Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[VAStationDude]

Who could have foreseen surface running light rail on Penn Avenue wouldn't be looked upon favorably by residents and that tunneling is a pipe dream?

[EOst]

Who could have foreseen such a plan for Bottineau?

Anyone who's ever been on Penn Ave N, for one.

[twincitizen]

Yup, Penn was a pretty bad alignment to begin with and they picked the worst of the worst sub-options (D2C or whatever, that would have taken out the most houses) to make D1 (RR alignment) a foregone conclusion. The optics of it were not good. Following Southwest, it certainly is clear that Hennepin County engineers and their consultants are on the same page when it comes to preferring LRT in RR corridors vs. on city streets. And the City of Minneapolis certainly hasn't stood up for the latter option, as St. Paul did on University.

I think something a lot of folks don't realize is that Penn isn't really a commercial corridor. The Route 19 is a pretty new thing, designed to make transit more legible. Penn Avenue, south of Broadway, never even had streetcars... It's pretty much single family homes. Just because the RR alignment is bad, doesn't make the Penn option good. A better option would have been N 7th>Emerson/Fremont>Broadway (or Lowry). Penn was seemingly put up to make D1 a slam dunk.

As far as serving density vs. running through a park, Bottineau is unarguably "less bad" than Southwest in that regard. At least the Bottineau stations at Penn, Plymouth, and Golden Valley Road have existing walk-sheds and existing bus service. Southwest's "northside serving" stations depend almost entirely on future development and new/re-jiggered bus routes to bring them any ridership whatsoever.

[Tcmetro]

There was a post on Streets.mn today about the northside bus - SWLRT connection.

https://streets.mn/2014/07/24/the-north- ... onnection/

[EOst]

I think something a lot of folks don't realize is that Penn isn't really a commercial corridor. The Route 19 is a pretty new thing, designed to make transit more legible. Penn Avenue, south of Broadway, never even had streetcars... It's pretty much single family homes. Just because the RR alignment is bad, doesn't make the Penn option good. A better option would have been N 7th>Emerson/Fremont>Broadway (or Lowry). Penn was seemingly put up to make D1 a slam dunk.

They studied this alignment in the AA, but Fremont/Emerson were found to be too narrow and residential for it to work. It's hard to blame them for tossing it out; you'd pretty much have to make them both one ways with no street parking to fit LRT in there, and that would be murder to the few businesses that are still surviving; plus, since there are parking entrances on both sides of the street, you'd either block off a lot of businesses/parking lots or have a lot of dangerous and awkward track crossings.

edit: Really hard to envision even one-way track of LRT on this, for example: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.000291, ... b4Iozg!2e0

[twincitizen]

There was a post on Streets.mn today about the northside bus - SWLRT connection.

https://streets.mn/2014/07/24/the-north- ... onnection/

This is pretty much spot on. He is absolutely right about Royalston Station being the natural connection for Routes 5, 19, and 22. The southbound bus stop is being moved farside and will be a "test" aBRT stop, built either this year or next. Transfers to head back north won't be as smooth, unfortunately.

I disagree with him about the Royalston Station location. It's fine where it is. Moving it further north (or elevated over 7th as he suggests) would put it way too close to Target Field Station. I think it should actually be shifted a couple hundred feet south to put it closer to Glenwood Ave, as this would make it practically walkable to the NW corner of downtown (Laurel Village, Hennepin & 11th, etc.). It has been announced that the tracks will now have to cross Glenwood at grade (as they rise from the RR trench), as the flyover (or under?) geometry they originally envisioned won't be possible. I would hope that there will be a walkway along the tracks, connecting Glenwood Ave to Royalston Station.

[Tcmetro]

It wouldn't be too difficult to shift the bus routes to use Royalston and provide a direct connection to the station. SB buses could follow 7th > Oak Lake > Royalston > Glenwood > 10th St > 7th St Garage TC. NB buses along 7th Street would take a left at Glenwood/2nd Ave, then to Royalston and on to the current routes.

SWLRT is also planning a new #8 bus that would run from the Van White Bl stop to Fremont and Broadway. It is fairly duplicative of the #5 bus, and might be better unimplemented. It would be a useful link for the southern part of the Sumner Field redevelopment, but that area is still pretty empty.

The Penn Ave bus situation will become a little bit of a conundrum. I think the best course of action would be to keep the C-Line operating between Brooklyn Center TC and Downtown, and rerouting the 19 local to operate between Robbinsdale TC and the Penn Ave SW LRT station, perhaps with a possibility of continuing down Wayzata Bl to the West End.

[ECtransplant]

As far as serving density vs. running through a park, Bottineau is unarguably "less bad" than Southwest in that regard.

In before Matt's pic of cornfields

[VAStationDude]

Penn, Emerson/Freemont, Washington/Broadway weren't practical and tunneling wasn't at all cost effective but STROADS, CORNFIELDS and TARGET.

[David Greene]

The Penn Ave bus situation will become a little bit of a conundrum. I think the best course of action would be to keep the C-Line operating between Brooklyn Center TC and Downtown, and rerouting the 19 local to operate between Robbinsdale TC and the Penn Ave SW LRT station, perhaps with a possibility of continuing down Wayzata Bl to the West End.

That makes sense to me. The only change I'd make is have the C line operate on Glenwood rather than Olson. It's stupid to have it duplicate Bottineau service.

[Archiapolis]

Who could have foreseen such a plan for Bottineau?

Pretty much anyone paying attention. There are plenty of Northsiders happy with the plan. Others, not so much. Please stop lumping all Northsiders into one bucket.

Please expand on "anyone paying attention" in response to my comment, "Who could have foreseen such a plan for Bottineau?"

Would you care to elaborate on your comment that seems to say, "The leading contender for alignment of the Bottineau corridor is exactly as predicted by me."

I seem to recall you making a LOT of arguments about what Bottineau was going to do for the north side while you were supporting 3A.

The current Bottineau line appears to bypass the densest areas and the area most in need of private development in favor of barreling suburbanites into the CBD.

Density. Missed. Again.

Do I need to point out that that generalizations get made when we are talking about swaths of a city that are miles long/wide? Is it necessary to give a caveat that "those within 3 blocks of station X LOVE the current alignment, those who don't think it is terrible." Please point me toward polling/data that show specific support numbers for northsiders regarding the current preferred Bottineau alignment if they exist.

[Archiapolis]

Yup, Penn was a pretty bad alignment to begin with and they picked the worst of the worst sub-options (D2C or whatever, that would have taken out the most houses) to make D1 (RR alignment) a foregone conclusion. The optics of it were not good. Following Southwest, it certainly is clear that Hennepin County engineers and their consultants are on the same page when it comes to preferring LRT in RR corridors vs. on city streets. And the City of Minneapolis certainly hasn't stood up for the latter option, as St. Paul did on University.

I think something a lot of folks don't realize is that Penn isn't really a commercial corridor. The Route 19 is a pretty new thing, designed to make transit more legible. Penn Avenue, south of Broadway, never even had streetcars... It's pretty much single family homes. Just because the RR alignment is bad, doesn't make the Penn option good. A better option would have been N 7th>Emerson/Fremont>Broadway (or Lowry). Penn was seemingly put up to make D1 a slam dunk.

As far as serving density vs. running through a park, Bottineau is unarguably "less bad" than Southwest in that regard. At least the Bottineau stations at Penn, Plymouth, and Golden Valley Road have existing walk-sheds and existing bus service. Southwest's "northside serving" stations depend almost entirely on future development and new/re-jiggered bus routes to bring them any ridership whatsoever.

Thank you. Brilliant.

[VAStationDude]

No, it's not brilliant. His thesis is that Penn was considered instead of Emerson/Fremont so the rail road alignment would win out by default. As EOst explained Emerson/Fremont would turn what is left of a commercial corridor into LRT frontage roads. Putting University Avenue in St Paul in the same breath as Fremont/Emerson is silly.

Of course you can keep going on and on about CORNFIELDS and DENSITY but the better allignments have won out

[David Greene]

Who could have foreseen such a plan for Bottineau?

Pretty much anyone paying attention. There are plenty of Northsiders happy with the plan. Others, not so much. Please stop lumping all Northsiders into one bucket.

Please expand on "anyone paying attention" in response to my comment, "Who could have foreseen such a plan for Bottineau?"

Would you care to elaborate on your comment that seems to say, "The leading contender for alignment of the Bottineau corridor is exactly as predicted by me."

Penn isn't wide enough and is mostly residential, as others have explained. If you go way back to before the last AA started, sure, most people wouldn't have predicted the outcome (I wasn't around at the time). But that's before any of the facts on the ground were known. By about 3-4 years ago it was pretty clear what was going to happen.

I seem to recall you making a LOT of arguments about what Bottineau was going to do for the north side while you were supporting 3A.

Did I? Bottineau will help but I've pretty consistently said it isn't a replacement for SWLRT 3A. That's why I support 3A.

Do I need to point out that that generalizations get made when we are talking about swaths of a city that are miles long/wide? Is it necessary to give a caveat that "those within 3 blocks of station X LOVE the current alignment, those who don't think it is terrible." Please point me toward polling/data that show specific support numbers for northsiders regarding the current preferred Bottineau alignment if they exist.

The Northside Transportation Network conducted several rounds of polling that put the Penn/BNSF choice at 50/50 by residents. These were not small public meetings.

One can (and I have) argue that the choice was artificially restricted. twincitizen's post gets to that. A lot of residents liked the idea of a Russel/Queen pair but the cost was deemed too high. Others wanted to see it go down W. Broadway. That would have been my preference. That said, a W. Broadway streetcar might be a better project there anyway. I'm reserving judgment on that until we know more.

[EOst]

Even if W. Broadway was geometrically possible (and MT has repeatedly said that it would be very difficult given all the curves, but hell, maybe they're evil or just lying) you'd still have to get from TFS to W. Broadway somehow--either Lyndale, E/F, or Penn. Of those only Lyndale is really wide enough to accommodate the train, and according to the AA it'd require extensive demolition (which, given how many empty lots there already are on this stretch, is definitely not preferable).

We can tilt at tunnels all day if we want, but that still doesn't make them cost-effective. But maybe once SW and Bottineau are built, we can look into throwing a couple billion dollars into a tunnel from downtown to Lowry. We can call it the Purple line, for all the sour grapes here.

[Nick]

We can call it the Purple line, for all the sour grapes here.

lol

[grant1simons2]

This thread man...

[David Greene]

Even if W. Broadway was geometrically possible (and MT has repeatedly said that it would be very difficult given all the curves, but hell, maybe they're evil or just lying) you'd still have to get from TFS to W. Broadway somehow--either Lyndale, E/F, or Penn. Of those only Lyndale is really wide enough to accommodate the train, and according to the AA it'd require extensive demolition (which, given how many empty lots there already are on this stretch, is definitely not preferable).

We can tilt at tunnels all day if we want, but that still doesn't make them cost-effective. But maybe once SW and Bottineau are built, we can look into throwing a couple billion dollars into a tunnel from downtown to Lowry. We can call it the Purple line, for all the sour grapes here.

I don't think I'm sour grapes. I'm fine with the plan as it is. It's a heck of a lot better than doing nothing.

But just to clarify, I'm not assuming the current ROW dimensions on W. Broadway. As we know there's a lot of parking lot adjoining the street. It's easy to build there. I drove down once paying attention to the width. There are a few places buildings would have to be taken but overall the corridor is pretty wide when you consider the surface parking. I've never heard the curves were a problem. I was told by the lead county engineer that ROW width and travel time were the issues.

Isn't W. Broadway to Washington another route into downtown? That seems easier than Lyndale. I know it was looked at.

[David Greene]

I seem to recall you making a LOT of arguments about what Bottineau was going to do for the north side while you were supporting 3A.

Did I? Bottineau will help but I've pretty consistently said it isn't a replacement for SWLRT 3A. That's why I support 3A.

Oh, I think I know what you're referring to. The Bottineau LPA alignment does serve Near North quite well. With that and SWLRT 3A Harrison becomes rail transit central which is really a transformative thing for that neighborhood. The LPA doesn't help communities further north as much as it could with, say, a W. Broadway alignment but they'll have decent bus connections so it's not like it's a disaster for the city.

[EOst]

I don't think I'm sour grapes. I'm fine with the plan as it is. It's a heck of a lot better than doing nothing.

Sorry if I'm painting with too broad a brush here; I don't mean you so much as others.

But just to clarify, I'm not assuming the current ROW dimensions on W. Broadway. As we know there's a lot of parking lot adjoining the street. It's easy to build there. I drove down once paying attention to the width. There are a few places buildings would have to be taken but overall the corridor is pretty wide when you consider the surface parking. I've never heard the curves were a problem. I was told by the lead county engineer that ROW width and travel time were the issues.

The AA talks a lot about "geometric challenges," and I'd heard elsewhere that the curves on Broadway were problematic for a lot of modern vehicles, but I don't have that firsthand. Either way, though, Broadway is hardly a slam dunk.

Isn't W. Broadway to Washington another route into downtown? That seems easier than Lyndale. I know it was looked at.

They did look at it (2f here), but it actually scored lowest of all the alternatives studied. Traffic disruption probably had a lot to do with that (it's dinged on Service Area, Service Efficiency, and Compatibility with Existing Infrastructure), though I imagine other things had a part as well.