urbanMSP

Yeah, fair. But there are also like 2 blocks x 7 blocks of houses total between Bloomington and 28th Ave south of 46th. So there's not a lot of people to serve.

Responding to Alex here instead of in the Walz budget thread:

Important also to note that the proposed 1/8th sales tax increase would fund ten new aBRT routes. Last year, I estimated that completing a network of fifteen routes would cost about $800 million in total. Of course, the A-Line has already been built, the C-Line is about to open, and the D, B, and E lines are all partially funded. The Walz-Flanagan budget is excitingly near to what I had hoped for, and with some potential added room for fleet electrification. I also hope that if this funding is passed, that it will spur Metro Transit to revise their 2012 list of aBRT corridors with the perspective of building a network of service instead of simply enhancing random corridors.

Note that it says "BRT", not aBRT specifically, and I assume that to be intentionally broad. Also, the high number (10) makes me believe that Gateway and Rush BRT lines are definitely included in that count (and why wouldn't they be...they exist, and they need funding). Since the B, D, and E lines are the only ones Metro Transit is seriously studying right now, that's still just 5 total.

What are the other 5? Let's count.

(6) Regardless of whether the streetcar is dead or not, I'm sure we're all hoping that Nicollet-Central aBRT will be revived by Metro Transit in the next few years. The streetcar was only ever going to serve a small portion of the route, while aBRT was planned to stretch from 494 to 694 (and beyond...hey a true "regional" project!)
(7) Then there's Robert Street, which will presumably get studied again at some point...it was a very high priority for CTIB, and likely remains one among Ramsey and Dakota County Commissioners.
(8) American Boulevard, which came up relatively weak in the initial study, will always have a political constituency, and possibly someday an actual ridership constituency, as a link between Southwest Transit Station (Green), Southtown (Orange), and MOA (Blue/Red). We don't need it now, but something to think about for 2030ish.

(9...maybe) I'm not sure what to make of East 7th. At least for the next 10-15+ years it will be the beneficiary of the Route 54 extension. Once Riverview is up and running as LRT/streetcar, and Rush BRT is duplicating some of the functions of East 7th aBRT, it's tough to say whether/how this half-segment of the current 54 could be a viable aBRT route by itself.
(10...maybe) Ok I totally forgot about West Broadway, but the City somewhat recently did another separate study with a result that was so confusing I haven't heard a word about it since the study ended. What was the mode choice even? Streetcar maybe kinda but probably gonna revert to aBRT?? Who even knows.

So that's all of the corridors that have been seriously studied for aBRT or BRT - 8 or 9 or 10 depending on whether East 7th & Broadway are in or out. Let's say it's 8. So what are the other two? The extremely cynical part of me says "don't forget about the Orange and Red Line extensions, because Dakota County certainly hasn't." I really hope those two (bad) extensions aren't what Walz' people were counting.


P.S. Highway BRT?
Beyond the known aBRT and planned BRT lines/extensions, there are like a half-dozen highway BRT routes that MnDOT/MetC have studied, but I honestly have no idea what the latest is on highway BRT. The couple routes that had the most promise and momentum were 35W north / Hwy 36 (Minneapolis to Roseville-Maplewood) and 169-394 (Shakopee-Minneapolis). It appeared that most of the rest performed too poorly to be studied further. Regardless, none of these highway BRT corridors have any kind of momentum behind them to open within a 10-year window, so I'm counting them out.

C Line extension down Cedar Ave to MOA.

How many BRT (current, under development, proposed, and still in concept) don’t link to either MOA, downtown Minneapolis, or downtown St. Paul?
A-Line
B-Line
Any else?

The map the Met Council published identifies:
- American
- Nicollet
- 169
- 394
- 55
- Broadway
- Central
- 65 (north of Coon Rapids)
- 35E North
- 36
- Snelling north extension
- E 7th
- Red Rock
- Robert
- Red extension
- Orange extension

I believe that Metro Transit is going to update the arterial BRT study, and I think they should probably do a more in-depth study of the highway lines.

https://metrocouncil.org/News-Events/Tr ... -2019.aspx

The map the Met Council published identifies:
- American
- Nicollet
- 169
- 394
- 55
- Broadway
- Central
- 65 (north of Coon Rapids)
- 35E North
- 36
- Snelling north extension
- E 7th
- Red Rock
- Robert
- Red extension
- Orange extension

I believe that Metro Transit is going to update the arterial BRT study, and I think they should probably do a more in-depth study of the highway lines.

https://metrocouncil.org/News-Events/Tr ... -2019.aspx

TC, are you sure on all of those? I definitely don’t see 35E on the map. Did you mean 35W?

Correct, 35W North.

The map the Met Council published identifies:
- American
- Nicollet
- 169
- 394
- 55
- Broadway
- Central
- 65 (north of Coon Rapids)
- 35E North
- 36
- Snelling north extension
- E 7th
- Red Rock
- Robert
- Red extension
- Orange extension

I believe that Metro Transit is going to update the arterial BRT study, and I think they should probably do a more in-depth study of the highway lines.

https://metrocouncil.org/News-Events/Tr ... -2019.aspx

I think you meant 47 north of Coon Rapids.

The interesting thing about the "north" corridor that was identified is that it is actually the previously planned "North Central" commuter rail line to Bethel, and what is now the Northern Lights Express corridor. I would not imagine that a busway would actually be built in the corridor, but that the plan for the Hwy 65 Highway BRT is what they meant to identify.

Considering how AMAZING the A-Line has done, and how AWFUL the Red Line has done, why would we bother building more highway BRT when we still have Arterial BRT opportunities?

The Highway BRT lines really only make sense if there's some kind of active development pattern in the corridor. The 394 and maybe the 36 corridors really are the only ones that make sense from that standpoint. The Red Line essentially follows a freeway to a giant collection of strip malls.

The other issue is that highway BRT done on the cheap doesn't work like we think it will. The result is something like the plan for the Orange line in Richfield and Bloomington or the current 645 line, with weaving, non dedicated lanes, and frontage road usage.

The sad thing in all of this is that a state funding plan (and all of the politics with it) is needed for what are essentially incremental bus improvements. A campaign of this magnitude from the state level should really be supporting higher-level transit and the incremental bus improvements should be the norm.

To be fair to the Red Line, you have to transfer to the Blue Line to go further north, while a Red Line north extension would certainly have much higher ridership. As others have said, once the Orange Line starts operation it would be nice if the Red Line could be extended north and share stations with the Orange Line on 35W and downtown.

All of the Highway BRT routes are designed to fail. Mostly serving park & rides and not really serving actual destinations, they're designed for mobility and using existing infrastructure as much as possible while sacrificing accessibility to the destinations people are actually trying to get to. Dedicated roadways like the Gold Line and Rush Line are the only way these routes can be successful, otherwise they're just glorified buses like the current Red Line.

And the Gold Line and Rush Line are probably significantly more expensive than the Red Line was (and obviously more expensive than Arterial BRT). Not to mention something like half of the Red Line capital funding involved using transit dollars to reconstruct/widen a highway for cars through Dakota County (ostensibly with bus shoulders).

Not possible to fund ten highway BRT routes with an 1/8th cent sales tax increase. That’s where my assumption that the funds were intended for aBRT comes from. I hadn’t seen that map—that map is...concerning.

It would also, of course, be a very stupid waste of resources, to spend transit money on a vision like that but that thinking unfortunately hasn’t stopped people before.

But I think the people at Metro Transit largely do know what’s up, and I think when they go head to head from a metric standpoint, aBRT is going to win just about every time.

Re: Highway BRT dotted lines- https://twitter.com/katebrickman/status ... 0394418177

So if it’s a dotted line, that means it’s a potential line to be explored. Simply means a corridor that has been identified to get more study, to see whether the demand is there. The 10 BRT plan includes 9 arterial BRT and one highway BRT. There are 6-7 potential lines on the map, as examples of what that one highway BRT could be. Again, simply to say it’s a place locals could study for possible investment. We didn’t do a good job making that clear on that map - we’ll work to provide that context. I don’t think it’s something transit supporters should worry about.

Interesting. Thanks for prodding the question. So the answer is more of "let's spend the next 5 years doing studies, so nothing is actually implemented until the late 2020s at the earliest".

Would be nice if for segments with enough right-of-way there was a busway parallel to the mixed-traffic road. One segment where that could definitely be done is on the Central Avenue ABRT in Fridley towards Northtown Mall.

Something like what's done on this road in Gothenburg, except more likely the busway would be on one side of the road instead of in the middle and requiring all riders to cross. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gothe ... 4d11.97456

Reminds me that I have a fairly ancient blog post and map that did a first-pass analysis of existing freeway interchanges to say whether it would be relatively easy or hard to add bus stops. A regular diamond interchange is pretty straightforward, but designs that fold ramps around or are missing one or two quadrants could be much more difficult to fix. That would just be for just running buses in mixed traffic or using bus-only shoulders, and wouldn't necessarily work well if the bus had to access center-running HOV/HOT lanes (I'm not sure what the recommended distance is, but you'd likely want 1/2 to 1 mile to allow for changing lanes to get from outside to inside).

http://hizeph400.blogspot.com/2011/04/b ... eways.html

Of course, even if you have set up decent stops, they can still be terrible for transit users if the ramps for opposing directions are too far apart. Folded diamond interchanges can easily have the two sides be 1/4-mile part from each other, meaning that the typical 1/4-mile walk shed used for bus stops effectively reduces down to the area between the two sets of ramps and nothing else.

I also have a map and article for distances between adjacent interchanges, under the theory that some are probably too closely-spaced, encouraging drivers to take short trips on the freeway or jockey for position more often and trigger extra congestion.

http://hizeph400.blogspot.com/2015/04/t ... eeway.html

I've wondered, for Hwy 169 BRT, why there's no planning for a connection to the City West Green Line station. It would be fairly easy via the 212/62 cloverleaf and flyover bridge.

While it sometimes feels like the D Line is imminent (8th Street reconstruction this year, Portland 60th-66th re-striping next year,etc), the realist in me is reminded of how long the A Line and C Line have taken to get from "hey it looks like everything is built" to actually beginning passenger service (June 2016 and June 2019 respectively). While the D Line stations are scheduled to be built in "2020-2021" according to the project website, that makes me think the die is already set for a June 2022 opening, and that's if everything goes well. With 2019 being dedicated to engineering, getting all of the stations built out in 2020 and the line opening mid-late 2021 seems like a moonshot. Especially since this line still isn't fully funded.

As a general aBRT thought, opening a new line every 3 years isn't that slow of a pace, as much as we like to whine around here. That's actually pretty good, in the abstract. The real problem is that we didn't open the first one until 2016, after studying aBRT in 2011. Getting a new aBRT line every 3 years would be a great thing if the first one had opened in 2010, not 2016. As it is, we really need to pick up the pace on planning the lines that will come after the D, B and E Lines. In addition to those 3 lines opening in 2022, 2023(?) and 2024 (in a perfect world), the next 3 lines should be opened annually as well. '8 by 2028' would be a good goal.