Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[mister.shoes]

Would some sort of "Hey, MPLS. A $200MM tunnel through parkland is stupid. Could we interest you in $200MM toward a streetcar line down Hennepin in addition to the streetcars on Nicollet and the Greenway if you'll let us build through Kenilworth at grade instead?" work?

Or, "Could we interest you in $200MM toward unf*cking the Triangle instead?"

I understand that's not really how that money works, but come on. This Kenilworth tunnel is stupid and everyone knows it.

[ECtransplant]

The inherent problem with routing SW LRT through South Minneapolis is the downtown approach. Any alignment; Hennepin, Lyndale, or Nicollet, has to manage a I-94 crossing and has to operate along busy north-south streets.

So build a tunnel. If we can build one in the middle of parkland surrounded by lakes, we should be able to build one where there is actually a high density of business and residents to use the tunnel

[David Greene]

The inherent problem with routing SW LRT through South Minneapolis is the downtown approach. Any alignment; Hennepin, Lyndale, or Nicollet, has to manage a I-94 crossing and has to operate along busy north-south streets.

So build a tunnel. If we can build one in the middle of parkland surrounded by lakes, we should be able to build one where there is actually a high density of business and residents to use the tunnel

And relocate utilities, and design it to bear the weight of the freeway, and relocate heavy traffic during construction, and make sure the tunnel won't disturb some very old buildings, and ...

Assuming that a tunnel under Hennepin will cost the same as a Kenilworth tunnel is beyond wrong.

[VAStationDude]

The UrbanMSP magic wand can overcome restarting the federal funding process and tunneling under 94. If only the politicians would listen to ECtransplant and Mattaudio. Please someone point Peter McLaughlin towards this thread.

[ECtransplant]

I'm pretty sure there's also some engineering challenges associated with a tunnel under lakes/channels. And when we're talking about a project that should be around for over a century, waiting maybe a decade to do it optimally seems worth it.

[talindsay]

I'm pretty sure there's also some engineering challenges associated with a tunnel under lakes/channels. And when we're talking about a project that should be around for over a century, waiting maybe a decade to do it optimally seems worth it.

I completely agree with the sentiment, and if that were actually the choice we got to make I'd completely support making it. But it's a false choice: choosing to delay this now in no way guarantees a more optimal outcome in the future. The politicians have demonstrated an unwillingness to reopen those parts of the scoping, and that indicates that the project will either stay in the Kenilworth corridor or collapse completely. If it collapses completely, there's no reason to believe that a restarted process later (much later likely, since projects with a history of issues tend to get severely de-prioritized) would somehow bring together a group more willing to accept the higher cost and greater complexity of routing the line through the city.

The real question at this point is, which of the two actually-available options (building the line in Kenilworth with tunnels, or giving up on the project for a while) is likely to be more damaging to transit development in the Twin Cities? I speculate that the line with tunnels, while perhaps a mistake, at this point would be relatively successful if built; once the trains started running much of the pain of this process would be forgotten, and the wealthy southwest suburbs would have a more positive attitude about transit. An opportunity would be missed and a lot of money would be spent poorly, but the political will to build additional lines would survive, and a model - poor though it may be - for building consensus around construction would survive as well. If the project collapsed at this point we would not spend the money on this poor routing, which is good, but everything else about that outcome is negative; and it would cast a long shadow over transit improvement for decades. Given that, I guess that at the moment I hope the line gets built in this (admittedly ridiculous) form than we allow transit planning to collapse the way it would after a project failure of this magnitude.

[David Greene]

I'm pretty sure there's also some engineering challenges associated with a tunnel under lakes/channels.

Given that the channel and at least one of the lakes were engineered into existence over 100 years ago, I'm pretty sure engineers with modern techniques available can design a tunnel to work with them and I'll bet dollars to donuts it's a helluva lot cheaper than tunneling under Hennepin and I-94.

[Viktor Vaughn]

It's pretty hard to swallow the 'reality' that spending hundreds of millions on an admittedly ridiculous tunnels is the right thing to do for transit in the region. We can build massive flyovers to hop a few interstates in the suburbs, build a viaduct thousands of feet long to traverse wetlands, and tunnel under a railroad corridor as a futile attempt to woo rich political donors -- but tunneling in the city is out of the question? F**k that. At a certain point you have to stand up to political absurdities and live with the consequences. Express buses would probably serve the SW suburbs better anyway, and aBRT could improve transit for a lot more mpls residents for a lot less money than Southwest. Hopkins is due for a metro station, so that'd be a shame...

But $1,600,000,000 is too much to spend on a flawed line produced by a broken process just to save face and keep the rapid transit ball rolling in the TC. Especially when another billion dollar line that makes the exact same mistakes is slated to immediately follow SW. We must do better.

[trkaiser]

Great post, and I agree. What can we do in this regard? We could build a trojan horse to infiltrate the Met Council... That's just my first idea. I may have others.

[Viktor Vaughn]

What can we do in this regard?

What, you mean besides repeatedly bitching about it on the internet? Or say eff it and retreat to the northwoods?

Hmmm... I wrote a poem about it and nobody cared. I guess the only way to change this for the better is to offer a viable solution and get Minneapolis officials to use their influence to push it on the other project partners. A route change is only remotely possible because it could be a way to break the current stalemate.

A bit of political theater (trojan horse?) could highlight the situational absurdity and propose another solution. Keep brainstorming.

[mister.shoes]

We can build massive flyovers to hop a few interstates in the suburbs, build a viaduct thousands of feet long to traverse wetlands, and tunnel under a railroad corridor as a futile attempt to woo rich political donors -- but tunneling in the city is out of the question?

This needs to be on billboards all across the state.

[Chef]

It's pretty hard to swallow the 'reality' that spending hundreds of millions on an admittedly ridiculous tunnels is the right thing to do for transit in the region. We can build massive flyovers to hop a few interstates in the suburbs, build a viaduct thousands of feet long to traverse wetlands, and tunnel under a railroad corridor as a futile attempt to woo rich political donors -- but tunneling in the city is out of the question? F**k that. At a certain point you have to stand up to political absurdities and live with the consequences. Express buses would probably serve the SW suburbs better anyway, and aBRT could improve transit for a lot more mpls residents for a lot less money than Southwest. Hopkins is due for a metro station, so that'd be a shame...

But $1,600,000,000 is too much to spend on a flawed line produced by a broken process just to save face and keep the rapid transit ball rolling in the TC. Especially when another billion dollar line that makes the exact same mistakes is slated to immediately follow SW. We must do better.

This!

This is the most pertinent point in this entire thread, and in the Bottineau one as well. We are on the precipice of a giant mistake. People are defending it because they want trains so badly that they are willing to accept bad transit to get them, even though we will then be stuck with that bad transit for a century or longer.

[MNdible]

Holy melodrama. SW as currently proposed is not some tragedy, nor is it "bad" transit.

It's also not perfect.

But it will help tens of thousands of people get around the metro more easily every single day. And it will change development patterns all along the line for the better.

[trkaiser]

Holy melodrama. SW as currently proposed is not some tragedy, nor is it "bad" transit.

It's also not perfect.

But it will help tens of thousands of people get around the metro more easily every single day. And it will change development patterns all along the line for the better.

Your argument holds less water with a $1.6 billion price tag, though...

[Chef]

If I remember correctly the original reason we were told we couldn't have LRT running through Uptown and Whittier is that it would cost too much and the Kenilworth alignment was cheaper. I believe it was $1.25 billion vs $1.5 billion...

[TroyGBiv]

This process is complex - but how could it not? dozens of communities, dozens of government agencies, city county state and federal funding sources… We're building pyramids not playgrounds… and think of how many people weigh in on a simple swing set and sand box. If we had less community involvement (to get 'er done quicker) then everyone would be up in arms. If we have more we might be creating too many opportunities to not get anything done, ever… We blow billions on roads that need millions of dollars of annual upkeep and still look like a crappy mine-field after only 5 or 10 years. Density Development Transit - all create growing pains but are important investments if we are going to stay competitive and increase the quality of living for all of us. Wasn't meant to sound like a soapbox - but we just have to get real. Change is disruption and people are never very comfortable with that… ever.

[Archiapolis]

It's pretty hard to swallow the 'reality' that spending hundreds of millions on an admittedly ridiculous tunnels is the right thing to do for transit in the region. We can build massive flyovers to hop a few interstates in the suburbs, build a viaduct thousands of feet long to traverse wetlands, and tunnel under a railroad corridor as a futile attempt to woo rich political donors -- but tunneling in the city is out of the question? F**k that. At a certain point you have to stand up to political absurdities and live with the consequences. Express buses would probably serve the SW suburbs better anyway, and aBRT could improve transit for a lot more mpls residents for a lot less money than Southwest. Hopkins is due for a metro station, so that'd be a shame...

But $1,600,000,000 is too much to spend on a flawed line produced by a broken process just to save face and keep the rapid transit ball rolling in the TC. Especially when another billion dollar line that makes the exact same mistakes is slated to immediately follow SW. We must do better.

This!

This is the most pertinent point in this entire thread, and in the Bottineau one as well. We are on the precipice of a giant mistake. People are defending it because they want trains so badly that they are willing to accept bad transit to get them, even though we will then be stuck with that bad transit for a century or longer.

I want to be on this team.

Also, I brought up a while back that people should be fired over this and DG scoffed at that because the "scope" had changed. I have noted that I am late to this discussion and I'd welcome a link to any information that can pinpoint the exact moment that this became an untenable situation but my reply to the notion that we can't hold anyone accountable is this: Any "feasibility study" that didn't explore the design properly is a dereliction of duty. When the "scope change" was suggested, it should have been *immediately* flagged as impossible without massive change to the design resulting in a fatal flaw. This should have happened in the very early stages of design and obviously key information was missed, overlooked or done improperly.

I obviously don't agree with those saying that we should just accept this $1.6B line, with all of its flaws just to save face.

With that said, I understand the hand-wringing over what the failure of this line will do to transit in this city and that is why people need to be removed from office. Confidence in the competence of decision-making and design needs to be restored because I wouldn't trust these people to design my flowerbeds. It is the definition of insanity to expect a different outcome with all of the same inputs.

[eazydp]

Keith Ellison wants us to get this s*** done.

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voice ... e-together

[twincitizen]

Because construction jobs. And because ridership at 2 Minneapolis stations (Penn & Van White) that combined will have less ridership than the weakest suburban station (City West).

Try harder Keith.

[Tcmetro]

http://www.startribune.com/local/minnea ... 14341.html