urbanMSP

I wish we could have same-platform transfers at interchange stations.

I wish we had steps and an elevator up to a long, concrete standing/walking area like this at every light rail station, and that the light rail was elevated to the same grade as the standing/walking area.

I stood on the bridge for about 15 minutes during the stadium open house.
The majority of light rail riders did not seem to understand the bridge would help them cross the street, so they just walked over on street level.
Sad and ugly use of public $.

Obviously this is confirmation bias but this pretty much nails the entire thing.

I can't believe that no one *ahem* VikingfaninMaryland *ahem* hasn't pointed out that there will be barricades and cops and tasers to keep people from crossing the tracks/street at grade and instead herd them onto this abomination.

It isn't just a question of whether it looks decent or not. It's the lack of foresight given the importance of this stop with all of the development happening in DTE (or whatever it is officially being called now) coupled with an expenditure that transports people 60-80' for entertainment compounded by what an equivalent dollar figure would buy in transit improvements elsewhere.

A literal $1 Billion construction project (not to mention the dollar figures associated with the rest of the development in this area) and no one thought, "Hey, what are these parallel lines running through this plan?"

I said it several pages up when this whole things started but it is egregious that LRT wasn't being discussed/redesigned in parallel with the stadium so that the whole platform could have been reconfigured for center platform and/or, a tunnel through the parking ramp to the stadium. Initially I said that a tunnel would be expensive and difficult given the structural challenges in the parking ramp but that was when I thought "we" would be on the hook for every penny to get riders to the People's Stadium and it was very late in the game (see argument above RE: egregious oversight).

IF this stop had been designed comprehensively with the stadium and the park, imagine an amazing pedestrian tunnel that would move people safely through this zone, integrated with the park and the plaza that would have been negotiated comprehensively with ALL of the construction and thus paid for with Wilf/NFL money and some public money if needed.

I like the bridge when I used it at the open house. It provides a good view of the neighborhood. I wish there was a little less hardscape around it (and the stadium in general), but the area is still being worked on. So I'll reserve final judgement when the entire project is finished.

A few observations:

1.) Most of the Medical Examiner parking has been integrated into this plaza. The fenced in area shown on Google Maps is part of the Plaza now.

2.) The amount of plaza space is enormous. Well over the equivalent of a square block. I don't really see why the Vikings would need more space than this for whatever they wanted the park for.

3.) The bike paths through the plaza are poorly laid out. One cuts right through the plaza, which will be chaos with any amount of pedestrians, as they will ignore the path and block all bike traffic. Additionally, that path feeds directly onto the LRT pedestrian crossing, creating further interaction problems. The other path along the Medical Examiner property doesn't link up well at either end.

4.) The commons park is pretty nice, if a bit bare-bones at the moment. There are some really good, quality materials being used. 1 criticism: There are manhole covers embedded in the rubber-floor of the "play area" Who planned this??? The rubber floor is great for kids, but somebody is going to fall and hurt themselves on a manhole. Very poor planning.

If they ever get around to swapping the LRT and 4th Street (beating the ol' dead horse or froggie style) a very nice center platform LRT station could be built along the north side of the new stadium. Getting 4th out of the way makes that the perfect place for pedestrian-heavy activity. Who knows, it might even be possible to lower the tracks a little and make it exceptionally easy to get peds directly out of the stadium and over the eastbound side. Imagine that.

I know this idea of a center platform keeps coming up, but seeing the masses of people at the stadium open house confirmed for me that a center platform is a bad idea for this location. It might be fine during a normal day and make transfers between trains easier, but it would be a dangerous mess during stadium events. When the center platform is filled with people waiting to get on the train, where do the people go who are trying to get off the train? And all the people have the cross the tracks to get on and off the train. Bad idea.

I think all along, people on this forum have been very clear that they would prefer a center platform in addition to side platform(s). You are likely correct that a center platform alone would be inadequate and unsafe for handling large event loads.

I think all along, people on this forum have been very clear that they would prefer a center platform in addition to side platform(s). You are likely correct that a center platform alone would be inadequate and unsafe for handling large event loads.

THIS.

Nth. Close off the center platform during game days but if this is a transfer point (HINT: IT IS) absolutely there should be a center platform. Having people go to one end or the other platform to transfer is dangerous, because people have to walk in front of a train that needs to pull out of the station. I've seen people run across to catch a train, and people could run in front of a train that's starting to pull out, or trip and fall and not be seen by a driver. Also a center platform helps with balancing the loading of the train, with the current layout, I think transferring passengers bunch up at the ends of the train (doubly so when you have to run across to transfer to a train that's already there) whereas a center platform would allow transfer to space themselves out along the whole train.

It's a shame that we hold this important transfer station back because of a crush load of people 10 times a year.

Or maybe whatever gains from a center platform is not worth months of disruption and tens of millions of dollars. The Green Line is much more reliable than it was even a year ago. Rarely does getting to the center blue line car from a westbound green line train take more than a leisurely stroll.

You'd be shocked at the number of people that get off a Green line train and sprint to get to the other platform when it's another Green line train going the opposite direction waiting. Same with Blue.

Made the transfer many, many times myself. Thanks for wildly exaggerating the issue to fit one of the silly pet complaints on the forum.

I've made that transfer every workday twice a day for 18 months, I've seen it plenty of times.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I don't see much of it. It's a weak argument regardless. Maybe people should be a little more observant. It's not like it's difficult to look out the left of the train. Again we're talking months of disruption and a ton of money to move the traction power substation east of Chicago (need the space to separate the tracks), demolish a station with a couple decades of life left in it and reconstruct over the parking ramp.

It's great that we can find post hoc justifications for why it shouldn't be done but it wasn't a conscious decision that was made after carefully weighing all the factors, it was just never considered. We just keep bolting stuff on that further cements the status quo without every really evaluating what we're doing.

However I'm not sure the placement of the bridge precludes a center platform, though it might be a bit narrow.

Yeah I'm really curious about those wood pieces, I thought they were just support during construction, but they're still there. But also the bridge isn't 100% done yet either.

It is still an ugly POS. I am not even sure what the little wood/black points sticking up are supposed to be for. The only thing this is good for is taking pictures of the stadium and park/skyline.

I'm pretty sure the wood spikes are permanent. I didn't go at night, but I think that the "black points" are lights. Remember how everyone on the forum appreciates small scale pedestrian lighting? There it is on a large scale pedestrian structure.

The wooden uprights in this sense serve as fancy light posts. They also support screens to keep things and people on the bridge. The ones underneath don't seem to serve a function other than making it look kind of like endzone uprights.

It's great that we can find post hoc justifications for why it shouldn't be done but it wasn't a conscious decision that was made after carefully weighing all the factors, it was just never considered. We just keep bolting stuff on that further cements the status quo without every really evaluating what we're doing.

Yes. THIS.

However I'm not sure the placement of the bridge precludes a center platform, though it might be a bit narrow.

Without taking measurements, my quick tour of the area makes me quite certain that the bridge would not preclude future conversion to a center platform.

But all of this second-guessing about "egregious" neglect and what-not should really go back to the original Hiawatha line construction (which was engineered 15 years ago). Perhaps the original planners really should have foreseen the eventual need to make the transfer, and why a center platform would have been nice. But they didn't. Sucks, and maybe someday they'll remedy it.

That said, the fix (whether it involves tunneling through an already constructed parking structure or even just shifting the tracks outward to accommodate a central platform and reconstructing the structural supports beneath it) was simply not going to happen on a dime, and as pointed out above, not going to happen without massive disruption to the operations of the system.

The type of disruption which will already be happening when we eventually grade separate the E-W LRT spine through downtown.