Tag Archives: lrt

Where are the transit riders in Southwest?

Posted on by
5
Where are the transit riders in southwest Minneapolis?

Where are the transit riders in southwest Minneapolis?

The very first Southwest Transitway open house happened tonight, but hopefully some of you intrigued transit nuts will come home and want even MORE data to think about.  Based on comments from one of my previous posts, I realized I hadn’t done any analysis of where people are riding transit.

Thanks to the amazing Data Finder, you can see where transit trips are happening by bus stop.  To make this map, I summed all the weekday trips from bus stops within 1/4 mile of each planned LRT station.  Station areas are labeled with their totals.  As you would expect, downtown stations show the most trips, with Uptown and 28th Street next.  The 3A alignment shows very few trips.  The Met Council data for Van White shows a stop, but no routes and no trips are assigned to it.

I’ll be attending Thursday’s open house in Minneapolis and I’m excited.  It’s great to be on receiving end of a public meeting once in a while.  The gossip I’ve heard is that 3A and 3C ridership would be the same, which is something I would like explained in detail.  Anybody out there go to Hopkins tonight and have any post-meeting thoughts?

Commissioner Dorfman: Southwest LRT routes about cost

Posted on by
8

Today Hennepin County Commissioners received analysis from HDR showing the projected ridership and costs of the two potential alignments for the Southwest LRT.  3A would cost $1.2 billion while 3C would cost $1.8 billion.  Hennepin County Commissioner Gail Dorfman, who chairs the Policy Advisory committee, implied that 3A was the better choice.

“Dorfman says the projected cost of the line ranges from $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion, depending on the final route. Those numbers put the proposal give the project a Cost Effectiveness Index of $30 per rider for the length of the line, just outside the range required by the Federal Transit Administration for federal funding.

In order to move into the next step which would be to begin preliminary engineering you have to reach that $29 CEI number, so we’re very close to that,” she said.

Dorfman says the new numbers show the less costly option is to build the line along the Kenilworth trail near Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.

Neither the MPR nor Star Tribune coverage of the meeting makes clear the difference in ridership between the two alignments.

Land Use Patterns and the Southwest Transitway Alignments (mapping Part II)

Posted on by
5

LUCrop

In my first post on the two potential Southwest Transitway alignments, I discussed the density of population, employment and transit dependent populations along each route.  In this post, we’ll explore land use patterns and the mixing of uses along each route and near the stations.  Click through for more.

Continue reading →

Who will the Southwest Transitway serve?

Posted on by
7
Hiawatha LRT

Hiawatha LRT

I’ve never written a long post about my opinion on the Southwest Transitway LRT alignment alternatives, although I have participated in some intense discussion on the City of Lakes Urbanism blog.  I cynically believe that the routing decision will probably be made based solely on the numbers that allow the line to compete for federal dollars, rather than the best long range planning, but that won’t stop me from adding my two cents and possibly rousing rabble at the upcoming meetings.

When comparing the 3A and 3C alignments (Kenilworth Trail versus Uptown), the question for me has never been how easy is it to engineer and build (Kenilworth wins this one every time), but who will the line serve, or in other words, what is its purpose?  Is it a commuter line to get people from the far-flung suburbs to downtown Minneapolis rapidly a la Northstar, or is it an urban transit line a la the Hiawatha line?  3A represents a commuter line that would serve suburban customers and move them to downtown quickly, mostly bypassing any housing density, retail or transit-dependent populations.  3C would serve the “second downtown” of Minneapolis, Uptown, as well as some of the most dense housing, large employment centers and more people who depend on transit to get around.  In short, missing one of the most vibrant activity centers in the Twin Cities because you have an easy right of way would be a huge mistake.

Before I get too deep into a rant, I want to share some maps that I think illustrate the point.  I assume the data behind these maps has been factored in to the alternatives analysis, but I guess we’ll have to wait until August to find out.

Population Density and LRT Alignments

Employment density and LRT Alignments

Transit-dependent populations and LRT Alignments

Grey circles around stations represent one quarter-mile walk-shed.

Southwest Transit Route Selection Open Houses Scheduled

Posted on by
Reply
Some transit-supportive development along the 3A alignment

Some transit-supportive development along the 3A alignment

The Southwest Transitway Route Selection Open Houses have been scheduled.  The purpose of these meetings is to release the evaluations done as part of the Draft EIS of the three potential LRT alignments. The evaluation measures include:

  • ridership forecasts
  • cost estimates
  • cost-effectiveness calculations
  • transit mobility measures
  • an inventory of potentially affected critical environmental resources

These evaluations will be used to select the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA).  Two SW Transitway Advisory Committees will make a recommendation on the preferred alternative in the near future.  The preferred alternative will then need to be approved by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority and the Metropolitan Council before it gets the full environmental review treatment.

The bottom line though is that this is the data that will get used to make the selection.  I’m very interested to see the results, and I hope I can attend at least the Minneapolis meeting.  I’m a little late on this news, but I assumed if I signed up for the mailing list I’d be notified of upcoming meetings.  Apparently this is not the case.

If you’re too lazy to click through to get the schedule, here are the meeting dates:

  • August 11: Open house at Hopkins City Hall from 6:30 to 8:00 PM
  • August 13: Open house at downtown Minneapolis Library from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM
  • August 13: Open house at Marriott Southwest Hotel in Minnetonka from 6:30 to 8:00 PM
  • August 18: Open house at St. Louis Park City Hall from 6:30 to 8:00 PM
  • August 19: Open house at Eden Prairie City Hall from 6:30 to 8:00 PM

If LRT = elevator, then car = ?

Posted on by
Reply

Thinking more about this post and letting my mind wander.

If LRT is like an elevator, what is the car equivalent of vertical transportation?  I picture a number of steel cables running vertically through the floors of a building.  Individuals would be responsible for the purchase, financing and maintenance of their own backpack-based “personal elevator” which would pull them up and down the cables.  They could control the speed, which of course would be dependent on whether one purchased the high performance model, or the discount model from Costco.  Of course they would be gas-powered.

Of course, the real beauty of the backpack elevator is the freedom.  Unchained from the “commie box”, as the old elevators will soon come to be called, individuals will travel up and down whenever they want, not at a time specified by building owners or calculated to maximize efficiency.  The cables (vertical highways) will eventually be placed all throughout the building, maybe one every ten square feet, in order to maximize freedom of choice and movement.  A lot of usable space would be lost, but buildings will just grow taller to compensate.

Cities will require building owners to require acres of backpack elevator storage on each floor, free to backpack owners, but paid for regressively, through lower wages and higher goods prices.

Horrible congestion will result at the most popular cables, but the engineers will promise new thicker cables that will hold more backpacks and allow faster travel.  Vertical travel deaths will go from near zero to the hundreds of thousands, but many people will be put back to work in the flourishing helmet and steel-toed boot industries.  Architects will begin designing building without stairways and traditional elevators, thus further cementing the backpack elevators dominance as a vertical transportation mode.  Giant new ventilation systems will need to be built in buildings to siphon exhaust fumes.

Randall O’Toole, I’ve got a new campaign for you: let’s ban the sweaty communal elevator from America’s public buildings.  The result can only be increased freedom and economic prosperity.

Transportationist: Rail transit forms urban superstructure

Posted on by
1

I like this idea of transit and the city being a single structure, much like an elevator is part of a building.

The theory I have now adopted comes from my recent trip from Minneapolis to Portland accessing the airport at both ends via LRT, and then riding the Portland streetcar almost full circle. Rail transit forms an urban superstructure. Guideway transit, esp. LRT makes the city more like a single structure, and makes everything seem closer. The LRT vehicle is continuously running, and if activities are along the path of the vehicle, everything seems quite coordinated. In a way by organizing activities linearly (or multi-linearly), it simplifies the city. Hopping on a train is much like getting on an elevator.

This feels right to me, rail transit is part of the city system.  Roads, when empty, are simply paved empty space.  They don’t contribute to the functioning of the system, except that they allow transportation to happen.

Do you care which route the Southwest Transitway takes?

Posted on by
Reply

The two choices in Minneapolis

Hennepin County is now accepting comments for the Scoping stage of the Draft EIS on the Southwest Transitway light rail line.  Submit comments online, or at the final Scoping Meeting on October 23rd.  If you care about the alignment in Minneapolis, tell them what you think.  I’m holding back my opinion (see note below), although you may be able to guess which route I prefer.  2015 is not that far away (we’ll be halfway through Obama’s second term), and once this piece of infrastructure is in the ground, it ain’t moving for a very long time.

The image above is of the two possible routes in Minneapolis.  One would basically follow the Cedar Lake Trail into downtown and connect with the rest of the system at the “intermodal” station near the news Twins Ballpark.  The second would go through Uptown on the Midtown Greenway and turn left at Nicollet, connecting to the rest of the system at Fourth Street downtown.

Full disclosure: Bonestroo (the firm I work for) is currently part of a team working on station-area planning for Southwest Transitway stations outside of Minneapolis (Saint Louis Park to Eden Prairie).