Green Line LRT

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
Silophant
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Silophant » March 30th, 2018, 4:16 pm

A car took out a power pole near Lexington, so there's a bus bridge between Fairview and Western.

At-grade trains are gooooood.
Joey Senkyr
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DanPatchToget
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby DanPatchToget » March 30th, 2018, 8:08 pm

At-grade trains are good when motorists and pedestrians aren't morons, which is most of the time.

phop
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby phop » November 18th, 2018, 7:15 pm

The Green Line is still a star (and the Blue Line is doing great too):

https://www.metrotransit.org/green-line ... -ridership
The Green Line had its busiest month ever in October, keeping the light rail line on pace to set another annual ridership record.

More than 1.4 million rides were taken last month, topping the previous high, set in September, by more than 127,000 rides. October's average weekday ridership was just over 49,000 rides.

Nearly 11.6 million Green Line rides have been taken through the end of October, a 4.5 percent increase compared to the same time last year. Except for February, monthly ridership records have been set every month this year on the Green Line.

Blue Line ridership has increased nearly 4 percent through the end of October, to nearly 9.4 million rides.

The Blue and Green lines each saw record ridership in 2017.

mamundsen
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby mamundsen » November 18th, 2018, 8:01 pm

What is the line supposed to be at? Didn’t they project 2030 numbers? Have they been passed yet?

How high will this go once swlrt is added?

Minnehahaha
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Minnehahaha » November 18th, 2018, 9:20 pm

They passed up the projections for 2030 (at least as far as average weekday ridership) several years ago.

https://www.metrotransit.org/strong-rid ... niversary-

alexschief
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby alexschief » November 19th, 2018, 8:56 am

Based on last year's ridership numbers and these reported rates of growth, Metro Transit should average about 75,150 weekday rides on the LRT in 2018. The Green Line should average about 42,375 weekday rides, and the Blue Line should average about 32,775 weekday rides. Overall, that should push METRO's weekday rides per track mile up to nearly 3,450.

These sustained rates of ridership growth really are extraordinary, especially in the national context, where many peer LRT systems are seeing small declines in ridership. Part of the story is certainly the ongoing redevelopment along the route of both trains, especially the Green Line. The improvement of feeder bus connections, especially the A-Line, is also probably important. I'm not sure that explains all of the growth however, it really is pretty impressive.

DanPatchToget
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby DanPatchToget » November 19th, 2018, 10:51 am

For such a small system we have quite the ridership. We have more than Denver despite them having eight LRT routes (according to Wikipedia, but if you included their A and B lines which are technically commuter rail then they have more).

mattaudio
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby mattaudio » November 19th, 2018, 11:47 am

We have - by far - the highest ridership-per-mile of a LRT system built in the modern era. Only the SF Muni Metro and Boston Green Line exceed our system.

Silophant
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Silophant » November 19th, 2018, 1:00 pm

It's pretty amazing when you look at the Wikipedia list. If SWLRT opened tomorrow, and absolutely no one rode it, we'd still have about the same ridership per mile as Portland and Denver's systems.
Joey Senkyr
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mamundsen
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby mamundsen » November 19th, 2018, 1:40 pm

This discussion makes me wonder why some of the other corridors aren’t going LRT? Our market is SO strong for rail, what would happen if we made gold, rush, and riverview all LRT? I think it would skyrocket the ridership. The Midtown Line should happen ASAP after the SWLRT.

tmart
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby tmart » November 19th, 2018, 2:17 pm

This discussion makes me wonder why some of the other corridors aren’t going LRT? Our market is SO strong for rail, what would happen if we made gold, rush, and riverview all LRT? I think it would skyrocket the ridership. The Midtown Line should happen ASAP after the SWLRT.
Totally agreed. I think Riverview especially, where the plan is already damn near LRT except shorter platforms and a small section in mixed-traffic, is a no-brainer, and I really hope they're smart enough to plan for an eventual conversion. It's super obvious that there's huge demand for reliable, high-quality, fixed-route mobility options within Minneapolis, St. Paul, and similar bordering areas.

I think SWLRT will be an interesting test of how the model extends to first-ring suburbs. (Arguably the Blue Line already tested that, since South Minneapolis gets pretty dang suburban at the extremes, but that's certainly not how it's perceived locally.) If ridership is great in Hopkins or even EP, it will start to look pretty silly that we aren't doing the same for the north side of St. Paul, Maplewood, Richfield, Bloomington, and these other communities where we chose BRT. IMO the Orange Line (at least, the part north of the river) already looks pretty ridiculous and hobbled when we see how phenomenally, shockingly successful rail has been in extremely similar communities.

mamundsen
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby mamundsen » November 19th, 2018, 3:48 pm

Sorry this is veering off topic, but especially with the Rush line in the Bruce Vento trail ROW, the Ford spur available for most of Riverview, and the gold line also planned for dedicated guideway. Just make it LRT and watch the developments roll in.

tmart
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby tmart » November 19th, 2018, 3:56 pm

Perhaps given the Green Line is long since finished, we could make this a general LRT ridership and future planning thread?

Bakken2016
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Bakken2016 » April 1st, 2019, 2:51 pm

Weekday Green Line service between 2am and 4am is being proposed to be cut starting in the August Pick this year.

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... pment.aspx

Tcmetro
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Tcmetro » April 1st, 2019, 3:39 pm

I'm surprised it lasted this long. Green and Blue should have night buses Sunday - Thursday and the 54 should be 24h. Morning shift at the airport starts in the 2-3 am hour.

Trademark
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Trademark » April 1st, 2019, 5:53 pm

Knew it was jus a matter of time before that happened. Especially by the time the green line got extended i cant imagine eden prairie being cool with people sleeping on the train overnight.

Hopefully service will be reinstated by the winter

alexschief
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby alexschief » April 5th, 2019, 12:10 pm

That's really disappointing. Canceling the already infrequent overnight service in August is essentially canceling the service for the coming winter. That will put some people's lives in real danger. It's not fair to Metro Transit that their trains are being used as a shelter, but that's a role they have fallen into by default, and it is unsafe to back out of that responsibility without a better plan being in place. Not to mention an abdication of the (few, but needy) riders who use the train for transportation at those hours.

I hope that this move will not eventually come to pass. I also hope that this announcement will spur more action from both cities. Minneapolis recently seemed to have some success in helping the people at the Franklin Hiawatha Encampment, and seems to be moving aggressively to try to end homelessness for MPS students. Could it not replicate that effort in partnership with St. Paul for people who are sleeping on the train? There are ample available piece of land for a navigation center along the line.

Oreos&Milk
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby Oreos&Milk » April 5th, 2019, 12:12 pm

VERY interesting conversation regarding giving trains the ability to hold greens longer...

I'm not expert but arn't we just about 5-15 years away from having a smart system? I mean a transit system that is able to calculate backups on an entire system via google maps, traffic cams and can predict when a train will be at a specific intersection to ensure when it DOES hit that intersection the light is green. Plus with so many intersection cameras it could also regulate crosswalks ie longer crosswalk times for when elderly people needing more time and shorter walks during rush-hour provided everyone is moving through it swiftly without waiting. I mean the internet has revolutionized our world, and so has the smart computer that can make decisions better than depending on timers and sensors (of course there would be a "off switch" to revert to the timers if such a glitch in the system occurred)

I mean, it seems the best way to make the current infrastructure better without increasing costs is to utilize it in a more efficient way. Ok maybe such a system is much further away, I mean parking stickers could have RDFI chips in them so the computer could track there movement to better ensure they are not delayed in traffic to long. I'm no expert but, having a super computer control the entire grid seems like it would be so much more efficient in the long run as it learns the most efficient traffic patterns. Of course coding to prioritize transit, and pedestrians and bikers too. If Minneapolis and St. Paul worked together on such a system it could work couldn't it?

David Greene
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby David Greene » April 10th, 2019, 8:16 pm

What you're describing is basically the PRT fantasy but much more complicated.

Huge distributed computing systems are difficult to build. I don't have the proof in front of me but I would not be surprised if such an optimization problem is NP complete or worse (computer-speak for, "I can't solve this in a reasonable amount of time without heroic effort").

We've had distributed packet routing in the internet since it was invented in the '60's and 50 years of really hard work to optimize it still results in congestion, bottlenecks and slowdowns. It's way better than it used to be but it seems like there will always be pathological cases and those might not be that uncommon.

mattaudio
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Re: Green Line LRT

Postby mattaudio » April 11th, 2019, 7:29 am

It seems like we have some pretty good tech to keep transit moving... Dedicated right-of-way, dedicated lanes, existing signal technology, etc. While I'm always excited for new ways to move people even faster on transit, it seems clear barrier today is political not technological.


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