Green Line / Central Corridor construction thread (archive)

[grant1simons2]

Hey it's Southwest Transit! That's my bus!

[Tom H.]

I just saw that bus backup a few minutes ago...

Anyway, it seems like they may finally be running at revenue frequencies for final testing. I've seen about half a dozen two-car trains today, which is a lot considering the short walking trips I usually take along Washington.

[FISHMANPET]

Yeah, as the light finally changed for the train, another train came in the other direction. And I saw one this morning by Burger King. Plus, these are two car trains. I might have to pack a lunch some day and sit in the amenity walkway with my camera and snag some shots.

[grant1simons2]

Please do. I love seeing the trains since I'm not up where they run a lot.

[nate]

Saw a 2-car train pull out of central station today, only to immediately wait for the light at 6th and Cedar. The 2 car train seemed to take up more than 2/3rds of the block between 5th and 6th. I wonder if a three car train would not fit on that block. (Cedar between 5th and 6th)

[bptenor]

I saw a 3 car train traveling the length of 4th St in downtown St Paul a little over a week ago. It happened to stop outside tpt which didn't cause any problems.

[Silophant]

Speaking of 3-car trains not fitting places, here's a 2-car train stopped at Walnut and not quite clearing the midblock crosswalk in front of the hotel. Hope they've got stuff figured out so that trains never ever have to stop at the midblock crossings, or there's going to be some pretty sad drivers not able to cross Washington at Harvard and Walnut, especially when 3-car trains start running.

On a happier note, though, if the Orange Line suddenly gets changed to LRT instead of BRT, Metro Transit is ready!

[eazydp]

Saw the fruits of over-signalization today when I was biking East on the WATM. A pedestrian walked head-down, against a light in front of a train with it's horn blaring, then into me and another on coming bike, finally realizing his mistake and switching to a light jog for the last 5-6 feet. Scary to think what could happen.

To be entirely fair, at least one pedestrian was killed on Washington Ave back when I was a student and Washington was basically a truck highway... No matter what, this is safer without cars, but it's not perfect.

[IllogicalJake]

Saw the fruits of overly-signalization today when I was biking East on the WATM. A pedestrian walked head-down, against a light in front of a train with it's horn blaring, then into me and another on coming bike, finally realizing his mistake and switching to a light job for the last 5-6 feet. Scary to think what could happen.

To be entirely fair, at least one pedestrian was killed on Washington Ave back when I was a student and Washington was basically a truck highway... No matter what, this is safer without cars, but it's not perfect.

I'm amazed, constantly amazed, by how stupid and unaware some people are around both trains and cars. It's sad how often these trains have to honk their horns at people that stop and stand right on the tracks!

[Chava]

Hey all!

I am not sure how it usually works, but I noticed that the LRT stops at it's own railroad crossings. I've seen this happen several times. Is this the way it's supposed to function?

I was going eastbound on Washington ave and noticed the gates come down just before the West Bank station. This is where the LRT crosses the road to the center of Washington. The gates came down, I looked west back up the hill to look for the LRT. No sign of it. It finally mades it's way down the hill eastbound toward West Bank station and then stopped right before it crossed the road, railroad gates down and all. It blew it's horn/bell and then proceeded through again. Is this how it will continue to be? Is this temporary until they're out of testing phase? I'm accustomed to watching trains just truck on through when gates are down.

I figured the folks here have some good insight as to LRT standard operating procedure.

[mulad]

Seems strange, but they may still be in the process of tweaking something there. I know that most of the testing has stopped somewhere on/near campus, with few trains continuing into downtown Minneapolis. There may be some fussiness with the way the gate arm gets triggered while they're in the testing phase -- it may have been triggered too early for one reason or another.

Grade crossings like that also have a status light shining down the railway which tells the train operator whether it's working properly (the gate arm is detected in the down position and doesn't seem to be broken). If there was something wrong with that, then it would make sense for the operator to stop short to take a look at the situation, possibly asking the control center whether to proceed or not. Or maybe there was some training going on and the operator was being quizzed about something along those lines.

Or maybe the operator got too accustomed to stopping at streets because of the stoplights at virtually all others -- I caught myself doing something like that in my car after I drove down University Avenue after lunch. On my way home I hit a 4-way stop (sign) intersection and was sitting there waiting for some imaginary stoplight to turn green...

Anyway, I was kind of pleased to find that the train was just as fast as driving down University for me, though there is some construction slowing down traffic. I started out at Marion Street in Saint Paul as a train came up just beside me. It usually caught up to me as I was waiting at stop lights, and then got a good lead on me at Snelling where I got stuck waiting through two light cycles. I caught up to it again around MN-280 and then beat it to 29th Street (Prospect Park station). After that point, it's hard to drive a comparable route. I took 29th to 4th, then zig-zagged my way down 25th, University, Oak, and Washington, where the train caught up to me again at Walnut. After that point I didn't see it again -- I presume it got way ahead of me as I looped down along Walnut, Delaware, Harvard, East River Parkway, Arlington, and Pleasant to get back to Washington...

[FISHMANPET]

I once stopped at the stop sign at 3rd St and Norm Mcgraw Pl (going into downtown via the old Washington Ave) thinking it was a stop light, and a cop behind me honked to get me to move. Whoops.

[twinkess]

Noticed that there is now an announcement at the warehouse district station when a train arrives. "A blue line train to downtown Minneapolis is now arriving on platform two."

[FranklinAveFixation]

Noticed that there is now an announcement at the warehouse district station when a train arrives. "A blue line train to downtown Minneapolis is now arriving on platform two."

noticed that as well last night, at the lake st. station. then when the southbound/MOA train pulled in they made the exact same announcement!

[kellonathan]

Apparently people are still not used to the trains running on University Ave.

There was a small crash with a testing train and a truck on University & Pascal around 12:15pm today. The truck was just sitting on tracks waiting for the signal(?!) while the LRV was approaching super-slowly. Even though it's called a 'light rail', they are pretty heavy and it takes quite of a distance to stop!

Wonder how often this kind of incidents are happening during the test, or will happen after the line actually opens...

[Chava]

I saw a few tweets about that and was wondering what that was. They seem to knock Metro Transit. Not sure why you would sit on tracks whether they were LRT, heavy rail, or freight!

[ECtransplant]

This why we can't have nice things

[mulad]

Semi truck? Delivery truck? Pickup truck?

[Chava]

Pickup. Wasn't sure how this forum handles html, so here is the link: https://twitter.com/ryanktaco/status/465185750842347520

[web]

so soon......sheesh are people stupid or what?