You’ll be presenting this at the September 17th meeting. Have you thought of presenting this to the PAC members who will be making their recommendation by September 30? or Met Council by the middle of October?

Cheryl

Second, small parcels have not seemed to be a major barrier to redevelopment in Uptown in the last five years. There has been quite a bit of mixed-use redevelopment in large buildings recently. I don’t think federal transit funding programs grade projects on their potential to spur redevelopment, and I’m not sure we should either. In any case, I would argue that Uptown and Nicollet have much greater redevelopment opportunities available than Van White given the existing traffic, surrounding density and desirability of the neighborhoods.

Third, linking with the Hiawatha line is very important, this is definitely an issue that needs to be resolved with the original 3C alignment (and is addressed in the sub-alts).

Fourth and finally: agreed. However the decision about mode has already been made, so I’m assuming that as a given. If the Southwest line does not follow a 3C-like route now, it seems very unlikely that any higher capacity/higher service line will be built in the area in the near future.

1. this considers only existing land uses – so this ranking system doesn’t value the potential for future development (very little potential at 21st & Penn stations, but the potential for redevelopment is very significant at VanWhite – especially if the station location is still flexible).

2. This ranking awards land use patterns with small, segmented parcels, which may not be very attractive to developers. I expect some developmers would rather have fewer (i.e. larger) parcels to redevelop than the very segmented, small parcels around uptown & Nicollet.

3. The interlining with Hiawatha and Central is potentially very significant – and while 3C preserves this option, it’s much simpler with 3A.

4. This metric potentially demonstrates a transit-supportive land use framework, but doesn’t necessarily show that light rail is the best way to meet that demand. In my mind, the real question is whether light rail is an appropriate form of transit for Nicollet, or whether we should pursue other technologies.

As effective as this is, I think that a ranking system that incorporates density as well as the transit dependent population would probably be more useful (and show 3C as an even more clear winner). You could use your multiplication/addition model to specially reward areas that score high in both categories. The maps you posted previously showing jobs/residents per acre as well as transit dependent population would be very useful. I might fool around with this idea a bit.