Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

[EOst]

Which unsung alternative did you have in mind?

[VAStationDude]

Mythical cheap tunnels.

[mattaudio]

"Ah yes, an alternatives analysis is a thorough study of the entire universe of alternatives." Some of you folks are so naive. And it has nothing to do with tunnels.

[mulad]

The "universe of alternatives" approach is so backward -- it assumes that you know everything at the beginning of a planning process, but that's never the case.

[EOst]

"Ah yes, an alternatives analysis is a thorough study of the entire universe of alternatives." Some of you folks are so naive. And it has nothing to do with tunnels.

Okay, so, what's the unstudied route?

[David Greene]

Well, one that the neighborhood preferred would have split north-south operation on Queen/Oliver. That would have saved homes while getting deeper into the neighborhood. It wasn't really considered due to cost.

But I still don't see how Joe had much to do with that. He has to work with the numbers he has.

I dunno, I like Joe. He's never come across as an arrogant stick-in-the-mud to me. *shrug*

[David Greene]

Joe Gladke's ignorance.

So why didn't you educate him?

[David Greene]

The "universe of alternatives" approach is so backward -- it assumes that you know everything at the beginning of a planning process, but that's never the case.

I really agree with this. What's a better approach?

[FISHMANPET]

Clearly the first step should be to start a thread here on UrbanMSP and let us hash it out for a year or so.

[David Greene]

Okay, so, what's the unstudied route?

I also don't know how seriously a line all the way down Broadway was considered. Although if (a big if) a Broadway streetcar happens, that's probably a better outcome anyway.

[mattaudio]

Though, since tunneling was brought up, and is within the comprehensive universe of alternatives of which nearly all were ignored, here's some good background on people pretending to understand geology using geology as a reason not to tunnel when responding to someone who knows more about geology than them. https://gettingaroundmpls.wordpress.com ... h-part-ii/

[VAStationDude]

Only us naive people refuse to believe tunneling under an airport and excavting a single deep station adjacent to a parking ramp are at all comparable to tunneling through north Minneapolis.

[woofner]

Only us naive people refuse to believe tunneling under an airport and excavting a single deep station adjacent to a parking ramp are at all comparable to tunneling through north Minneapolis.

What is different about tunneling under an airport vs tunneling under a low density residential area? Except that the airport has a surface use that is more expensive to disrupt.

Which unsung alternative did you have in mind?

Given that there was an alternative that would have torn down dozens of houses along Penn, how about an alternative that widens the West Broadway ROW? How about an alternative that doesn't skirt the North Loop? How about a BRT alternative that isn't encumbered by padded run times? Those are just a few offhand ideas.

Joe Gladke's ignorance.

So why didn't you educate him?

Really? This is your question? What exactly do you want me to say to this? The honest answer is that I felt so dejected by his immediate dismissal when I brought up tunneling that I not only felt it pointless to respond, I went into a deep depression. I did write several responses over the course of a few months, but never felt courageous enough to send them. I went to several meetings for Bottineau, but never saw him in person. Are you satisfied now, David Greene?

[VAStationDude]

An airport's surface use would certainly be morecostly to disrupt than an urban neighborhood, but, given our geology, this is not a concern. Neither are built on land reclaimed from a bay or some other nasty soil. North Minneapolis tunneling and station building would be highly disruptive and expensive relative to the airport. Portals and stations would have to be excavated in populated areas. This means expensive impact studies, utility relocation, property acquisition and construction impact mitigation that just doesn't happen at an airport.

You're grossly under estimating tunneling costs. Your blog post linked by mattaudio lists a laughable ~$60 million/km cost for underground central corridor light rail. Sorry but you're being naive.

[mulad]

Only us naive people refuse to believe tunneling under an airport and excavting a single deep station adjacent to a parking ramp are at all comparable to tunneling through north Minneapolis.

What is different about tunneling under an airport vs tunneling under a low density residential area? Except that the airport has a surface use that is more expensive to disrupt.

I doubt any of us on this board have enough information to know for sure -- we can assume that there's a denser network of utility lines through the city neighborhood than the airport, but there is definitely stuff underground at the airport too -- probably a lot of it at a bigger scale but arranged in different ways. Does the stuff in the neighborhood go deep enough to affect a deep-bore tunnel? Would cut-and-cover still be more cost-effective, even if it did mean digging down through water lines, sewer lines, and gas lines (some of which might be old enough to need replacement anyway)?

They dug down pretty deep to work on everything below the Central Corridor -- I for one don't think it's all that crazy to think about going down a bit wider and deeper to make a transit tunnel rather than just a space for utilities.

...
The honest answer is that I felt so dejected by his immediate dismissal when I brought up tunneling that I not only felt it pointless to respond, I went into a deep depression. I did write several responses over the course of a few months, but never felt courageous enough to send them. I went to several meetings for Bottineau, but never saw him in person. Are you satisfied now, David Greene?

Reminds me of how things went for me after politics swooped in to stop efforts at intercity rail in Wisconsin. Too much of the decisionmaking in these situations gets driven by whoever yells the loudest, and that tends to mean cutting back efforts at public transportation because it's seen as "wasteful" by the anti-tax crowd, even though the projects are often the more cost-effective way to get people to move around. Folks are just too afraid of the costs (they manage to turn a blind eye to highway spending, though state DOTs tend to do a masterful job of slicing big projects up into relatively bite-sized pieces, so the spending is often a lot less obvious).

[David Greene]

So why didn't you educate him?

Really? This is your question? What exactly do you want me to say to this? The honest answer is that I felt so dejected by his immediate dismissal when I brought up tunneling that I not only felt it pointless to respond, I went into a deep depression. I did write several responses over the course of a few months, but never felt courageous enough to send them. I went to several meetings for Bottineau, but never saw him in person. Are you satisfied now, David Greene?

I'm not the one needing satisfying. It's not fair to blame Joe for decisions when you didn't take any action to get what you want. Maybe action wouldn't have helped but I'm tired of the victim mentality on this, SWLRT and basically every other transit project people complain about.

[FISHMANPET]

I'd like to live in a world where building sane transit isn't an adversarial processes going against thoughtless bureaucrats.

But hey maybe that's just me.

[David Greene]

I'd like to live in a world where building sane transit isn't an adversarial processes going against thoughtless bureaucrats.

IME there aren't thoughtless bureaucrats, but regardless, we don't live in your ideal world. Take action to create it and in the meantime, fight. Everything else is wasted effort.

[FISHMANPET]

Well it's not like we live in a world where you can just take the project lead to coffee and explain everything wrong with not only what he's doing now, but everything he's done for his entire career, and then have him do a sudden 180 and champion a much improved project.

[David Greene]

Well it's not like we live in a world where you can just take the project lead to coffee and explain everything wrong with not only what he's doing now, but everything he's done for his entire career, and then have him do a sudden 180 and champion a much improved project.

No, that's not how you do things. You build relationships with the people in power and over time you influence them. You introduce them to new ideas. You debate them. You *listen* to what they have to say. You build trust and mutual respect. You discover your common self-interests. Then you decide together what you can do.

You don't go around calling people idiots.

This kind of work takes lots of patience and perseverance.