urbanMSP

The flyer was clearly an April Fool's joke. Maybe they should have spelled it out at the bottom for folks, but I imagine most of those who were duped didn't read the whole thing anyhow.

Recall, this line was to be up to 80% funded by CTIB, with less federal support than previous lines. Even with a sales tax increase (if CTIB manages to split), it will take Ramsey County some time to be able to fund this project.

I read that the senate passed a bill to increase CTIB taxing ability, so if CTIB stays there's the possibility of getting more tax money AND keeping Dakota's contributions. Maybe some self-funding would be possible after all.

From Facebook: "Riverview PAC meets at 9 AM this Thursday, April 13 at Union Depot. Feel free to stop by to listen to study updates and discussion of the Most Promising Alternatives and Preliminary Concepts! Public comments are heard at the end of each meeting."

EDIT: whoops that was this morning. Here's the packet: http://riverviewcorridor.com/wp-content ... 170413.pdf

^Just me or are the packet links not working?

Thought about the street car option for this project or other street car lines, maybe Greenway line, using this technology someday here in Minneapolis/St. Paul:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/12/technol ... _tech_pool

Thought about the street car option for this project or other street car lines, maybe Greenway line, using this technology someday here in Minneapolis/St. Paul:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/12/technol ... _tech_pool

I don't think that makes sense for new construction, only for use on existing tracks that don't have an OCS or other electricity supply. It should be more efficient to use electricity to directly drive the train rather than use electricity to split water, then use the resulting hydrogen to recreate water, which requires the use of more electricity to gather oxygen from the air (and purify it?).

The meeting packet for July shows a recommendation by the TAC to reduce the number of alternatives to six. They are throwing out LRT and dedicated BRT. They are still planning for a tie-in to the Blue Line, so I would imagine that the Modern Streetcar just means regular LRT vehicles sharing lanes with all other traffic.

1. No build
2. Arterial BRT (same stops as existing route, but with minor upgrades - like the Rapid Bus lines)
3. Modern Streetcar - W 7th/Hwy 5
4. Modern Streetcar - W 7th/Ford Site
5. Modern Streetcar - CP Rail/Hwy 5
6. Modern Streetcar - CP Rail/Ford Site

http://riverviewcorridor.com/wp-content ... 13_rv1.pdf (It's big ~220 pages)

Man, that would be something if they did this whole study and settled on the aBRT that they were always planning to build, but 5+ years later than it would have been otherwise.

How is possible that using the CP spur between Randolph and the Davern only saves 1 minute compared to using W 7th? Especially if the streetcar is running in mixed traffic during that time. The CP spur adds .2 of a mile to the length but shouldn't more than made up for running in a dedicated right of way. Unless it's the "streetcar" is going run at like 30 MPH in the spur, which is a different problem in itself, the 1 saved minute isn't even logical.

...so I would imagine that the Modern Streetcar just means regular LRT vehicles sharing lanes with all other traffic. ...

So that would mean, IF the city wised up down the road in 10 or say years when LRT mixed with car traffic becomes too restrictive, then they could remove the parking lane & switch car traffic over there and turn it into a LRT line? Or would the station configuration for the streetcar design prevent just that?

To have a mixed-traffic streetcar with parking on both sides, I'd think they would have the Streetcar in the outer, non-parking travel lane. The stations areas would be bump-outs into the parking lanes, with parking between stations.

Down the line, we could probably retrofit Riverview such that the lane it's in becomes a dedicated lane, and the parking lanes could become buffered bike paths (with floating streetcar/LRT stops).

It would mean less space for car travel, but whatev's ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

5. Modern Streetcar - CP Rail/Hwy 5
6. Modern Streetcar - CP Rail/Ford Site

How exactly do these differ from the LRT option? Seems effectively the same to me.

EDIT: I guess dedicated lanes on W. 7th vs. shared?

Yes, and probably one car trains vs two or three car trains.

As St. Paul's downtown population continues to increase, I could definitely see demand for more cars/longer platforms in 20 years, if not sooner. Is the county taking that into consideration when looking into these options? Seems complicated to convert shared lanes with small platforms to dedicated lanes with large platforms, much more so conversion from aBRT to rail.

This is one of these routes that probably doesn't completely deserve full dedicated ROW and multiple cars to day (and maybe not even rail), but almost certainly will down the road. This is an example of the utter failure of federal transportation policy.

With that in mind, how unrealistic is it to consider that in the future we might extend along the CP spur all the way to SPUD for some kind of express/limited stop rail alongside aBRT/streetcar?

I really hate taking this position, mostly because it's impossible to make it without having lingering negative feelings about other good projects we've already done, but $1+ billion is too much for a streetcar with mixed traffic segments. I'm sorry. We need to get our costs under control if we're going to spend that much money on a rail line with far less capacity than a light rail, and (in all likelihood) major challenges to upgrading the line to full-spec LRT in the future (rails, stations, etc).

For comparison, Nice (France) just built a tram that's 7 miles long (vs 12 for W7th/CP options) with 20 stations (same for W7th/CP), but 4 of those stations are underground in a brand new tunnel (dug under a far denser, older, challenging urban environment than St Paul). It cost $970m in purchasing power parity. And it also includes enough vehicles (19, vs the W 7th's need for 15) to run at 3 minute headways. And for that investment they expect over 100k daily riders on opening day, and 140k shortly after. Maybe I'm underestimating the cost of a new bridge for streetcars compared to tunneling+4 stations, but Nice seems to be getting much more for less (and they aren't a unique case).

Back when the estimates said the direct routing by LRT was more likely to be sub-$1bn, I think you could make the case for the benefits of full-LRT over aBRT or streetcars at that cost. But not anymore.

The aBRT has a faster travel time than any of the rail alternatives at a fraction of the cost.

Rail is supposedly going to attract 2x the riders, but doesn't really have any additional prioritization measures.

All this being said, Ramsey County has a transit tax that is going to find the Gold Line and the Rush Line BRTs. There's probably more than enough to build a rail line. Ramsey County could probably (and should) conduct a BRT study to make some real, transformative changes on many corridors. There is a lot of excess space on a lot of arterials for dedicated bus lanes/ways as well as the various off-street ROWs that are available.

I had this same feeling about Rush Line (which I live very close to) and I have relatives on the Ford Spur. I'd love to see them both as full LRT, but the benefit just doesn't seem to be there. These should both be BRT with option to future upgrade to LRT.

Why not aBRT now (it could be done within a year if we set our minds to it) and plans for LRT in the future (maybe in 10-ish years)?

Yes, and probably one car trains vs two or three car trains.

shoot, well if that is the case why didn't they just create a single track ROW and build passing sections at stations? I bet that would have allowed for faster transit and more capacity.

Does anybody know of any game/simulator where you can build a train system and run simulations on capacity for yourself? Such as trying to build a single track ROW with passing only at stations and be able to test to see how much headway can exist and how much capacity your concept would truly have?

Why not aBRT now (it could be done within a year if we set our minds to it) and plans for LRT in the future (maybe in 10-ish years)?

Isn't ~10 years what we would be looking at for rail if we simply followed the current planning process? This isn't going to be done any time soon.

Pretty much. I feel like there was talk at one point about CTIB (So, Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, now) just funding this locally instead of trying for federal funding, which should speed the process up, but... lawsuits still take time.