Purple Line BRT (Rush Line Corridor)

[StandishGuy]

Up-zoning around station areas should be a requirement of these expensive transit (and somewhat questionable) transit projects.

[Trademark]

Up-zoning around station areas should be a requirement of these expensive transit (and somewhat questionable) transit projects.

Redevelopment of Maplewood Mall areas is a huge point of potential.

[Oreos&Milk]

Gotta imagine that Wells St option, or even the moved Arcade St station, would cut capital costs notably by not requiring a separate bridge to get from Arcade back to the busway, in addition to improving service by removing a left turn across Arcade in each direction.

Yes, but will Wells St. Station have good connections to the area, or just be a dumping ground to let passengers off?

If those "saved funds" could be used to build the following:

an at-grade rail crossing connecting to the Loomis sidewalk & connect to 7th st E.

pave the sidewalk space on Earl St. W which would allow a wheelchair-accessible street crossing. Maybe even a matching staircase on the North side of Earl St. so trail riders can use stairs to cross OR a complete trail ramp accessible crossing.

Also would be NICE to have a trail ramp from Forest St. N to the bike trail on Phalen Blvd so transit goers could also utilize that pathway but IF the other two are built then might be redundant. However if Jones Sign Company or the building owner was able to offload that dead space to the city so they have a trail that they maintain with a nice pocket park then yea, I think they would be on board pretty quick.

I like Option C only if they actually connect the station to the community in ways that they can get moving to where they are trying to go.

a Arcade St. station would mean that Eastside Heritage Park would have TWO transit station on both ends (or just beyond the parks edge) of the park. That seems excessive.

[Vagueperson]

The point of that station all along was to capitalize on the future potential of a derelict strip mall. The potential for future developments at the Wells Street station is much, much less than the potential at the Arcade Street station. Would the development occur? I don't know. Probably not. But from a neighborhood perspective, Wells Street doesn't really seem any better than Arcade. From a system-wide perspective perhaps Arcade makes less sense.

If this is ostensibly all about pedestrians accessing the Arcade St bridge, why not make it pedestrian accessible? Seemed silly from the beginning to exclude pedestrians and cyclists from using the new bridge connection.

Arcade and Payne are close together, but if they were really well developed that would make a difference, and there is a large hill and uninviting wooded space between the two so they don't feel as close as you might think.

[Anondson]

I guess Maplewood might want to pull consent now.

https://www.startribune.com/maplewood-c ... 600214627/

Our transit planning is a joke.

[Tcmetro]

Thanks for sharing the article.

I think the issues that Maplewood has brought up can be addressed, but it seems like it might be too late and that the mayor's mind is already made up.

- Eminent domain of Birch Run Shopping Center. Obviously the city doesn't want to lose tax revenue. Seems like a strange design option given how overbuilt Beam Ave is anyways.

- Demolition of the existing Maplewood Mall park and ride ramp. This one makes no sense to me. The park and ride was built in 2004 and unless there's structural issues, it should be fine. My guess is that if it's not structural related, it's that the ridership modeling showed that a bigger parking ramp would improve the FTA score or something like that. I suppose we'll find out soon regardless.

- Ridership forecasts. This is one that's likely on everyone's mind. Projects like this are really designed for strong peak ridership with the hope that some people use it outside of rush hour. Construction is a controversial issue among voters and the city probably doesn't want to rock the boat if they don't envision the benefits of the line.

- Communication. This is a weird one to me, it always seems like the cities are well informed. My guess is that the issues that the city identified are actually those that came up as part of the reroute study. Likely staff are still refining the proposal and haven't even had the chance to discuss among the stakeholders. Of course that could just be an excuse for becoming unsupportive of the project.

I suppose it's not a done deal until the council votes, but given the geography of the city many of the council members may choose to go with the mayor's wishes.

[thespeedmccool]

Marylee Abrams is a DFLer too...

I swear, we won't make progress on transit until suburban DFLers get it through their heads that transit is good. Right now, they seem to begrudgingly support it to move the poors around, but panic the second anyone talks about upzoning or redoing a dreadful shopping mall.

Clearly, elected leaders aren't equipped to deal with these issues. The Met Council should be annually sending envoys to educate these clowns on how transit, urban development, and housing all work as one system. Right now, that really seems to be escaping even the savviest lawmakers.

[daveybabymsp]

I get that we can’t abandon large portions of the metro, and that people everywhere deserve transit access. But it feels like such a waste spending hundreds of millions on projects on cities that barely even want the transit, and who have terrible land use and road design around the station areas. Things like this make me wish we would just put all our transit money in places that actually support transit and want to make it work. Imagine how great transit could be in Minneapolis and Saint Paul if we were building our expensive “true” brt projects there instead of places like Woodbury, Maplewood, Vadnais Heights, and Burnsville.

[VacantLuxuries]

If Maplewood pulls out we should just abandon this one. We can still improve transit on Arcade and WB Avenue with a future aBRT line to serve people who depend on transit, but I just don't think we're going to see the kind of redevelopment and land use changes needed to justify spending $400 million on 'true' BRT versus ~$50 million on aBRT improvements.

Maybe one day they'll come around, but in the meantime there are other places we should focus our efforts on.

[Tom H.]

Does anybody know what the sunk-cost expenditures have been on this line life-to-date (planning, engineering, etc.) and who paid for them? Not that it should affect the decision, of course.

The article says that funding is split between Ramsey County and the FTA, so I don't think the Met Council actually would see any savings from the cancellation of this line. How likely do we think it is that Ramsey County would be willing to use some of that money to further east-side aBRT development?

[Bakken2016]

What the actual F*** Maplewood...

[Trademark]

If Maplewood pulls out we should just abandon this one. We can still improve transit on Arcade and WB Avenue with a future aBRT line to serve people who depend on transit, but I just don't think we're going to see the kind of redevelopment and land use changes needed to justify spending $400 million on 'true' BRT versus ~$50 million on aBRT improvements.

Maybe one day they'll come around, but in the meantime there are other places we should focus our efforts on.

I'm starting to agree that if Maplewood pulls out we need to seriously rethink this line. An extension of the Riverview Streetcar up 7th to Arcade or Phalen could be an alternative. With an additional N-S White Bear Avenue line.

Otherwise maybe an aBRT to the East Side, maybe Phalen to Maryland to White Bear to North St. Paul Rd to Geneva Rd to Century College.

[Tom H.]

I'm starting to agree that if Maplewood pulls out we need to seriously rethink this line. An extension of the Riverview Streetcar up 7th to Arcade or Phalen could be an alternative. With an additional N-S White Bear Avenue line.

This might also make the lack of Riverview interlining with the Green Line in DT St Paul a bit more palatable, as well. Might even result in some cost savings on Riverview if the routing to the back of Union Depot were abandoned in favor of through-lining further east.

[seanrichardryan]

An example of how Maplewood feels about transit-

[DanPatchToget]

What happened to the flexibility of buses that people are always talking about, and how BRT is more supportable than light rail? Seems like that's not the case. Well, the former is definitely true since they could just route the Purple Line back onto Beam Avenue, but perhaps the mayor was trying to find an excuse to withdraw support and that's the best she could come up with.

I know the Met Council wouldn't do this because politics, but whenever a suburb opposes transit they should cut all transit service to that suburb. Anyone who uses transit in that suburb can direct their frustration at the city council, and then maybe they'll learn the importance of transit and improving it. White Bear Lake and now possibly Maplewood with the Purple Line, Lake Elmo with the Gold Line, Lakeville with the Dan Patch Corridor, etc. are ones that come to mind. Redirect our limited resources to transit in places that actually support transit and are at least open-minded to transit improvements.

[MNdible]

I mean, it's also entirely possible that Metro Transit staff got way out over their skis and were developing plans to take a bunch of land without warning the city about it, right?

[DanPatchToget]

There's been plenty of advanced notice of possibly removing that strip mall for a busway. If it's so important to the city then fine, just route the buses onto Beam. It adds a few turns and the travel time goes up a minute or two, but not the end of the world.

[at40man]

Marylee Abrams is a DFLer too...

I swear, we won't make progress on transit until suburban DFLers get it through their heads that transit is good. Right now, they seem to begrudgingly support it to move the poors around, but panic the second anyone talks about upzoning or redoing a dreadful shopping mall.

Clearly, elected leaders aren't equipped to deal with these issues. The Met Council should be annually sending envoys to educate these clowns on how transit, urban development, and housing all work as one system. Right now, that really seems to be escaping even the savviest lawmakers.

I spoke with Mayor Marylee Abrams yesterday after I saw the news. She expressed to me that she is NOT against transit or the Purple Line. In fact, she's concerned about how other parts of the Metro have pulled far ahead of the east metro in terms of transit development. And she's well familiar that Maplewood need to be a more walkable, multi-modal city.

The issue is that she was taken aback by the Met Council not consulting the city about their plans for using eminent domain for Birch Run Station in order to acquire a right-of-way, and that they were looking to tear down the ramp that they had built in 2004 and rebuild. The city had developed a plan for the North End area around the mall, and nothing had been communicated with her or the city and she wants to see Purple Line plans integrated with the city's plan. I expressed my concern that this could be stymied entirely, but it sounds like this move is to light a fire under the Met Council's ass in order to get them to dialog with the city like they had originally promised.

She said she sees the Purple Line as a way to help draw development to the area, particularly with the vacant retail spaces and the possible redevelopment of the Myth property. She also indicated to me that part of the plan is to tear down the old Sears building and replace it with apartments and green space. Another opportunity to integrate Purple Line with adjacent development.

While I disagree with the "going nuclear" strategy to get dialog going, I do think her concerns are valid.

I am more concerned about Diane Longrie, who has been shaking her rattle and drumming up the NIMBYs and anti-transit boomers. She's made her entire platform trying to kill Purple Line and last week even sent out a mailer with utter falsehoods about Purple Line like "pollution, ugliness, empty buses, clear cut destruction of Bruce Vento Trail" etc. She really doesn't want it to exist at all, but if it must exist she'd rather it run down Hwy 61. I've pointed out to her that that flies in the face of walkability and being close to destinations, that it is the opposite of best practices around the world. She is under the impression that transit should only be on or adjacent to highways and pointed to the Gold Line. I pointed out to her that I was involved with Gold Line planning, and that Gold Line connects walkable destinations together and how Woodbury business leaders support it because it allows potential workers from St Paul to get to Woodbury far more easily. She doesn't care and wouldn't have hear any of it. Diane Longrie, if some of you don't remember, put the city of Maplewood into a tailspin under her leadership in the late 2000s with corrupt cronyism, resulting in many long-term city employees getting so fed up that they quit. The city nearly lost its insurance. Council meetings became disfunctional at best. I'd hate the city fall into the utter chaos she caused her last time around. Even years after her "leadership" she was still acting unethical: she was caught on camera stealing budget documents from City Hall, and had the temerity to lie about it. No matter how horrible she acts, she has ardent supporters who'd rather cut off the nose to spite the face. A walk down memory lane: https://web.archive.org/web/20121023163 ... maplewood/

[Tcmetro]

Valuable insights. Thanks for sharing.

[thespeedmccool]

It's good to hear Mayor Abrams still supports the Purple Line, but a mayor "going nuclear" influences the narrative in such a negative way. Really pretty cynical politics.

I'll also point out that I highly doubt Ramsey County was going to just go ahead with a new plan without discussing it with Maplewood first, but I think Mayor Abrams probably knows that. She just didn't want Ramsey County to show up to a Maplewood City Council meeting and present it to the public for the first time without the council having made a statement. Seems like a purely political move on Abrams's part to get out in front of a potential political issue before her reelection vote (I am pretty sure she'll win, but we definitely have to watch out that a Republican City Council majority wins out. Vote for endorsed DFLers Abrams, Knutson, and Lee!)