Nicollet-Central Streetcar

[MNdible]

And one thing that I never see anyone mention about rail is that IT'S MORE RELIABLE IN THE WINTER. Seriously, in a place where it can snow for almost six months out of the year, why doesn't anyone ever bring this up?

We're not talking about LRT in its own ROW.

How much of a bus's winter unreliability is actually the result of a bus's inability to maneuver through the snow, and how much is a result of it being stuck in traffic? I'd wager it's 99% the latter, and since streetcars are in traffic too, they'll be no better or worse. Except when they're worse, because the car ahead of it gets stuck and the streetcar is forced to sit there until somebody digs the car out.

[VAStationDude]

Buses aren't the same as street cars they're better. The Portland street car is slow and prone to disruption (check their Twitter account). For the privilege of having a slow, every eighteen minute tinker toy, taxpayers had to fork over millions and millions for construction and vehicles. This idea is so incredibly hair brained. I don't have the numbers in front of me but American street cars cost about fifty million per mile. For the $150 million our three mile long would cost we could have 30+ mile Fremont/Chicago, Nicollet, Penn and Snelling abrt.

[talindsay]

I agree, though, that most cities (especially large ones) with good transit systems eventually build a rail network to meet the demand for transit that a good bus system creates. But they don't build streetcars. All the French and Spanish cities that have upgraded to rail have done so with light rail or metro systems. I'm not aware of a modern streetcar system being built from scratch except for in Portland and Seattle (and Tucson I guess).

I think there's a terminology problem here: we call anything running in dedicated ROW that isn't heavy rail "light rail", and anything running on tracks in a street "streetcar"; in Europe both are typically called trams, and there are new tramways being constructed in mixed traffic all over second-tier French cities. True, the vehicles they're running on them are more similar to our "light rail" standards rather than our "streetcar" standards, but I suspect that the origin of your complaint here is the mixed ROW nature; and there are many instances of street-running trams being installed in European cities recently, such as Lyon and Grenoble in France, and of course Brussels in Belgium. Just go to the home pages for Bombardier, Alstom, and Siemens, and look at their use examples for their "light rail" cars; you'll see that many of them are running as trams in mixed traffic for at least part of their routes.

[lordmoke]

In winter, vehicles typically get stuck on the sides of the road, not middle. Furthermore, the frequency, size, and low ground clearance of streetcars would likely minimize the amount of snow on the area of the street over which it runs, making it less likely that autos in front of the trams would be encumbered enough to hinder it significantly. (I can't speak to any formal data or proof on this, just my own conclusions.)

On a different note, one of the primary goals of mass transit (in addition to providing a mode of transportation to those who do not own their own transportation) is to alleviate congestion by providing an alternative method of transit to those who would otherwise drive. It has been shown through a number of studies that no kind of bus transit will cause a statistically significant number of motorists to choose bus over their own cars. However, rail options have been shown to draw 30-40 percent of their riders from the pool of those who would otherwise drive, as compared to around 5 percent for rapid bus.

Published paper with links to further references:
http://www.claverton-energy.com/sustain ... ail-2.html

[VAStationDude]

I agree, though, that most cities (especially large ones) with good transit systems eventually build a rail network to meet the demand for transit that a good bus system creates. But they don't build streetcars. All the French and Spanish cities that have upgraded to rail have done so with light rail or metro systems. I'm not aware of a modern streetcar system being built from scratch except for in Portland and Seattle (and Tucson I guess).

I think there's a terminology problem here: we call anything running in dedicated ROW that isn't heavy rail "light rail", and anything running on tracks in a street "streetcar"; in Europe both are typically called trams, and there are new tramways being constructed in mixed traffic all over second-tier French cities. True, the vehicles they're running on them are more similar to our "light rail" standards rather than our "streetcar" standards, but I suspect that the origin of your complaint here is the mixed ROW nature; and there are many instances of street-running trams being installed in European cities recently, such as Lyon and Grenoble in France, and of course Brussels in Belgium. Just go to the home pages for Bombardier, Alstom, and Siemens, and look at their use examples for their "light rail" cars; you'll see that many of them are running as trams in mixed traffic for at least part of their routes.

French trams are not comparable to American streetcars. First, from what I can tell, there really isn't a lot of street running sections in the cities you cited.

Take Grenoble for example: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=grenoble ... s&t=k&z=19

It took me a few minutes to find shared ROW and what I did locate was a very short stretch where turning motor vehicle traffic couldn't be accompanied without an uncontrolled car/rail intersection. I used the Strasbourg tram (and bus!) system back in 2011 and do recall short shared areas but never in any tram boarding areas, unlike the proposed Minneapolis tinker toy.

French trams, since they're actually built to be effective transportation, are much higher capacity than their American streetcar cousins. Grenoble's Alstrom Citadis sets are 43m long compared to just 20m for Portland's Skodas. French trams also possess a feature lacking in the American streetcar - Speed. Since they operated largely on exclusive guideways, they're actually faster than the buses they replace. My experience in Strasbourg and Cologne is that trams are much faster than buses here in Minneapolis. I don't know about anyone else on the board but when I ride the 18 downtown from Lake Street I find do not myself thinking "This is a great ride but could we slow it down a little." For some reason (some) planners are pushing that very concept at the cost of $150million.

Street cars will certainly not clear snow for other vehicles. Standard track gauge is 4ft 8.5 inches. Even small cars like the Chevrolet Cruise nearly six feet wide. The street cars will certainly do a good job displacing snow on the tracks and pushing it into vehicle lanes. The embedded track downtown Minneapolis has a healthy amount of snow adjacent. Of course some of that is pushed there by cars but some of it is coming from the LRT trains.

[Chauncey87]

I love trains, as are most of the rest of those on this board I think. However I just feel like since we got rid of the street cars over fifty years ago what sence does it make to bring them back? Reading all the pros it seems to be act like a bus only with out the abilty to switch lanes. Really if the emissions from the buses are the issue why don't we push for trolley buses? Street cars with traffic = bus in the same traffic. Now if giving the train its own ROW then that is a different story.
If anybody wants to push for a street car then why don't we push to have the Harriet trolley expanded to Tin Fish? Some ROW issues might happen, but how cool would it be to have a simple two stop trolley line between Lake Calhoun and Lake Harriet?

[talindsay]

I used the Strasbourg tram (and bus!) system back in 2011 and do recall short shared areas but never in any tram boarding areas, unlike the proposed Minneapolis tinker toy.

You bring up a lot of good points and I appreciate your insights even though we clearly see these issues in different ways. However, being intentionally derisive in your language doesn't support useful discussion. Rational arguments against something you disagree with demonstrate your knowledge and background (such as having actually used the Strasbourg tram) but referring to the very serious and real effort to evaluate a major north-south corridor in the Cities as "the proposed Minneapolis tinker toy" does a tremendous disservice to your point. I remember the fanatical outer-metro anti-transit folks in 2002 referring to "blight rail". I'm sure they thought it was clever but it didn't help their point.

[UptownSport]

I recall there were those on Minnescraper who weren't in favor of streetcar lines, and I certainly can understand hesitance or even ambivalence about streetcar, but the overall negative tone here surprises me.

Perhaps there's less posters here but the ones who do post just happen to not be tram/trolley/streetcar fans, and I'd ask you don't take my comments too seriously, if we ever were to disagree!!!!

[Nick]

I'm incredibly surprised by the heavy anti-streetcar tone of this thread. I recall there were those on Minnescraper who weren't in favor of streetcar lines, and I certainly can understand hesitance or even ambivalence about streetcar, but the overall negative tone here surprises me.

Personally, I've changed my mind about it a bit in the past six months or so. Previously I was all onboard with it (with some reservations about the worth of the "starter segments") but I've heard enough convincing arguments to lean slightly against at this point.

[mplsjaromir]

I think we need to call streetcars what they are, development vehicles, no pun intended. Do I think that the city is wanting to build a streetcar to maximize the investment in getting people from point A to point B? Absolutely not. That is the Metro Transit's job. Minneapolis Streetcars are a development/vanity project. Speaking of vanity projects such as the Vikings Stadium, Target Center renovations, Block E, Peavy Plaza makeover, streetcars are the most useful and equitable I have seen. I wish cities stopped with vanity projects and focused their limited resources in the areas that would make the most impact. If it wasn't for vanity projects politicians would likely be just corrupt.

The streetcar pessimists and optimists on this board could both be potentialy correct on how things could shake out.

Streetcars could end up like Northstar, a politically watered down, half finished, infrequent, line without destinations that puts a bad taste in everyone's mouth and gives anti-transit types more ammunition. Worst care scenario, its funding would preclude any aBRT upgrades around the city and would have no impact on land use or commuter mode share.

Streetcars could also end up like Hiawatha, exceeding its projected ridership, joining pedestrian destination rich areas, providing better service than what had been in the corridor, being a spine for an overall more healthy transit system and convincing surubanites that transit is not too scary. Best case scenario streetcars entice private developers and residents to truly change the feel of the corridors and make the finely grained nature even better and more urban.

I've tried to find more details on the plans to find which outcome is more likely but I haven't found anything pertaining to headways, vehicle procurement or the city's plan for rezoning. Again if you care about speed and making transit complete with cars in that regard, streetcars are terrible. If you want to make corridors more urban and dense streetcars could help, and do a much better job than just curb bumpouts and pre-paid boarding. Its unfortunate that the city is not looking at making the everyday transit commuters life better today, but what can you do?

[minntransplant]

Couldn't they incorporate signal priority into a streetcar line? Has this been done in other peer cities?

[talindsay]

I do hope they try to give these lines their own space whenever it's feasible to do so. Obviously the Nicollet-Central line would be essentially exclusive-running from the River to 12th along the Mall, but a carefully-planned river crossing and northeast routing could allow exclusive running in those spaces as well. If it ran in mixed traffic from 94 south to Lake, and on Central north of Hennepin (since both of those segments are relatively narrow), but in exclusive center lanes between those two points, it could still provide a pretty good time.

[trkaiser]

Couldn't they incorporate signal priority into a streetcar line? Has this been done in other peer cities?

They did mention signal priority for this. The Anna Flintoft said they were considering earlier green lights for the streetcars, or longer green lights to give it a boost over regular traffic - but not doing anything like Hiawatha. Probably wise to have said that last part...

[UptownSport]

Couldn't they incorporate signal priority into a streetcar line? Has this been done in other peer cities?

They did mention signal priority for this. The Anna Flintoft said they were considering earlier green lights for the streetcars, or longer green lights to give it a boost over regular traffic - but not doing anything like Hiawatha. Probably wise to have said that last part...

Could they incorporate signal priority into (existing) bus lines?
I'm all for premium rail services, but what else could be done now to improve existing lines?

[talindsay]

Yes they could; I believe that's one of the concepts in the Marq2 project, though I don't know if it was actually implemented. Signal priority for buses is a little trickier because it requires wireless communication linked with location services (whereas track communication and location is simpler), but obviously the basic method is no different from the pre-emption used by emergency vehicles. In general I'd like to see signal priority more widely used.

[LRV Op Dude]

by UptownSport
Could they incorporate signal priority into (existing) bus lines?
I'm all for premium rail services, but what else could be done now to improve existing lines?

Transit Signal Priority technology is used on buses traveling on Central Avenue. They will also use this on University for the Green Line.

[UptownSport]

Metro Transit
Transit Signal Priority

Metro Transit buses traveling on Central Avenue use Transit Signal Priority technology to communicate with traffic signals to stay on schedule.

Unlike communications between traffic signals and emergency vehicles such as ambulances and police, buses can't preempt a signal to change it from red to green. However, buses that are slightly behind schedule are able to communicate with traffic signals to request maintaining a green light for a few extra moments as they approach an intersection. The signal controller can grant the extension of the green light if it will not disrupt overall traffic conditions.

Thanks, that seems reasonable.

With absolute sincerity, thanks to everyone who made the VA LRT station possible, for me it's like limo service- For severely disabled Veterans it gives them freedom of movement- I'm so happy to see the ease of entry/exit the train/station give them. I think this is appropriate in this thread.

[helsinki]

There was a great contribution to Streets.mn recently entitled "I Love Some of Our Streets", the basic premise of which was that while there are many great things about the Twin Cities, the streets are not amongst them. If we look at the streets as a newcomer might (i.e. not assuming that things just "are the way they are" but rather that the city looks the way it does because the inhabitants want it to look that way) then we have to admit that our streets kind of suck.

And I'm not talking about the beautiful, quiet street with no traffic, a cathedral-like tree canopy, no driveways because the garage faces the alley, and a stately line of pre World War I homes. Rather, I mean the the main commercial streets (Hennepin, Lyndale, Nicollet, Chicago, and Lake Streets in South Minneapolis, to name the most important).

Jeff Speck (Suburban Nation, Walkable City) says that streets should be (1) useful, (2) safe, (3) comfortable, and (4) interesting. In his interview on the Strong Towns podcast last week, he also made the point that cities should narrowly focus their resources on making walkable places. Sprinkling improvements everywhere leads to decorative banners and other nonsense; it's a better investment to truly make a walkable environment in one or two places.

A tram connecting Nicollet Avenue south of Lake, Eat Street, Nicollet Mall, Nicollet Island/East Bank/Marcy Holmes/etc., and Northeast is the perfect means to focus investments in this manner. MSP has few dense neighborhoods, but many of them are clustered on this line. Nicollet and Central actually have the potential to become truly walkable streets.

So add this to the side of the scales in favor of the streetcar: creating walkable streets.

If nothing else (and there is a lot else: quieter, no smell, smooth ride, sense of permanence, etc) a tram connects places psychologically in a way that buses do not. Buses are a great means of transportation, and can be greatly improved in MSP so that they attract greater ridership (easily - sometimes Metro Transit seems like it's run by people who would never ride the bus - why, for instance, does a certain species of bench exist that faces the street, is two feet away from the street and roaring traffic, and is always dirty so that you would never sit on it anyway? It's not rocket science). But buses do not provide a link in people's minds between one place and another like trains do. I'm sure everyone reading this has at some point been on a bus that took an unfamiliar turn and you thought to yourself: "Hmm, now what number bus is this again?"

[Tcmetro]

There is many things to dislike about our streets, but honestly they are quite decent compared to a lot of other cities. Most of our streets have islands, curbs, sidewalks, crosswalks. Even MnDot will place these things in semi-rural areas on highways. In a lot of places, sidewalks don't exist on main arterials (Chicago suburbs) let alone side streets.

That being said, the bus stops truly do suck. Information is poor, benches and shelters are too close to the street, bus shelters are poorly designed, no bus bulbs, not enough farside stops, etc. We could even go SF style and put GoTo readers on the back doors, and have a POP system. Simple things like this can make significant improvements to the bus network, and aren't exactly expensive. It doesn't have to be done at once, but these kind of improvements should be made on a line-by-line basis and coordinated with street reconstruction.

I understand the points being made about the streetcar, but it isn't like buses on Central and Nicollet are that confusing. The 10 goes to Central, the 18 goes to Nicollet. If it is really hard for people to figure that out, then perhaps we need special buses with bigger signs.

[Matt]

There is many things to dislike about our streets, but honestly they are quite decent compared to a lot of other cities. Most of our streets have islands, curbs, sidewalks, crosswalks. Even MnDot will place these things in semi-rural areas on highways. In a lot of places, sidewalks don't exist on main arterials (Chicago suburbs) let alone side streets.

That being said, the bus stops truly do suck. Information is poor, benches and shelters are too close to the street, bus shelters are poorly designed, no bus bulbs, not enough farside stops, etc. We could even go SF style and put GoTo readers on the back doors, and have a POP system. Simple things like this can make significant improvements to the bus network, and aren't exactly expensive. It doesn't have to be done at once, but these kind of improvements should be made on a line-by-line basis and coordinated with street reconstruction.

I understand the points being made about the streetcar, but it isn't like buses on Central and Nicollet are that confusing. The 10 goes to Central, the 18 goes to Nicollet. If it is really hard for people to figure that out, then perhaps we need special buses with bigger signs.

Our bus schedules look like this:

Route 18.png

This is confusing to someone who doesn't ride this route all the time.

Our rail schedule looks like this:

Route 55.png

This is not confusing even if you have never taken it before. There is a reason why people think trains are easier than buses. Trains don't have this many branches. Branches make buses much more confusing to irregular riders. I accept that buses don't need to have ridiculous schedules like the 18 does that I posted but in Minneapolis, they tend to have those types of schedules. Rail almost never does in any city.