Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[BigIdeasGuy]

And complaining about residents monitoring/measuring a public works project in their neighborhood? That's how it's supposed to work.

That is not, in fact, how it's supposed to work.

Having random people, doesn't matter if they are local residents or not, enter and explore an active construction sites is an absolutely terrible idea. Doesn't matter if it's after the workers have gone home for the night it's an absolute liability nightmare on both sides, the person could get seriously hurt/killed or the person wrecking something that would could run into the millions to fix.

Not to mention there is an active train line right there as well, their decision could have easily turned disastrous for them. Anyone who enters an active construction site that doesn't have permission to be there needs to held responsible for their actions and "oh nothing went bad" isn't a legitimate defense

[angrysuburbanite]

It's mostly concerning to me that this article indirectly promotes people to go into a construction site illegaly and unsafely. This is especially ironic given that this NIMBY did it in the name of "safety"

re: the 25 foot thing, I did some research and it is an FRA spacing requirement, so it is a legitimate concern, but just not *that* big of a deal.

[DanPatchToget]

One day it's people trespassing to inspect construction, the next day it's people trespassing to block or sabotage construction.

For those claiming the 25 foot rule is or isn't a requirement by the FRA, please provide your source.

The best I can give to show it's not a requirement are examples around the country of light rail being next to freight rail with less than 25 feet of spacing between the center of each track. The A Line in Los Angeles has some segments where the spacing is 18-20 feet, and on the Blue Line in San Diego I found a segment where the spacing is 15 feet. However, that could be due to those routes being built before rules changed, or maybe the speed of light rail and/or freight trains is involved with any supposed spacing rule.

I also found this: https://www.federalregister.gov/documen ... compliance

"SWLRT will be constructed adjacent to freight rail service operated by Twin Cities & Western Railroad (TCWR) in the Kenilworth Corridor and a portion of the Bass Lake Spur, and adjacent to freight rail service operated by BNSF Railway (BNSF) in the Wayzata Subdivision. Typical track center spacing averages 25 feet or more throughout this shared corridor."

To me the wording makes it look like at least 25 feet of space isn't a requirement.

[angrysuburbanite]

https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/c ... 4_sela.pdf

The existing regulations are general in nature. There are no specific design requirements.
However, in practice, freight and passenger-carrying vehicles must meet stringent requirements,
even when the LRT track and the freight railroad are as close together as two tracks on a double-
track railroad. FRA defined these operations as “common corridors” when rail transit and
railroad tracks are less than 200 ft apart, track center to track center. FRA regulations define
adjacent tracks (shared ROW) where tracks are 25 ft or less center to center, while shared
corridor relate to freight tracks and transit tracks, such as LRT, separated by more than 25 ft, but
less than 200 ft, center to center.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, there is this FRA document (I did not read the whole thing)
https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot ... -03-16.pdf
Of note:

This report is a catalog of “common use” rail corridors. These are defined as corridors where non-FRA-compliant light rail or rail
rapid transit vehicles operate adjacent to, or on track shared with, rail freight or passenger operations coming under FRA safety
regulations. Three types of common corridors are defined:
- shared corridor (track centers 25 to 200 feet apart)
- shared right-of-way (track centers less than 25 feet)
- shared track

Shared right-of-way (ROW). These are tracks 25 feet or less center to center –
this is an FRA definition of “adjacent tracks” for a specific regulation

Shared right-of-way - In this case the transit vehicles run on separate tracks, but
track centers are less than 25 feet (that is, separation between the centerline of the
freight track and the centerline of the passenger track is less than 25 feet). Tracks
separated by less than 25 feet are defined as “adjacent” by FRA, and certain
roadway worker protection rules apply on adjacent tracks. FRA also defines “less
than 30 feet” as the distance at which tracks are “non-insular” and operators are
therefore subject to certain railroad regulations.

So it kind of looks like some sort of design guideline? My apologies for incorrectly stating it as an FRA requirement if such is not the case.

[kdo5581]

Absolutely wild to me that the discussion here right now is about the appropriateness of measuring the distance? If you watch the video, you can see that the road where this was measured is open to traffic, and there's a sidewalk across the tracks as well. No one was where they don't belong.

Also, it doesn't really matter if the 25' is "necessary" or is a "requirement" or "guideline", does it? If the plans specified 25', that's what should have been built. If the plans didn't specify 25', then we have to ask why the public was told that there would be 25' between them if that wasn't what was planned. Both are bad for different reasons.

It seems we don't really know why it wasn't built to 25' at this point, and I have to say I find that pretty baffling? It shouldn't take this long for the project to figure out how this went wrong. I can understand that they probably don't want to say "oh we lied to the public about what the plans would state" if that's the reason, but at some point someone should be able to answer this question.

[thespeedmccool]

Also, it doesn't really matter if the 25' is "necessary" or is a "requirement" or "guideline", does it? If the plans specified 25', that's what should have been built. If the plans didn't specify 25', then we have to ask why the public was told that there would be 25' between them if that wasn't what was planned. Both are bad for different reasons.

1. It's unclear whether it was engineered to be 25', or if that was a vague "guarantee" on the part of the project team.
2. If it's the former, it's the contractor's fault and they'll pay to fix it. Full stop. Not a scandal, not newsworthy.
3. If it's the latter, which I'm guessing it is, this is a Watergate in search of a hotel break-in. If I vocally tell you "We'll make sure it's about 25 feet wide," that is not semantically equivalent to "From center line to center line, the distance between the two rails will never be narrower than 25'0"." It is entirely reasonable for someone to vaguely say to a random neighborhood group "yeah, it'll be 25' feet wide" and actually mean 24'5". That's not a scandal, it's not a lie, and it's not newsworthy.

You're assuming the only possibilities are that the contractor made a mistake or that the Met Council lied, but there are reasonable alternate explanations, and even if there weren't, this just isn't newsworthy unless your goal is to get angry clicks and kill transit projects.

[kdo5581]

I think if the contractor screwed up, it is newsworthy, even if they'll fix it at no cost. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. I suspect that such a fix wouldn't impact the overall construction schedule given how long the tunnel still has to go, but it is reasonable to be concerned about that and it would be good for the agency to be able to state that they don't expect delays due to this and reassure the public.

I don't especially care about the 25' for the sake of 25' (and indeed have very little sympathy for the neighbors' perspective on this generally). But I do generally think that if something on a major project is amiss (and Jim Alexander does seem to admit something is off here in the interview), it's newsworthy and important to understand what exactly happened.

It's pretty notable that the Met Council hasn't publicly shared what the source of the issue here is yet. (Unless I've missed something? happy to be proven wrong here). It's been like a month and we haven't heard anything more? That in itself is part of the issue here. We're all speculating because nothing has been made clear.

[angrysuburbanite]

The problem is that the article failed to clearly inform readers of exactly what the problem was, whether this 25' was a requirement, and what effects it has. It may as well be newsworthy, but the article seemed to have been posted as yet another " NIMBYs complain about the light rail" article made as clickbait rather than an actual, factual news piece whose intention is to educate the reader on what the issue actually is.

[MNdible]

I think if the contractor screwed up, it is newsworthy, even if they'll fix it at no cost. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.

I know this project is uniquely in the public eye, but seriously. If there was a news report every time a road contractor made a minor error that they were obligated to fix... you'd never see the end of those reports.

[Tom H.]

Do you reckon there are any lane centerlines / offramps / curbs that are 7 inches off of their design specs in the 35W south Minneapolis rebuild? I daresay you could probably find one or two spots like that. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which piece of infrastructure will have larger negative effects on its neighbors.