Light rail linking Minneapolis, St. Paul downtowns goes green June 14
The announcement was 2 weeks ago, but I didn't see anything posted here on SSP.
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This seems like such a great light rail line connecting the two major cities in the area AND the University of Minnesota. As noted in the article, the line will be open just in time for people to use for accessing Target Field for the MLB All Star Game festivities. Hopefully this spring one of our forum members will be able to do a photo tour along the line. :) |
I agree - it's huge for the city and mobility - and will be the first rail line since the exodus of the streetcars in St. Paul. I really like the Hiawatha Line operation. This addition is a very smart addition and will incite transit envy in the rest of the region, I'm sure!
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Great news!
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wow its almost online!
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Excited for MSP - St. Paul - hope the ridership exceeds expectations!
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Congratulations! These truly are great times for light rail in the United States.
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How much faster will this LRT be compared to the limited stop bus route it replaces?
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It will be about 6 minutes faster. The main argument for this line when it was being planned was based around the cost/benefits of capacity expansion rather than improved speed. It will run on the same headways as the combined 50 and 16 bus routes with higher capacity than the articulated buses that are currently packed like sardine cans. Apparently expanding the bus fleet to increase headways would increase day to day operations costs significantly more than switching over to LRT.
This whole corridor is primed for transit oriented development and is already receiving a significant amount of it. It is likely that within a few decades it will be dense enough that the federal government would be willing to pay for a cut and cover tunnel, at that point travel times will increase significantly. It is worth noting too, that most transit use on the current bus lines is not downtown to downtown, but between various points within the corridor. In addition to the two downtown, the line also serves the University of Minnesota, the state capitol, all of the metro area's major sports stadiums and arenas, a plethora of medium density residential neighborhoods, a swathe of University Avenue that is considered the upper Midwest's Asian main street and another that is full of St Paul's everyday shopping destinations (two large supermarkets, a Super Target, Walmart, lots of independent niche stores etc). Connecting the downtowns is actually secondary. |
From today's Star Tribune:
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^Hourly overnight service sounds like a great idea.
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Because the line serves two of the three main nightlife areas of the city it will help a lot of people get home after a night on the town. I think that is an underrated element of transit, if it is done right. Because this line runs through 10 miles of central city, it is more able to do that than the more typical, commuter oriented, suburb to core LRT lines.
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From today's Star Tribune:
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I'm excited for the Twin Cities, and can't wait to ride the new line. I've been to Minneapolis, but not to St. Paul (that I know of) precisely because I didn't have an obviously easy way to connect the two--the Green Line solves that problem.
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61,000 people rode the green line on opening day, 107,000 for the weekend.
https://www.metrotransit.org/107000-...pening-weekend Not too shabby. I have a feeling the green line is gonna have good ridership. |
this is awesome, i want to check it out. it's great that you can take light rail from the airport to downtown minneapolis AND st. paul now.
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So far the average weekday ridership is 40,400 which is 500 short of the 2030 projections.
https://twitter.com/McLaughlin_P/sta...41250049601536 |
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Prior to the Green Line, there were only 24,600 average weekday LRV riders in Minneapolis. This dramatic increase vaults M-SP's light rail system up into the top tier of US systems--congratulations! P.S. Would love to see photos! |
what, only 16 years ahead of projections?
j/k, that really is awesome! i knew the green line was going to be a major success. connecting the two downtowns of a bipolar metro with rail is so obvious, and then you throw in one of the nation's largest universities along the route and it's like "holy shit, why wasn't this done ages ago?". |
Weren't there some comments earlier about there being more ridership potential if they built the line along I-94 instead?
Seems like the alignment running through neighborhoods has been a crazy success. Skeptic that I am, though, I wonder if the poster on Twitter confused his data somehow. |
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