Riverview Corridor Streetcar

[thespeedmccool]

Look, I know LRT is best for Riverview, but quite a few of you are making perfect be the enemy of good. I think there should instead be a focus on the options Ramsey County has put on the table and advocating for the best one, which is Streetcar Option 1. It's not LRT, but it's pretty close to it with 87% dedicated right-of-way and center-running on West 7th. Converting the rest of the route to dedicated right-of-way may not be as simple as throwing down some paint on the road, but I also don't think it would require tearing up the road and tracks and starting from scratch.

As for ABRT, I've already said why that's barely an upgrade over Route 54, and making this an ABRT route doesn't mean we saved a ton of money that can be put towards many other ABRT routes. That's not how funding for transit projects works.

The thing is I don't even think this streetcar idea is good. I think it's a bad idea that's worse than current transit in the corridor and will require a full reconstruction to eventually be LRT.

Not an expert on how capital transit funding is won, but I am under the impression that the state/county/city has to commit half to win a federal match for the other half. Someone in MN will have to commit $1 billion + to build Riverview.

So yes, stopping this one streetcar is not equivalent to winning over $2 billion for new aBRT lines, but it's fair to say that Ramsey County could commit the $1 billion for Riverview to 10 aBRT lines.

Riverview isn't being built at this point to improve transit or aid in our transition away from personal vehicles. If that were the case, Ramsey County would be committing a billion dollars to projects that will actually improve service or replace car trips.

No, Riverview is being built to appease St. Paul's inferiority complex and score a "big win" for some county commissioners who need a "legacy."

[Nick]

I don't even think it's as thought out as politicians wanting to go to a ribbon cutting or spread out money to other side of the metro. It feels like it's more about the expectation that a government of a certain size has an office full of people whose job it is to talk about transit planning stuff. You have to have those 10 people and they need to do something, so regardless of whether or not the projects are ever going to happen, they spend their time making maps and going to meetings and having open houses and generating content for the newspaper.

[DanPatchToget]

Look, I know LRT is best for Riverview, but quite a few of you are making perfect be the enemy of good. I think there should instead be a focus on the options Ramsey County has put on the table and advocating for the best one, which is Streetcar Option 1. It's not LRT, but it's pretty close to it with 87% dedicated right-of-way and center-running on West 7th. Converting the rest of the route to dedicated right-of-way may not be as simple as throwing down some paint on the road, but I also don't think it would require tearing up the road and tracks and starting from scratch.

As for ABRT, I've already said why that's barely an upgrade over Route 54, and making this an ABRT route doesn't mean we saved a ton of money that can be put towards many other ABRT routes. That's not how funding for transit projects works.

The thing is I don't even think this streetcar idea is good. I think it's a bad idea that's worse than current transit in the corridor and will require a full reconstruction to eventually be LRT.

Not an expert on how capital transit funding is won, but I am under the impression that the state/county/city has to commit half to win a federal match for the other half. Someone in MN will have to commit $1 billion + to build Riverview.

So yes, stopping this one streetcar is not equivalent to winning over $2 billion for new aBRT lines, but it's fair to say that Ramsey County could commit the $1 billion for Riverview to 10 aBRT lines.

Riverview isn't being built at this point to improve transit or aid in our transition away from personal vehicles. If that were the case, Ramsey County would be committing a billion dollars to projects that will actually improve service or replace car trips.

No, Riverview is being built to appease St. Paul's inferiority complex and score a "big win" for some county commissioners who need a "legacy."

The only slight advantage Route 54 has over Riverview streetcar is the travel time, but that's only because it takes Highway 5 and skips Fort Snelling and Terminal 2. There's nothing else about Route 54 that makes it better than a streetcar. If less than half of the Riverview streetcar route were proposed to have dedicated right-of-way then it could be debated if Route 54 is better, but what they're proposing is the streetcar would have 72-87% dedicated right-of-way. Riverview is not the same as the vanity streetcar projects that have happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Washington D.C., etc.

If Ramsey County wanted to spend $1 billion on aBRT routes they could've done that awhile ago, but there's no interest in doing that whether they have the money or not. Dropping the streetcar options for Riverview doesn't mean they're suddenly going to spend that kind of money on aBRT. I don't think there's even enough bus routes in Ramsey County, let alone the metro area, where they could spend $1 billion on aBRT. A lot of bus routes have a ridership that's spread across many stops instead of concentrated in areas where it could be possible to reduce stops to every 1/4-1/2 mile and almost all of the existing ridership would still be within the walkshed of an aBRT station. Look at Route 2, which on the surface looks like a good candidate for aBRT with high ridership, connections with several other popular routes, and serving a few important destinations, but the existing ridership is spread out too much so if it were replaced with aBRT a significant amount of the existing ridership would have to walk a long way to reach an aBRT station.

[angrysuburbanite]

It's also probably worth noting that since it is a rail line, it is not as subject to weather-related delays (especially if it has the custom plow-shaped things the existing rolling stock has), and the quality of the ride is much, much better thanks to the rails instead of a rattly Gillig bus on poorly-maintained asphalt. I don't know about you all, but I'll gladly sacrifice 5-10 minutes for a smoother ride...

As I have said before: I'm not advocating for this project, but I certainly will not be upset if it gets constructed.

[Tiller]

The true level boarding provided by rail is also huge for wheelchair users (as well as strollers, other people with disabilities, etc).

It does not require the deployment of a ramp, which saves time. Plus, with buses you only get 2-3 spots for strollers/wheelchairs, while strollers and wheelchairs can safely use almost any part of a LRV (even if it's a "streetcar" LRV) due to the improved ride quality. If there are no wheelchair spots available, then someone trying to board has to wait for the next bus, which is a bad outcome I've seen lots of times.

[DanPatchToget]

I looked at the specs for the Siemens S70 streetcar and the New Flyer Xcelsior articulated bus. Here's the links to them: https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/ ... -sheet.pdf
https://www.newflyer.com/bus/xcelsior-charge-ng/

Specs of streetcar:
Length-79.1 feet (for reference the length of our existing LRVs is 94.3 feet)
Seats-60
Wheelchair spaces-4
Total passenger capacity-approximately 195
Doors-4 on each side

Specs of articulated bus:
Length-60.8 feet
Seats-61
Wheelchair spaces-2
Total passenger capacity-approximately 123
Doors-3

Also worth noting that while they're proposing battery-electric buses if aBRT is chosen for Riverview, as we've seen with the C Line there's been challenges with implementing that. Meanwhile electric streetcars/light rail with overhead wires have been around for more than a century.

[mattaudio]

Seems SWLRT and Bottineau have messed with our perception of what good rail transit is and how much it should reasonably cost.

[DanPatchToget]

Seems SWLRT and Bottineau have messed with our perception of what good rail transit is and how much it should reasonably cost.

So what's good rail transit to you, and what do you think is a reasonable cost for that?

[Wezle]

Transit costs money, and the longer we wait to make these investments to move us away from auto-centric infrastructure, the more it's going to cost. That's definitely not carte blanche to approve every transit project no matter how bad it is, but we have had decades of bad transportation planning that's going to cost us time and money to undo.

The cost of the SWLRT isn't that extreme compared to the cost of similarly sized projects around the country. Even after the ballooning costs, it's still within the typical cost for an infrastructure project of its size in this day and age. The issue is the ballooning of the cost, not the cost itself.

[Tcmetro]

The problem with Riverview is that it is a solution in search of a problem. It is a transit line that doesn't increase capacity or speed. It's basically a streetscaping project to increase land values and development. All the largest cost drivers are to tie it into the Blue Line so that it isn't a complete ridership failure.

[thespeedmccool]

I am a big supporter of SWLRT. Even with higher costs, it's an amazing, bang-for-our-buck project that's compared to similar projects nationwide. It provides a service that currently isn't offered and enhances surrounding services and will support massive development opportunities in currently underdeveloped suburbs.

Riverview streetcar offers none of this. It's worse than existing service for 90% of users (the other 10% are those whose disabilities are better served by level boarding and those who really need connections to Terminal 2), won't enhance or augment existing services, and is expensive compared to Southwest when you consider that this is a notably worse transit service. You could argue that Riverview will support development, but this corridor isn't nearly as underdeveloped as the western suburbs are.

One can reasonably support Blue Line extension and SWLRT, and not support this. I worry the politicos behind this are very much in the headspace that this is "mini LRT for mini Minneapolis!" when really this is just a bus that can't navigate around parked cars.

[DanPatchToget]

The problem with Riverview is that it is a solution in search of a problem. It is a transit line that doesn't increase capacity or speed. It's basically a streetscaping project to increase land values and development. All the largest cost drivers are to tie it into the Blue Line so that it isn't a complete ridership failure.

It may not increase speed, but it would increase capacity because as I posted earlier a streetcar has more capacity than an articulated bus. The streetcar should also increase reliability because it has much more dedicated right-of-way than Route 54 has (which is basically none). West 7th is getting rebuilt anyway, so why not change it to favor transit and people more than it does today?

[Tcmetro]

The difference between the streetcar and the bus is minimal. The bus actually has one more seat than the streetcar. The difference is the streetcar has a lot more room for standees, but at 8-11k riders/day it's unlikely that there will be many crush load situations.

Compare to the three-car LRT which is 270 feet long and has about 180 seats.

[EOst]

Has anyone here ever actually tried taking Route 54 on Glumack Rd to or from Terminal 1 during Uber/Lyft drop off peak hours? If you had, you would understand the problem with buses on this corridor.

[Bakken2016]

Has anyone here ever actually tried taking Route 54 on Glumack Rd to or from Terminal 1 during Uber/Lyft drop off peak hours? If you had, you would understand the problem with buses on this corridor.

I would agree with this, taking the bus in and out of the airport is a nightmare due to all of the other traffic. Rail would make it a much easier journey.

[thespeedmccool]

Has anyone here ever actually tried taking Route 54 on Glumack Rd to or from Terminal 1 during Uber/Lyft drop off peak hours? If you had, you would understand the problem with buses on this corridor.

A problem that could probably be solved with some red paint and a new bus lane. A $2-3 billion dollar toy train is not necessary to solve that problem

[angrysuburbanite]

Good luck getting MnDOT to cooperate with a dedicated lane on Highway 5 by the airport.

[DanPatchToget]

The difference between the streetcar and the bus is minimal. The bus actually has one more seat than the streetcar. The difference is the streetcar has a lot more room for standees, but at 8-11k riders/day it's unlikely that there will be many crush load situations.

Compare to the three-car LRT which is 270 feet long and has about 180 seats.

I wouldn't call it a minimal difference to have room for around 72 more people. That's slightly more than the seating or standing capacity of another articulated bus. And why bring up the capacity of a 3-car LRT train when you also claim there won't be many crush load situations?

The traffic going in/out of Terminal 1 is another good point why the streetcar has an advantage over Route 54/aBRT. Awhile ago I was on a Route 54 bus that was completely stopped on Highway 5 because traffic going into Terminal 1 was so bad, and another time for whatever reason the driver missed or just skipped the Terminal 1 stop, which at least one person was unhappy about.

[thespeedmccool]

Good luck getting MnDOT to cooperate with a dedicated lane on Highway 5 by the airport.

The traffic by the airport is rarely backed up as far as the highway. You would not need a bus lane along the freeway to avoid the 54 being caught in traffic at the terminal. Bus shoulders would do the trick when the backups are that severe, perhaps augmented by a bus-only ramp akin to the one that serves the Orange Line in downtown Minneapolis. A bus lane on Glumack Drive would get an aBRT through almost all traffic jams at the airport.

Total cost: $150 million for 95% of the benefit of a $2-3 billion streetcar.

[dstolp]

For everyone who laments the mistaken alignment of SW light rail (2c was far superior - should have gone thru uptown - would have saved money (no tunnel) and improved ridership), I would urge you to NOT support a street car. Why can't this be light rail? Either build light rail, or go with ABRT. Don't pick a middle ground option that no one will be happy with.