Red Rock Corridor

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Red Rock Corridor

Postby mulad » July 14th, 2012, 11:39 am

Got this in an e-mail newsletter from the Red Rock folks a week and a half ago:
Public Input Sought on the Design for the Newport Transit Station

Washington County Regional Railroad Authority, in partnership with the City of Newport, is designing a transit station that will be a launching point for future development and enhanced transit service along the Red Rock Corridor. The transit station will initially have express bus service to St. Paul with the potential for more service in the future. About a quarter of the site will be used for the transit station and the remaining acres are available for development. Potential uses include rental housing, such as senior living facilities or apartments, office, and retail.

Station area master plans were completed in 2011, and Washington County Regional Rail Authority be­gan design of the Newport Station in early 2012. The design will be completed by the end of 2012, and construction will begin in the spring of 2013. The Newport Station will open for ser­vice near the end of 2013.

You are invited to provide input on the design concept for the Newport Transit Station at a public open house and enjoy ice cream with your fellow community members.



Newport Transit Center Open House
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - 6:00pm to 7:30pm.
A short presentation will be given at 6:30 but you are welcome to stop by at any time.

Newport City Hall - 596 7th Avenue, Newport, MN 55055



For the latest information about the Newport Transit Station project and the Red Rock Corridor, please visit the Red Rock Corridor website.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » September 19th, 2012, 8:11 am

Red Rock will be starting a new Alternatives Analysis soon, which will reconsider the possibility of BRT in the corridor:
http://finance-commerce.com/2012/09/ref ... rithmetic/

200-space park and ride lot to open in Newport next year. Maybe the 364 line will move from minibuses to full size buses?
http://finance-commerce.com/2012/07/rea ... -corridor/

This article seems to suggest a park and ride is underway in Hastings, but is behind a paywall...
https://secure.forumcomm.com/?publisher ... N=10000051

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » September 19th, 2012, 8:24 am

I think it's good they're reconsidering the platform for service in the corridor, but I also worry that the "failure" of Northstar has really changed the idea of what it should be.

If the goal is to move commuters from P&Rs to St. Paul, express buses do that job great especially when there's a freeway in the corridor (61).

If the goal is to expand service to connect a string of P&Rs with all-day off-peak service, freeway BRT is likely a good strategy.

If the goal is to connect regional destinations, downtown to downtown, then I think that's where Red Rock would succeed. And this is something that could be done under the Northstar banner, which I feel should be about regional service first and commuters as a secondary priority.

Red Rock, or another "Northstar Regional" line, could connect Winona maybe 1-2x a day, Lake City, Red Wing, Hastings, Newport, SPUD, and MMM. Depending on whether HSR goes in this corridor, or eventually a Rochester or Eau Claire corridor, likely has a lot to do with if this would be successful.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » September 19th, 2012, 8:47 am

The problem with this line is the relative lack of demand to this part of the metro. There simply isn't enough population or demand for traffic to the cores to support the large investment in rail. St Paul Park and Newport have a combined population of 9,000, Cottage Grove has 35,000, and Hastings has 22,000. That combined with the low employment (and the employment that exists is industrial or service, generally) is hardly supportive of rail in the corridor, and I doubt an all-day bus along 61 will be able to attract enough demand.

Also, the HSR project is taking forever, and it could be quite a long time before Red Rock could piggyback on the HSR improvements.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mulad » September 19th, 2012, 9:42 am

I really hope they look at an alternate service pattern -- I think the current plans are based on a train only making 4 round-trips a day, with all of them inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. The fleet would basically be the same size as the Northstar fleet, but it would be used less (the first Northstar train makes an extra outbound trip back to Big Lake, then returns as the 5th inbound). So I definitely favor something like what mattaudio said, where you have a smaller number of individual trainsets operating, but they run back and forth from end to end all day long.

That's more how the Northern Lights Express is planned to operate, and a key reason why they might be able to pull off a farebox recovery ratio over 100%. The NLX also plans to charge much more of a fair-market rate for tickets, rather than discounting them heavily like Metro Transit does for basically everything.

Actually, now that I think about it, there's good reason for Mn/DOT to pursue the Minnesota part of the MSP-MKE/CHI part of the HSR line -- there's probably "independent utility" to having trains run from the Twin Cities down to Winona or La Crosse. The river route has larger population centers distributed along it than the NLX corridor does. Not quite as much at the endpoint, as far as I can tell, but close (if you go to La Crosse).

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » September 19th, 2012, 10:04 am

I bet Northstar could extend to St. Cloud, Red Rock could go to Red Wing or beyond, and they could get by with 6 or 7 trainsets total. So buying one or two more, instead of four, and having all-day service instead of commuter service.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby kellonathan » May 6th, 2013, 3:51 pm

Any updates on any of the commuter rail proposals in the region including this one?

I've been doing some researches on Red Rock, Rush Line and NLX recently and it seems like it's pretty quiet just judging from the lack of updates from their websites.

Does anyone here know what's going on with some of the commuter rail plans?
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Re: Red Rock

Postby talindsay » May 6th, 2013, 5:41 pm

Northstar was far and away the most promising corridor in the preliminary modeling of commuter rail. Like with light rail, there weren't any local numbers until the first one was built. Unlike light rail, the first line did nothing to make those initial numbers look promising. Whereas the Twin Cities appears to have a higher-than-usual rail bias for urban transportation (people's willingness to take rail vs. bus for urban trips), the Northstar corridor has definitely put a severe damper on anybody's enthusiasm for expanding extra-urban rail transit in the region. Nobody wants to champion commuter rail in corridors whose predictions were substantially lower than Northstar's when Northstar is significantly under its predicted numbers.

As noted above, any talk about these other commuter-rail corridors right now is about developing ridership through express buses. Which is a good idea, since the funding that commuter rail requires can be put to much more effective use developing the core transit system in the cities that actually supports the commuter rail lines.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby FISHMANPET » May 6th, 2013, 8:26 pm

Did the Twin Cities ever have much of any commuter rail, or did we have too many streetcars for that to ever happen?

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mulad » May 7th, 2013, 5:11 am

There was some, though I don't know a whole lot about it -- I mean, the Saint Paul Union Depot had over 200 train movements per day at peak, and I find it pretty hard to believe those were all regular intercity trains. (And I'll just mention that that level of service is on par with how many Hiawatha trains shuttle back and forth on a daily basis, so something would have typically been coming or going at SPUD every 10 minutes during the day.) I've heard that the last real commuter rail service ended in the 1940s. The streetcar services definitely absorbed some routes which operated in a commuter style, like the line through South St. Paul to Inver Grove Heights.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » September 19th, 2013, 3:57 pm

So it seems that the new BRT option is getting a lot of promotion. It would be really nice if Red Rock BRT buses can continue along the Gateway ROW into downtown St. Paul.

http://redrockrail.org/images/content/p ... 031913.pdf
http://redrockrail.org/pdf/July%202013% ... tation.pdf
http://redrockrail.org/pdf/Transit%20Al ... 20Maps.pdf
http://redrockrail.org/pdf/August%2029, ... Agenda.pdf

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » September 20th, 2013, 8:58 am

It would be nice if service was simplified and the buses could quickly interline via St. Paul then head to Mpls. I had a full plan for how we could restructure the 94 with east metro express services to provide more one-seat rides. I'll try to find that thread.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » September 20th, 2013, 1:15 pm

It would make sense to have the Gateway Corridor BRT buses extend to Minneapolis. It's a shorter route, will have better off-peak (and peak for that matter) ridership, and will probably have a more diverse location of destinations. Additionally, Red Rock BRT riders would have a simple and easy transfer to BRT buses.

Extending an all day BRT route along I-94 is actually a really good idea. With direct HO/T lane connections to downtown and a few median stations (Snelling, perhaps Riverside or Cedar, maybe John Ireland Bl), bus service would be fast (20 min downtown to downtown) and reliable, and better connect the East and West metros.

As for the Red Rock line, I think the BRT is the best option. Peak hour buses are only carrying 1,000 riders per day, and a significant number of those riders would shift over to BRT (or a peak-hour BRT express providing direct service to Minneapolis). The train line is heavily traveled by freights, which would mean a lot of money would need to be spent on trackage rights, and would still have a bus substitute during midday periods. Additionally, BRT would utilize Gateway and Hwy 61 bus shoulder infrastructure, and would only require the construction of slip-ramps and pedestrian bridges.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Mdcastle » September 20th, 2013, 1:52 pm

Has anyone come up with a good theory why commuter rail has been a flop despite the rail bias of the region? My own thinking is that people in Elk River or Big Lake tend not to work in Minneapolis (and don't have use for downtown except for an occasional Twins game). Driving to downtown everyday would suck so they probably bought their house there because they're working at Target Maple Grove or Carlson or someplace, whereas there's a stronger commuting pattern (and people hang out in downtown more) from places served by Hiawatha.

I know commuter coaches have been successful, but those are a couple of coach busses, not a couple of trains.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mattaudio » September 20th, 2013, 3:01 pm

Exactly. The trains just don't go where people want to go. Northstar is set up like an express bus on steel rails, and that's why it's bad. I'm sure it would do much better if it had a usable destination (St. Cloud) and intermediate stops that connected towns rather than farm fields.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby UptownSport » September 22nd, 2013, 10:29 am

In these little towns It could stop right downtown and not add significant ridership; the populations of these towns are tiny.
One major purpose of small rural towns is to service farms, so it would make total sense to provide parking for the same.
Also, train isn't frequent enough for someone to move to Big Lake permanently with intention of commuting-
If you wanted to catch a show this evening in Minneapolis, you'd use your car or be in for a long walk- Essentially you're a captive of a small town except to ride the train- during narrow hours- to work in Mpls and back.
-Nor does it get close enough to the the large population of St. Cloud to make it convenient for business or commuting.

German trains, 'Regional Bahns' IIRC, to small towns were similar- There just wasn't a lot of people riding from some 'kühdorf'.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Mdcastle » September 22nd, 2013, 2:06 pm

I don't know. It seems to me that most members here live in the cities, and maybe overestimate the interest exuburban dwellers have in the city. I think most people that would choose to live in Big Lake would come home every day and ride horses or ATVs or spend time with their families instead of going to a show in Minneapolis. That's what my aunt and uncle do, they moved out to Cambridge 10 years ago because they could ride a commuter bus to get to work at Wells Fargo and they wanted an exurban lifestyle, AFAIK they haven't once been in the city aside from work. My thinking is the existing people that live in Big Lake moved there because they drove to someplace else than the core downtown for work, and with the economy it's stopping people who might move there because they could work in downtown and take the train. If they're interested in the Twin there's still commuter rail for that.

Living in a closer in suburb, it seems half and half to me. Personally I go into Minneapolis frequently to go on bicycle rides, (but nothing else) but I have a lot of friends and coworkers at Blue Cross who don't for any reason. It seems about 50/50, but I'd imagine the farther out you go the more people do things locally. Going even farther out, I'd say some people even have a fear of the city. My relatives in Durand will come in to go to Valleyfair once a year, but they're amazed I feel safe living "in the city" like I do.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby FISHMANPET » September 22nd, 2013, 2:49 pm

Yeah we're not really in the situation where housing is so expensive that you have to live an hour away to be able to afford a home. We also just don't have a tradition of commuter rail like Chicago and New York.

I work with someone at the University who lives all the way out in Albertville, and his complete social and entertainment circle is in Albertville, not Minneapolis. He drives in to work and then drives out at the end of the day.

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Re: Red Rock

Postby Tcmetro » October 27th, 2013, 6:04 pm

So it looks like the BRT option is the most likely to be chosen. BRT would require a bus-shoulder lane from I-94 to Jamaica Ave, as well as new stations at Lower Afton Road (with new walkbridge and park and ride), and Langdon Village (walkbridge and park and ride also), as well as upgrades to Newport Station and Hastings (BRT platform), and a walkbridge at the existing Cottage Grove park and ride. Proposed service levels would be 15 minutes peak and midday and 30 minutes evenings, and hours would be 6 am to 10 pm.

The initial recommendation is to increase bus service and explore a route to Hastings, then Stage 2 would be BRT, and Stage 3 would be commuter rail.

I don't expect CR would ever happen, and I think BRT is a long shot in itself.

http://redrockrail.org/pdf/October%2031 ... Agenda.pdf
http://redrockrail.org/pdf/Packet%20Add ... %203-6.pdf

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Re: Red Rock

Postby mulad » October 28th, 2013, 11:19 am

Interesting that they are looking at going all the way down to Red Wing for both express bus service and commuter rail.

Much like Northstar, I kind of wish they'd just look at running multiple trips per day at even intervals -- perhaps 2 or 3 peak-period trips inbound at 30-minute headways, but generally looking more like the NLX plan where the minimum number of physical trains would be running


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