Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby woofner » June 21st, 2012, 10:13 am

From the Strib:
The Golden Valley City Council has voted against routing the proposed Bottineau Transitway through the city, becoming the first city affected by the project to oppose the preferred route.
I agreed with Golden Valley's last LRT related vote, a few decades ago, in which they rejected the construction of 394 in favor of a light rail line similar to the Southwest line proposed today (only not as long, since without quality transit to draw development to existing areas the city has sprawled dramatically.

I also agree with this current vote. It is a bad idea to route higher-capacity transit through parkland for 3 miles, in part because of the degradation of the parkland, but moreso because that just guarantees you'll have 3 miles of unproductive transit. In the TCRT days, Minnehaha Falls, Wirth Park, and the various lakes were big trip generators, but not so today. Ask Dallas, you can build as many miles of LRT as you want, but you won't get riders unless you hit the big destinations. By skipping West Broadway and North Memorial, Bottineau is going to be a weak link in the Metro's LRT network.
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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby MNdible » June 21st, 2012, 10:57 am

Re: ridership, North Memorial, and Terrace Center, why wouldn't they put in a stop just south of N 36th Avenue as part of the D1 route?

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby woofner » June 21st, 2012, 11:16 am

Re: ridership, North Memorial, and Terrace Center, why wouldn't they put in a stop just south of N 36th Avenue as part of the D1 route?
I don't know why they're not planning one there, but even if they did the closest they could get to North Memorial is a half mile.
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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby MNdible » June 21st, 2012, 11:29 am

I don't know why they're not planning one there, but even if they did the closest they could get to North Memorial is a half mile.
Yeah, it certainly doesn't solve the North Memorial problem, but they might be able to run a shuttle from the station. But there's a large apartment complex right there, and it would be quite close to the Terrace Center, which seems to remain a good opportunity for redevelopment should a station be located three blocks away.

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby ECtransplant » June 21st, 2012, 11:07 pm

If we can't get the Southwest line going, with all the moneyed-support for it, I don't see how we'll ever come close to getting the Bottineau line going with the political mess that any of it's routings will be.

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby mulad » June 22nd, 2012, 7:28 am

Some maps of the possible alignments are here, though detail is lacking for the northern A, B, and C segments:

http://bottineautransitway.org/library/ ... nments.htm

If they use the D1 alignment (which looks very likely at this point), it'd run west on Olson Memorial Boulevard and then turn north in the BNSF rail corridor just east of Theodore Wirth Park. Parts of it will be highway-adjacent much like the Hiawatha Line, though the heavy-rail tracks will be on the same side of the highway as the light-rail tracks (as opposed to Hiawatha where Minnesota Commercial operates on the other side).

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby 612transplant » June 22nd, 2012, 11:31 am

I'm starting to think that the ridership for this just-might-maybe not justify grants from the feds, but I don't know...

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby Tcmetro » July 30th, 2012, 9:25 am

Looks like the TPP amendment process is underway for the inclusion of LRT on the chosen alignment.

http://councilmeetings.metc.state.mn.us ... ridors.pdf

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Re: Bottineau LRT

Postby mulad » August 12th, 2012, 10:52 pm

Looks like Bottineau is getting one of those Met Council style maps.

Image
Hmm. Rather than running up past MN-610 to empty land, they should really try to have the line terminate as close as possible to Osseo's Central Avenue, a traditional small-town main street along the historical Jefferson Highway. The current routing along Broadway Avenue takes it through a car-oriented big-box area with curvilinear streets that aren't very well-connected. I would have suggested that they just keep the LRT in the existing rail corridor all the way to Osseo, but it does look like there are some big traffic generators along Broadway including North Hennepin Community College.

Should the line turn west at 93rd Avenue (CR 30)? Seems like there's a fairly natural termination spot right in front of the St. Vincent De Paul Catholic Church which could probably fit some LRT platforms without even impinging on their parking lot (though that might actually be wetland).


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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby Neptune » September 19th, 2012, 10:51 pm

http://finance-commerce.com/2012/09/bot ... -up-again/

"Plans to bring a light-rail transit line from Minneapolis to Brooklyn Park continue to be held up by concerns from Golden Valley council members who aren’t convinced the tracks should run through their community.... The setback is another blow to supporters of the project who fear delays will jeopardize plans to bring the line into service in 2019, and that every year the project is delayed will add an estimated $40 million in project costs, making it increasingly difficult to win critical federal support."

:roll:

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby Andrew_F » September 20th, 2012, 3:26 am

Why isn't this line ending at Brooklyn Blvd? That's right about where density take a nose-dive, dropping from 4-6k to 1-1.5k. Seems like a waste to me.

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby mulad » September 21st, 2012, 12:08 pm

Here are some maps by Brendon Slotterback, who has a blog at netdensity.net and is a streets.mn contributor. The density just falls off dramatically in the park area, so much so that there are fewer stations planned along that route. The street grid also fades away, so the number of paths available to reach the station drop off a lot.
bottineau-density.png
bottineau-half-mile-walk.png

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby twincitizen » September 23rd, 2012, 10:33 pm

A few things (assuming D1):

The stop spacing proposed on D1 is more consistent with Commuter Rail than LRT...which begs the questions:

1. Why no stop at 36th Avenue North? There's a bridge there, and buses currently cross over it. It would be one mile from Robbinsdale Station, which is consistent with Hiawatha station spacing. This would sort-of make up for not having a North Memorial Station (for my money, reason enough to pick D2).

2. Why not build stations at Plymouth AND Golden Valley Road? As Central Corridor showed, adding another stop adds roughly $5MM to the cost and 40 seconds of running time. I think it's completely justified, compared to D2 stop spacing.

3. I've thought from the beginning that both Maple Grove and Brooklyn Park spurs should be built. As someone else mentioned, density drops significantly after Brooklyn Blvd (roughly where the lines would split). That way you could have 10 minute service on the inner segment and 20 minute service on each of the spurs. Makes sense, no?

4. Less importantly, if we make this massive investment into LRT, I think that the Crystal Airport should be shut down (MAC has considered this) and redeveloped with mixed-density housing & retail. An enormous TOD opportunity awaits, if only anyone wanted to live in Crystal...

(just spitballing here...) Honestly though, this thing has turned into a hot mess. D1 makes no sense as an LRT line. At this point, we'd be better off going back to the drawing board and figuring out the best BRT routes (or two) for the same money. Preserve the rail corridor for Commuter Rail to Rogers (and beyond) in the distant future.

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby Tcmetro » September 23rd, 2012, 10:43 pm

BRT was about to proceed with construction c. 2005, but they wanted to go back to the drawing boards for LRT. They were about to build the stations in North Minneapolis too.

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby Nick » September 23rd, 2012, 11:03 pm

It looks like a Catch-22. Minnesotans don't know how to deal with all the tricky political and social imagery associated with the idea of this project. Using BRT here but building a train out to Eden Prairie looks like we're picking rich, white suburbs over a poor, black inner city neighborhood. But the alignment that actually makes sense to best serve North Minneapolis would require demolishing a bunch of poor peoples' houses. So we can either:

1) Build the train right, and deal with bulldozers and give Republicans in the legislature lots of opportunities to score property rights points, and have sad old ladies on TV who've lived in their houses for fifty years, etc.

2) Build the train wrong, and spend a billion dollars on a commuter rail line through wetlands that will probably be hurting to have much ridership.

3) Build BRT and tell the poor they're not worth the investment. Not to mention forgo all the redevelopment possibilities on the Northside, which has to be a gigantic blackhole for property tax collections as is.
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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby woofner » September 24th, 2012, 11:15 am

They had a great series of maps showing the 3 or 4 D2 Penn-Oliver alternatives and highlighting the properties that would be impacted, but the only one I have a link for is the C option (LRT on Penn with a general traffic lane in each direction and a bunch of superfluous right turn lanes). Matt I think you're right that this option and the others would have only required a handful of properties to be demolished, but many properties would lose yards. On the other hand, at this level of engineering it may be premature to say for certain how many demo's would be needed.

I would add a fourth option to Elf's list - "Take advantage of the fact that the Twin Cities have demonstrably the nation's lowest urban tunneling costs and look into a deep bored tunnel between Plymouth & Lyndale and North Memorial, with stations at Broadway & Emerson/Fremont and Broadway & Penn." But instead I think the most likely course is that years will be spent squabbling over options 1 & 2 and nada gets accomplished.

Re Twincitizen's questions 1 & 2:
1. Why no stop at 36th Avenue North? There's a bridge there, and buses currently cross over it. It would be one mile from Robbinsdale Station, which is consistent with Hiawatha station spacing. This would sort-of make up for not having a North Memorial Station (for my money, reason enough to pick D2).
I'm assuming it's because of the curve in the ROW at 36th but I agree that it should be done. Either move the platform south a bit or take a property or two to straighten the ROW.
2. Why not build stations at Plymouth AND Golden Valley Road? As Central Corridor showed, adding another stop adds roughly $5MM to the cost and 40 seconds of running time. I think it's completely justified, compared to D2 stop spacing.
The City of Mpls recommended the DEIS study building both stations - hopefully they listened, as I don't believe it was a condition of the MOU.
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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby ECtransplant » September 24th, 2012, 9:10 pm

Not saying this would or should be done. However, a way to build the train and not tear down (poor/minority) peoples' houses would be to build it underground or elevated above road, where needed.

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby Nick » November 13th, 2012, 7:11 pm

Good streets.mn interview with a Golden Valley City Councilmember about the Bottineau line. The part about the train starts a little under halfway into it. Also, fun fact, I'm the person who was in the car with her counting cars on Penn.

http://www.streets.mn/2012/11/13/podcas ... la-pentel/
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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby helsinki » November 14th, 2012, 8:55 am

Excellent discussion.

She makes some good points about the failure to seriously consider (yet) routing the line through N. Minneapolis. She also evidently holds some grudges and is nursing bruised feelings from the planning process itself; it makes you wish that local pols could take ego out of such important considerations.

I especially liked her strong rebuttal of the allegation that routing the line through the North side is somehow analagous to the destruction of Rondo in St. Paul for I-94; it's such a bogus claim and deserves to be called out for the nonsense that it is.

Honestly, I think the 'fear' of undesirable elements passing through your neighborhood (or passing through undesirable neighborhoods) because of a rail line is both (1) unfounded, but more importantly (2) not as prevalent as people think it is. People generally understand that, (a) buses already run on similar routes, (b) whoever these shifty vagrants are, they probably have access to a car anyway, (c) even if there are masses of impoverished minority youth who would jump at the chance to rob you if only a train went directly to your house, they're not going to steal your TV and then schlep it onto the LRT.

In other words, trains don't bring crime. And passing through a bad neighborhood on a train will not harm the train's passengers. It's really that simple.

By way of example, if you fly to JFK, take the air train to Jamaica, and then take the subway into the city (because you didn't know you could take the LIRR), your subway will pass through some rough patches of city. Do we midwesterners, upon realizing this, grow terrified that we're speedily passing through a neighborhood of lower socioeconomic status than our final destination? No. Because that's silly and we're not that ignorant. Why would this not be true in Mpls? It is. And I think we insult the intelligence and decency of suburbanites when we assume that they're so racist, economically smug, and alarmed by mixing with 'others' that they wouldn't ride a train that passes through the North side. I bet they would.

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Re: Bottineau Corridor (Blue Line Extension)

Postby MNdible » November 14th, 2012, 9:45 am

Honestly, I think the 'fear' of undesirable elements passing through your neighborhood (or passing through undesirable neighborhoods) because of a rail line is...
Is such a red herring that I'm not sure why you'd bother bringing it up?

The reason that the route through the northside wasn't selected is that nobody can point to a good example of how this kind of infrastructure would work in that kind of a physical environment. We're talking about running three car LRT trains at in excess of 10 minute frequencies through a limited ROW along a low density residential neighborhood. Where has this been done before successfully (or at all)? It's a total mismatch in scale and intensity, and I don't blame people on the northside for balking about this.


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