Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
sean
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby sean » January 6th, 2014, 3:00 pm

I've known that for a while and have been meaning to take a walk around Cedar Lake. The whole lake.
Many times I have floated by, jealously eyeing those lake-fronts. Might have to have a picnic on the south east side of the lake when summer returns.

Clicking around on the property tax map to see how much those homes are valued at I was surprised to discover that at 28 Park Lane the owner is "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth", and the taxpayer is listed as "CANADIAN CONSULATE".

Tom H.
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Tom H. » January 6th, 2014, 3:13 pm

A quick check on Google StreetView shows a Canadian flag flying on the front lawn of this house. SPIES?!?

seanrichardryan
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby seanrichardryan » January 6th, 2014, 3:26 pm

Continuing off topic, Don't you wish they would have picked one of the grand but downtrodden homes in Whittier or Stevens rather than this suburban-city location? A consulate row in Washburn Fair Oaks would be awesome. Of course our Minneapolis consulates are more honorary than functioning embassies.

EDIT* I take that last statement back, anyone who needs a work visa, study permit, etc. uses these facilities. I suppose what I'm advocating is a consul residence combined with the office functions in a restored old house.*
Last edited by seanrichardryan on January 6th, 2014, 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

mulad
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby mulad » January 6th, 2014, 3:32 pm

The consulate office is downtown, of course.

twinkess
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twinkess » January 6th, 2014, 8:03 pm

The consulate office is downtown, of course.
Yup, I used to work in the building (4th ave and 7th st if I can remember off the top of my head). Was quite a surprise one day when the elevator opened, scented air wafted in (not kidding, smelled like flowers) and there was a Canadian flag across the way.

twincitizen
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » January 7th, 2014, 9:19 am

Meetings scheduled tonight (Tuesday 1/7) and Thursday 1/9 in Mpls and SLP, respectively.

The first meeting will be held Jan. 7 at the Kenwood Community Center in Minneapolis (2101 Franklin Ave. W.). The second meeting will be held Jan. 9 at the St. Louis Park Rec Center (3700 Monterey Drive). Both meetings will run from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

Also: Opponents of the Southwest rail plan have cited its potential harm to bike trails, but cycling advocates say “it can work.”

David Greene
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby David Greene » January 7th, 2014, 2:51 pm

Meetings scheduled tonight (Tuesday 1/7) and Thursday 1/9 in Mpls and SLP, respectively.
I don't think I'll be able to go to either of these but I really wonder what the point is. The studies aren't done yet, so what are they going to talk about? I suppose maybe they can present some findings so far.

orangevening
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby orangevening » January 8th, 2014, 9:46 am

Very conflicted reports from the meeting last night. Star and Tribune report "griping" while others (even in the Stribs article comment section) report that the meeting was constructive and accuse the STrib of yellow journalism. Anyone here go?

twincitizen
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » January 8th, 2014, 9:54 am

If no one from the forum went to the meeting, I have to conclude that we are ****ed as a society. I mean, who has spent more time discussing, analyzing, and arguing over this project than us, outside of the people actually getting paid to work on it?

mattaudio
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby mattaudio » January 8th, 2014, 9:58 am

I couldn't go because...
I organized a meeting for SMAAC that discussed the legal framework of using 14 CFR Part 161 to institute local restrictions at MSP with Quincy, A. Johnson, Hornstein, Dibble, and your friend from Ellison's office.

Bad timing on my part, but I doubt the organizers would have appreciated my starting a "3C" chant.

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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby mulad » January 8th, 2014, 11:12 am

I arrived around 5:40 pm as the main facilitator was speaking. I didn't catch his name, but he said he had "dedicated his life" to the project and sounded very frustrated himself. I guess there had been an open house to start out with, but after the guy was done speaking, the crowd divided up into six major groups. There were tables set up to talk about topics around freight rail, tunnels, watershed/quality issues, green space/park impacts, ridership and alignment, and an "other" table for concerns that didn't quite fit any of the first five.

I sat at the freight rail table(s). Right off the bat, there was an issue in that there were two big round high-school cafeteria tables attempting to share a conversation in a big gymnasium with other talking going on, and it was very difficult to hear. I don't know why they tried to have both tables in one conversation when it would have been better to have the tables talk separately. In the discussion, one of the major problems right off the bat related to the supposed documentation or lack thereof of an agreement with St. Louis Park to allow a reroute. I did manage to get a dig in at MnDOT for the truncation of tracks at Hiawatha Avenue in the late '90s as Charlie Zelle was standing right there (though of course he wasn't there at the time).

There was a lot of discussion relating to simply understanding the facts about how much train traffic there currently is, how the lines are configured now, what the tradeoffs were with different potential reroute alignments, and the impact on TC&W and BNSF themselves. One guy at the table was dubious about Twin Cities and Western being an independent company, and believed that it was owned by one of the major railroads and the name was just something to make it sound more local (it is true that TC&W is closely aligned with Red River Valley & Western and the Minnesota Prairie Line, but I'm not aware of them being controlled by one of the Class I roads or anything).

Commissioner Zelle did pipe up at one point and seemed to get the TC&W confused with the BNSF Wayzata Subdivision, saying it went to Willmar, but it's an easy mistake to make. I also got a bit frustrated when he called it a short line and "not a mainline", which is kind of true, but I think undercuts its value -- it's over 150 miles long (extending to Appleton) and the Minnesota Prairie Line branches off of it.

I was pretty frustrated that we didn't have good facts at our disposal when looking at freight rail issues -- no big maps to look at the reroute options, though several were shown with sparse detail on handouts we were given upon coming into the gymnasium. There also weren't any cost estimates for the various reroute options, though I have to say that the past studies have been quite at odds with each other, and it wouldn't have done much good to have people look at bad data. There is currently another freight reroute study underway, so I guess that's another thing to keep an eye on.

Anyway, after about 40 minutes, I decided to take a peek at the tunnel tables, but they mostly seemed to have wrapped up discussion. I'm a bit concerned about those tables being stacked a bit. I filled out a comment card and was thinking of leaving as the table discussions wrapped up and speakers stood up from each group, but ended up staying to listen to most of them. The volunteer recorder/speaker from the freight rail group started off with some comments that didn't mesh at all with what I'd heard while at the table, though he did eventually wander back to some points I had heard -- perhaps the conversation had changed a lot after I left, I'm not sure.

The two tables for tunnels had more wisely broken up into separate groups, and there were two speakers. I am really reluctant to support any tunnels myself, so I was disappointed that nobody brought up that idea. The first tunnel table seemed to be mildly pushing for deep-bore, but the second speaker was completely in favor of that and tried to assign that opinion to everyone at the first table, which made me very annoyed. He did, however, mention that the tunnel distances didn't seem to make much sense at all, that they're probably longer than necessary. There was a statement about beginning the tunnel at or north of the Lake Street bridge, for instance, but I fear that they may have missed that one of the major choke points (if we don't want to demolish any residences at all) is southwest of the bridge. Again, they probably didn't have any maps showing where the choke points are, which was a shortcoming of the meeting format.

One of the speakers talking about park impacts noted that here haven't been good detailed renderings/simulations of exactly how trees would be affected by building LRT at grade, and fairly basic information about how wide the individual right-of-way need to be has never been widely disseminated. (I'm kind of ambivalent on the whole parkland situation, since this has been a rail corridor for a long, long time -- for most of the area north of the lake channel, I think there's plenty of room, but whatever.)

I'm a bit surprised there was a ridership/alignment table at all, since the facilitator was basically saying at the beginning of the meeting that realignment of LRT through Uptown was completely off the table. But it certainly would have polluted the other discussions a lot more if the topic didn't have an outlet (though most speakers still did mention an alignment through Uptown at one point or another). Anyway, their group summarized many of the points we've made over the years in favor of 3C or some other Uptown alignment. Their speaker mentioned that models assumed bus ridership would make a significant transition to LRT down in Eden Prairie, but missed the corresponding statement that has been asserted here about how existing bus riders in Minneapolis were assumed to keep using the buses. I was a bit surprised to only be one of two people to clap when she mentioned how the argument of SWLRT serving North Minneapolis was extremely weak. Oh well.

I decided to head home around that time, so I don't know what else happened. There were so many things brought up that I've only scratched the surface. Even at age 35, I feel like I'm too young to have followed the planning process appropriately -- when it takes decades to look through options, a project like this really requires a historian to be on staff, and to create readable reports for the masses (maybe there is one?). I was glad that the handout included some of the discarded Uptown/South Minneapolis alignments -- the first I've really seen for many of them -- but it was very thin on the reasons why they were discarded.

I suppose I should mention that I went to college for Computer Science, where we understand software development to be an iterative process. Old ideas are being constantly revisited -- tossed out, thrown back in, etc. The planning process for transit is not set up in that way, expecting that a large number of initial ideas can be filtered down to a single outcome. But you never ever know all of the possibilities to start out with -- some good ideas only become clear late in the process. And the outside world is constantly changing. Heck, the FTA and FRA may allow LRT-like vehicles on freight lines soon, so it'd make some sense to switch out the whole thing to be a DMU commuter rail line and build LRT or streetcar service on surface streets instead. As we've seen with Red Rock, it is possible to go through another Alternatives Analysis iteration, but it's a very cumbersome task. Software is a weird world, so you can't directly apply fast-iteration techniques to something that must result in a billion-dollar piece of infrastructure, but something needs to be done to make it easier to revisit old ideas or add new ones. There are too many times when I've gone to planning meetings to hear that the things I want to talk about are either way off in the future, or have already been set in stone sometime in the past. That's just a terrible way to proceed.

Ubermoose
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Ubermoose » January 8th, 2014, 11:23 am

I'm hoping to make the first part of the meeting tomorrow night, but my time is limited and I'm sure that I won't be able to take part in much table talk, if at all.
I really wanted to make it last night so that I could compare the two meetings. I guess that will have to wait for February.
Thanks for your insights Mulad.

twincitizen
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » January 8th, 2014, 2:45 pm

I may attend tomorrow night as well, arriving around 5:00.

mattaudio
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby mattaudio » January 8th, 2014, 2:56 pm

See you then.

David Greene
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby David Greene » January 8th, 2014, 6:55 pm

I also arrived late at yesterday's meeting and mulad's recap sounds fair. I did hear a bit more anger in the tones of the voices, especially the tunnel and route groups. Overall, I would say that most people there really missed a chance to put some concrete ideas and issues on the table that the consultants could wrestle with. As I understood it after talking to a MC member, this was supposed to be a chance for the community to give information to the consultants doing the studies. Instead it felt very much like a gripe session to me that just rehashed a bunch of old compaints. There were some diamonds in the rough such as the comments from the water quity group, but let's hope the people at the St. Louis Park meeting take better advantage of their opportunity to povide new input to those performing the studies. People say they want to give input before studies are done. This is a chance to do that.

I see mulad's point about the lack of information but in reality I'm not sure more information would have helped. There were freight reroute option maps on the posters, at least. People at various tables were making all kinds of factually incorrect statements and it's not because they had a lack of information. It's because the had the *wrong* information. There's been a deliberate campaign to spread misinformation in the neighborhoods.

I was disappointed that no one mentioned the Midtown corridor and how that relates to SW LRT. That's a huge missing piece of information that's important context for people talking about routes. I don't blame people who don't have all the facts for assuming an Uptown route would be better. It does look like the obvious choice until you really start digging into it.

mulad, I gotta strongly disagree with your coment on North Minneapolis. I know I've said this a hundred times, but the folks in Near North don't consider SW LRT serving their community "weak."

And I don't think the software analogy works. If anything, a software optimization process looks very much like big infrastructure planning. Any algorithm to find an acceptable solution to a difficult problem is going to throw away possible solutions and not revisit them. It has to to make forward progress and find an answer in a reasonable amount of time. At least until practical quantum computers are widely available.

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Nick
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Nick » January 9th, 2014, 6:38 pm

twincitizen and I are at the meeting now. Anyone else in the house?
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Anondson
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby Anondson » January 9th, 2014, 6:47 pm

I almost went but got disuaded by the reporting of the prior meeting early this week. Don't want to be around headstrong upset going in circles.

David Greene
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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby David Greene » January 9th, 2014, 7:17 pm

I couldn't make it tonight because I've already had two evening meetings this week and the baby had a rough night of sleep. I look forward to hearing reports! I hope it was more productive than the experience I had on Tuesday.

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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby David Greene » January 9th, 2014, 7:32 pm

I was glad that the handout included some of the discarded Uptown/South Minneapolis alignments -- the first I've really seen for many of them -- but it was very thin on the reasons why they were discarded.
3A and 3C has been discussed enough so I'll assume you know the arguments for dropping 3C.

As for the others, the Blaisdell/1st Ave. split obviously costs a lot more due to duplication of equiipment and wouldn't generate a significant number of riders over 3C. The route down 11th/12th was a city councilmember's pipe dream. It has the same problem as Blaisdell/1st as well as issues with the skyways. The route down Portland/Park was a CIDNA resident's pipe dream, as was the route down TH100/BNSF. I'm not sure the last one was actually an official route that was looked at but it got talked about a lot on Tuesday. I think that same CIDNA residents even proposed interlining with Hiawatha to head north but I don't think it was taken seriously.

Generally, all the others after 3C came down to, "costs too much with not enough ridership gain," which is true for 3C too but 3C had a lot more study put into it because the ridership numbers were closer and other issues were found. I think the other routes were so expensive or poorly-performing they weren't even studied beyond the cost and rough ridership estimates factors.

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Re: Southwest Corridor (Green Line Extension)

Postby BigIdeasGuy » January 9th, 2014, 8:16 pm

After the meeting, Metropolitan Council chair Susan Haigh talked about the mistrust expressed by many at the session: “A lot of facts have changed, so what people believed 10 years ago, we have different facts today, and we have to go forward, and I think that’s really distressing to people.”

“This issue of alignment is something, I think, that has been decided,” she said.

At this point, the route could only be changed if new information about the water quality in the lakes is discovered, she said.

“The key issue we’re trying to get at is — engineering plans withstanding — is there an alternative to locate freight rails outside of this corridor,” she said.
Did anyone else see this quote in the MinnPost article about the meeting the other day, I added emphasis because that's the important part to me.

Anyone know what the going rate for an engineer is these days, because I have the first $20. :D


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