urbanMSP

Trump has also selected a Transportation Secretary who has a track record of both roads and transit. Granted, she can certainly have a new agenda under President Trump, but I'm at least thankful that she has experience. Unlike many of the other cabinet posts. But ultimately, it doesn't matter what the President wants - it's up to Congress to dole out the money. That's the bigger hurdle.

What happens to the $800M CTIB and Hennepin County dollars if federal funding is suddenly yanked? (Well, obviously like $200M or whatever is already spent on engineering and etc, so that's gone). Do we end up building just as far as Shady Oak and the OMF to salvage what we can, or scrap the whole shebang?

Paying, with only local funds, to build the line only as far as Shady Oak would be a win, in my opinion.

We built half of Northstar despite that being a terrible idea. I don't see why building half of SWLRT would be impossible, considering it would at least be a train to somewhere.

SWLRT has been approved to enter engineering by the FTA.
https://metrocouncil.org/Transportation ... est-L.aspx

This only confuses me more regarding future potential political roadblocks!

Met Council rail spur ROW purchase imminent in Hopkins and SLP. $27+M.

http://finance-commerce.com/2017/01/sou ... -advances/

A couple weeks back Hopkins Planning Commission voted 4–2 to approve Met Council's plans for the OMF. The 2 voted against came from this:

Representatives of Metropolitan Council said that of these workers, 40-60 employees will be present at the site at a given time. The proposal includes 109 parking stall to provide ample accommodations.

http://sailor.mnsun.com/2017/01/09/hopk ... Newsletter

109 parking stalls for 40–60 employees for a Met Council building literally in walking distance to the Shady Oak LRT station. IMO, a scandal of many layers. I'm face palming.

Now that you mention it, the Cedar shops parking lot is always shockingly empty as well.

Extra fun thought, there will be a park and ride lot built at the Shady Oak station a block away from this too. Too far for maintenance workers to be expected to park there and walk a block? Heck my walk in to work is over a block...

Also, who are these residents? This isn't a residential area. ?

Btw, plans

http://www.hopkinsmn.com/boards/zpc/pdf ... packet.pdf

Unless I've lost my ability to figure such things out (a possibility), it looks like they haven't given themselves any way to reverse a trainset at this OMF. I understand that since the trainsets are double-ended it's not strictly necessary, but certainly it's more of a hassle if there isn't a way to do it. I'm surprised they didn't, as it looks like there's enough space to do so on the north end - if they lost a few parking spaces they could put a small section of track to connect the maintenance and storage sections in a reverse orientation, thus allowing them to reverse the trains if they needed to. I guess they deemed it unnecessary - perhaps they rarely use the reversing loop at the Hiawatha OMF.

109 parking stalls for 40–60 employees for a Met Council building literally in walking distance to the Shady Oak LRT station. IMO, a scandal of many layers. I'm face palming.

The documents reference that the parking will store work vehicles. Based on the design and documents, I would suspect that the south lot is where the bulk of those vehicles would be stored.

Another thing to consider is that this location is best served by transit when the LRT is running, which isn't 24/7. Depending on shift times, taking transit may not be a reasonable option. I'm not in the OM business but as I understand it, a significant amount of work has to be done overnight since that's when the fleet is back at the facility and they can work on the tracks and the LRVs. Would that be peak period for staffing?

Huh? Lrt isn't running 24/7?

Right, not a 24/7 line.

Wasn't aware. When's the cut off time?

Given that the Green Line is 24 hours a day, and SWLRT is an extension of that, how does that work. Do some runs cut off at Target Field? And can they be extended to West Lake at least?

Perhaps they'll operate like two separate lines.

Blue Line is only 24/7 between the terminals. It otherwise has 3 hours of no service at night. I would be shocked if the Green Line ran service 24/7 the entire length of the extension. Unsure what the current plans are, though. Either way, the point is more than in the late night and middle of the night, the bulk...if not all... of the LRVs are at OM facilities or yards and therefore available for cleaning and maintenance without having to be taken out of operating service.

yes, but the green line only has ONE train an hour during that 3 hour overnight period. Seems hardly a big impact to have 3 west bound trains stop at Target Field. However on the weekends it seems like those 3 hourly trains would benefit the party crowd in being able to get back home to the west metro.