 5:38 pm

nothing that can't be solved with a wile-e-coyote style trap door to swallow up the offending cars

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby DanPatchToget » March 30th, 2018, 8:13 pm

http://www.startribune.com/plans-emerge ... 478424143/

"Many of the apartment buildings in Bloomington and surrounding suburbs were built more than 30 years ago, a time when bus lines guided development."

Have bus lines in this region ever guided development? I know streetcars did, but I've never heard of buses doing this.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby LRV Op Dude » April 12th, 2018, 4:11 am

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Bakken2016 » April 20th, 2018, 9:58 am

Does anyone have any info on why we didn't go with a downtown Minneapolis tunnel? like original documents?

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Silophant » April 20th, 2018, 10:06 am

Cost, I'm sure. We got a tunnel under the airport only because the airport paid for it.
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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby mattaudio » April 20th, 2018, 10:44 am

Well and because you can't have trains crossing runways at-grade.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby tmart » April 20th, 2018, 10:58 am

It makes about as much sense as crossing every downtown street at-grade...

IMO getting any transit on rails built felt like a total coup at the time. Adding a subway would have made a ton of sense, but I wonder if it would have actually been built at that cost.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Tcmetro » April 20th, 2018, 12:45 pm

I believe one of the very early models for the Hiawatha line (1980s) presumed airport access along Hwy 5 with a spur along the airport road, similar to the Route 54 operation.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby MNdible » April 23rd, 2018, 9:20 am

We've discussed this before, but everybody assumes the very high costs of tunneling are because it costs a lot to dig a tunnel. While tunneling isn't cheap, the real money is in all of the vertical circulation and underground station construction. Doing one of these stations in a relatively unconstrained site on a relatively short tunnel where they were able to use piston-effect for air circulation (like the airport tunnel) is a whole world different from what a downtown tunnel would have involved.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby Bakken2016 » May 24th, 2018, 3:42 pm

http://www.startribune.com/legislature- ... 483632651/

I could see this benefiting ridership at the Fort Snelling Station, it is about a 15 minute walk from the site to the station. Not a big fan of how much MHA money is being used to rehab this, but I digress.

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby gopherfan » May 31st, 2018, 8:22 pm

I don't think I've seen anything that shows the station designs in one location, so here's all of them from the Corridor Management Committee presentations. https://www.scribd.com/document/3802252 ... on-Designs

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Re: Blue Line (Hiawatha LRT)

Postby mattaudio » June 1st, 2018, 8:06 am

Last night at the Mpls2040 meeting, fishmanpet pointed out how much Interior 1/2 is planned immediately to the west of Blue Line LRT stations. It seems crazy to have Interior 1/2 designations within three or four blocks of stations such as 38th, 46th, and 50th. Go to minneapolis2040.com and comment if you feel the same way.


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