Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

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Tiller
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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Tiller » September 1st, 2017, 10:34 am

That candidate's idea might look something like this
https://drive.google.com/open?id=15wouf ... sp=sharing

Idk how he wants to deal with the hill though. 25 miles in length is a bit long for a "People Mover", and the return-leg of the loop only really adds the Miller Hill Mall, Lake Superior College, some lower-density uses around Mesaba Ave/Central Entrance, and a long stretch of Skyline Parkway because "tourism".

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Tiller
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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Tiller » September 4th, 2017, 11:26 am

Here's what Duluth's bus routes could look like (simplified, truncated, and combined) in the case of a LRT spine being built. I also changed the LRT alignment a little to lessen grading problems outside of reaching UMD. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o5MQa ... sp=sharing

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby gopherfan » September 4th, 2017, 3:21 pm

Fun! I like the Gary/New Duluth alignment!

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby gopherfan » September 4th, 2017, 5:20 pm

Would a Rochester streetcar/LRT work? Potential map with North Terminus @ IBM and South Terminus @ Apache Mall (purple). https://drive.google.com/open?id=18lA1L ... sp=sharing

Connections to existing apartment complexes sets the route generally. St. Mary's Hospital might be the only missing connection, but shuttle service between there and the Mayo Clinic may suffice.

BRT/LRT line could be extended to RST (teal) which might make ZipRail obsolete. If LRT, southbound trains could alternate service to Apache & RST, having less frequency on these branches then the main line seems reasonable as one can plan departure/kill time easily at the mall. Orange tunnel & yellow bridge segments would be needed for freight separation.

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby DanPatchToget » September 4th, 2017, 8:42 pm

Here's my Duluth transit improvements-https://www.google.com/maps/@46.7632133 ... mGJeGAQLU0

Duluth BRT System:
All BRT routes would be high frequency (at least every 15 minutes all day on weekdays and Saturdays). Stations would have ticket vending machines for off-board fare payment and real-time information. Buses and stations would have a unique design to distinguish from regular buses and bus stops. While not officially BRT (more akin to our ABRT), where possible dedicated bus lanes could be built to improve travel time, but otherwise will travel with regular traffic.

Thunder Bus:
Commuter service would operate between Duluth and Two Harbors with service every half hour in peak hour and peak direction. Reverse commute and midday service would be every hour. Evening service would have 2-3 roundtrips. Five roundtrips on the weekend. Regional service would operate between Duluth and Grand Marais with five roundtrips on weekdays and three roundtrips on the weekend. Express service non-stop between Duluth and Thunder Bay would have two roundtrips everyday.

Cloquet Commuter Bus:
Express bus service between Downtown Duluth and Cloquet with stops at West Duluth (Grand & I-35), Cloquet Park & Ride, and Downtown Cloquet. Frequency every half hour in peak hour and peak direction, every hour reverse commute, midday, and evening. Weekend frequency would be every 1-2 hours.

Regional Rail:
Local trains would operate from Duluth Union Depot to Carlton and Superior Village serving all stations in between. Frequency would be every half hour in peak hour and peak direction, every hour reverse commute, midday, evening, and weekend. Regional service would operate from Duluth Union Depot to Fort Frances, Bemidji, Brainerd (potential western extension to Fargo), Minneapolis, and St. Paul Union Depot with limited stops. Single digit number of roundtrips per day.

Bayfield Ferry:
This would be a seasonal ferry service non-stop between Duluth and Bayfield, WI. This is more of an idea I'm just throwing out there as I don't know the travel demand on this route and whether it would be better to have more stops.

I looked at service to Duluth International Airport, but it doesn't seem economical to have high frequency transit operating there when flights are infrequent (a few flights per day to/from MSP, Chicago, and Detroit).

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Tiller
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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Tiller » September 4th, 2017, 11:32 pm

So some positives Duluth has vs Rochester:
  • 280k metro vs 215k metro (currently)
  • older urban form initially built around public transit vs newer suburban-oriented growth
  • Duluth is constrained by geography (lake on one side, hill on the other) into a corridor (Duluth is a narrow and looong city, only like 10 miles of corridor needed for good coverage), while Rochester is pretty flat and thus has sprawled out more (more like 25 miles)
  • Duluth has twice the existing transit ridership (3.3M annually vs 1.7M annually) and better service overall (Rochester is only relatively recently getting sunday service(?!))
  • (I'm not sure how much Mayo-related/private/other transit service there is, so take those Rochester #s with a grain of salt)
  • Related to above, Duluth's average daily (daily, not weekday) ridership is ~9k, most of which is concentrated along that Grand Ave Superior St - UMD corridor, which puts it in the "Riverview corridor" ballpark (single car LRT)
  • Rochester's system map is just terrible, just look at it:
Image

Luckily, I found this with Rochester's (sometimes bizzare) bus system: https://platform.remix.com/map/9af964f? ... .43656,z13

Rochester, of course, has the gigantic advantage of the DMC/Mayo Clinic project, which includes large projected future growth in population/employment, and a shit ton of public money for infrastructure, both of which would be needed to make something like this happen:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wXK1m ... sp=sharing

Instead of adjusting Rochester's bus routes to account for a new streetcar system, I just "overlaid" the streetcars onto the remix™ of Rochester's bus routes.
https://i.imgur.com/tcje59Y.png

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby DanPatchToget » August 18th, 2018, 1:35 am

Plans for a BRT route and improved local bus service in Rochester-http://tcbmag.com/news/articles/2018/au ... it-service

What I'm wondering is if the BRT route will just serve between downtown and park & rides, or will it be useful getting around downtown?

And of course they mislabel the Blue Line as the "Red Line light rail".

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Oreos&Milk » August 18th, 2018, 3:04 pm

don't they have a nice railroad in downtown rochester? I thought even an old train depot as well. They not having conversations about putting in small light rail line and maybe expanding it if demand increases. Is that rail still used to carry freight even? I bet if they were super nice to metro transit they could borrow one or two of our old pee colored interior ones for testing/trial. A single train offering downtown service seems like it would be pretty quick transit. Looks like that line even runs near the southern transit hub they are wanting to build. Even on the north end too, why isn't rail even being considered instead of brt? If they are talking 6,000 parking spaces that's gonna be a sizeable amount of riders as well.

Maybe rochester just don't have the density to justify the investment?

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby mattaudio » August 20th, 2018, 7:45 am

Downtown Rochester has a railroad, though I doubt the locals would describe it as "nice." The north edge of downtown near Civic Center has the CP mainline (ex DM&E, ex Chicago & Northwestern) which still has a significant amount of traffic. Then there's also an industrial spur that curves into the eastern side of downtown along 1st Ave SE (through a new parking garage, etc) then across the Zumbro River which was originally part of a CGW mainline. Planners assume the spur will eventually close, but the mainline will stay (a change from 1990s-early 2000s plans where Mayo and others were pushing for a complete freight rail bypass of the city). The east-west CN mainline could eventually be used for an approach for some sort of passenger rail to MSP, though no direct connection exists today.

Rochester would actually be a great candidate for some sort of transit backbone, but running north-south instead. As pointed out upthread, Rochester has sprawled in all directions whereas Duluth developed in a linear way due to geography. But two factors seem to overtake that limitation: First, Rochester is growing ridiculously fast, with nearly half of its population showing up during the last 30 years. Second, it has unique employment density and travel patterns due to the high concentration of Mayo employment downtown. 40,000 employees downtown today (not sure if that counts St. Mary's Hospital, the largest hospital in MN and about a mile out of downtown) and plans for another 20-30k employees over the next few decades. I'd be curious to see the ratio of "downtown employment" to "MSA population" and I bet Rochester would be an extreme outlier on the high end.

What does this mean? Rochester far more favorable to transit and walkable, transit-compatible development patterns than anywhere other than the densest parts of Minneapolis. It's a shame Rochester dropped some of their initial aspirational transit plans as DMC planning has been watered down by the status quo. Lots of focus on park and rides in parking lots, not walk and rides in neighborhoods. But a transit spine down the 52 corridor in the northwest (55th St NW, IBM redevelopment, Valleyhigh, Cooke Park) to downtown, then continuing on the Broadway/63 corridor (industrial redevelopment sites, Broadway redevelopment opportunities, and ultimately the RST airport) would be a great starter line.

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby DanPatchToget » January 2nd, 2019, 11:33 am

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/ ... aTmasXEOnM

I don't know if they're looking at full scale BRT like our planned Gold Line, arterial BRT like the A Line, or calling a route BRT even though it's not actually BRT (cough cough Red Line).

Also apparently Minnesota only has one BRT route, and it's in Burnsville...

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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Silophant » January 2nd, 2019, 12:23 pm

Well, technically, it looks like Hwy 77 is in Burnsville for about a quarter mile just south of the river.

That being said, that National BRT Institute website doesn't seem to be the most reliable resource.
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Re: Transitways in other Minnesota cities?

Postby Mikey » January 3rd, 2019, 7:51 am

They've updated the article; it now mentions two routes. One from Bloomington to Apple Valley (Red Line) and one in St Paul (A Line I'd presume) By the tone, an A Line type is probably the goal
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