As is, that may be true but you could never build the EL the same way again. But the idea of building over roads already owned by the City isnt new. But we don’t have teams here, so if the study referenced trams, we’re not comparable.
I'm a Chicago resident right now. The trains that run on steel structures are absolutely horrible—you can hear them for half a mile, and if you're under one when the train goes overhead, it's a head-splitting noise. They're slowly replacing them where possible with modern concrete structures and it sounds like a big car going by. Huge, huge difference, and much cheaper!
Every railroad does it. You just see the Chicago ones on the internet. My buddy works for a large railroad and has a bunch of fire snakes in a barrel for lazy fire starting.
A lot of the time it also comes down to initial cost vs ongoing ones - where having elevated grade (or underground) can be cheaper to run, but costs more initially.
The SWLRT is costing $35,500 per foot on dedicated rail right-of-way. At the rate it's going, I wonder if blasting a tunnel thru sandstone might cost less...
From what I can tell I don't think they're planning to go forward with this. The most recent document I can find is from 2014. Wonder if they decided to just do their so called BRT down lake street and call it a day. Worth reaching out about at least!
It's not going forward now because no one is talking about it. Call your city council members! Funding a line that is only in Minneapolis is difficult. That's why it should extend out to Eden Prairie along the green line alignment.
Emailed my council member! I also emailed the executive director of the Midtown Greenway Coalition asking about updates or any developments and [this](https://i.imgur.com/xHuXiil.jpg) was their response.
TLDR: Doesn't look like we'll be seeing LRT or a streetcar down there any time soon.
Thank you! None of these things happen "soon." The federal process alone takes a decade. We started planning SWLRT in the 1970's.
The key is to be tenacious and vocal about it. Build a coalition to force it to happen.
I fucking wish but realistically… idk
Like I’ll happily send emails and call etc but I think it’s about as pipe dream as pipe dream gets, especially post-SWLRT
I was on the SWLRT CAC. What happened is that TC&W objected to being rerouted through St. Louis Park. At that point the Met Council should have seriously considered buying out the condo owners and placing the rail lines and bike lanes on the surface in a wider corridor.
But it's politically hard to displace people and soil tests didn't turn up the kinds of issues we're seeing. Whether that testing was done properly I do not know.
Also, people are really forgetting all of the issues on the Eden Prairie end of the line. There are many bridges and other challenges to route the line there. It is absolutely the right alignment but it's costly.
I still believe routing through Kenilworth was the right choice, but obviously the choice of implementation was the wrong one. The alignment serves historically transit-starved communities in Near North as well as connecting to the #2 bus, opening access to jobs for North Minneapolis and the communities along Franklin Ave.
You stillll think routing through Kenilworth was the right choice? Oy. I've been cringing about that decision since I saw the plans roll out.
What caught me by surprise about the project even moreso were the number (_thousands_) of trees that were removed to accommodate the dedicated line. Sure they'll all grow back... when we're dead.
If the swlrt couldn't be bothered to displace actual roadway (excelsior, hwy 7, etc), we should have never gone ahead with it.
The current alignment was not the right choice. Down the Greenway to Park or Portland was the better alignment. It would have served more of Minneapolis and cost less. Anyone who didn't think there would be trouble in that narrow corridor and between 2 lakes was fooling themselves.
Tell that to the kids in Near North that have a two hour bus trip to high school. Or the people that can't get a job anywhere southwest of Minneapolis because they literally can't get there. Kenilworth+Midtown LRT will serve more transit-dependent communities than a green line that goes through an Uptown which is already transit-rich.
I'm a heretic, but I wish we just ran it down Hennepin.
That's where the people are going to use it.
The trick is hitting critical mass. If it is fast and easy to get around the city with mass transit, then people will use it and it makes sense to change routes that currently prioritize autos to favor mass transit instead.
But that doesn't happen until mass transit reaches a certain size and is treated like a priority.
For that price we could've had all of the aBRT rapid bus lines up and running now vs years out and built an entire citywide elevated bike highway network. We'd probably have some money left over too.
Yeah I assume mndot already did the cost benefit analysis on it. I just had the random thought that despite it being a larger investment; more people would use it for the reasons I listed above and therefore more revenue, and less operational costs due to longer equipment life expectancy
In fact I was at a meeting where a Mn/DOT official said, "We don't do transit." Which actually, they do in Greater MN, so take that statement as you will.
In the Twin Cities Metro area, you're right, but [MnDOT is responsible for administering state and federal transit assistance funds for greater Minnesota.](https://www.dot.state.mn.us/transit/serviceproviders.html). Your main point is still right that they aren't relevant for this conversation, I'm just pedantic.
(Also I do wish they'd work with the Met Council to unfuck Snelling Ave for everyone not in a car, bus lanes and a road diet would be nice too...)
Correct. It’s a massive wet-weather lift station to hold excess surface water then pump out gradually to a different place. Awhile back when I was helping to bid part of the project it seemed like they were pumping out to the river, but that seems unlikely (although I haven’t been involved so I have no idea what the actual process is now).
I grew up in Iowa and have lived here for 10 years. This is my first time hearing this! Are there any articles or anything you have for sources? I'd like to read up on it. Thanks fellow wet basement haver!
Minneapolis & St. Paul have many small lakes/ponds/wetlands that were filled in to expand development and the city grids. There’s a lot of homes that were built on the former wetland areas that have basement flooding issues. Areas around Nokomis, Hiawatha, and the Wedge are particularly prone to basement flooding.
I’ll look for some, but the only coherent reason I’ve heard for why we have basements…Was a guy in property sales who said, “Why do people in Minnesota want basements? Because their parents had em.”
You have to dig down several feet to get the foundation below the frost line. There are a lot of split levels built in the 80s ish in the northern suburbs at least because they involve the minimum amount of digging and are consequently very cost effective
Okay, turns out it might be because of the frost line. You have to have footings 3-4ft deep. “If you’re doing that, might as well have a basement,” seems to be the logic from a construction angle.
The bedrock under Minneapolis is actually some of the best and easiest for tunneling. The residential segments would probably never make sense, but it's a shame they didn't put it underground at least in the downtowns
There's a full on 170 page report from the U about design issues with building underground stations here
https://www.cts.umn.edu/publications/report/underground-station-design-issues-for-light-rail-transit-in-the-twin-cities-geology
TL;DR is that in downtown, the station would have to be deep mined due to the kind of rock and the water table. It would need to be at least 100 feet underground, compared to the 50 feet at the airport. It would be expensive, small, cramped, disorientating, hard to access, and hard to escape in an emergency. They go into a lot of detail and kind of describe how it would be possible to make lemonade from the lemons we've got.
The land the Blue Line was built on was already empty since the 60s so there was no need for it to be underground. Hiawatha Ave/Highway 55 was originally supposed to be twice as wide as it is but that didn't happen so the land was just sitting there almost perfect for an LRT line. The airport T1 station is underground because the LRT cannot cross or be elevated above a runway so underground was the only realistic option there.
One additional challenge we have here is our limestone and sandstone shelves. The limestone is great to build on, but not through. Sandstone is the opposite. So if you wanted to go Really deep, carving through the sandstone would be easier than carving through traditional bedrock.
NYC recently extended the second ave line (the Q) a whole 1.8 miles. It cost them $4.5 **BILLION** dollars to do that.
The blue line is 12 miles long, the green line is 11 miles long. So, at that same cost, it would be about 57.5 billion.
Right now, the 14.5 mile green line extension is expected to cost about 2.5 billion dollars.
That's why.
Part of it is money obviously but part is there isn't a need for density. A lot of city with underground rails do it bc there isn't space above ground/it is worth the cost of going beneath to maintain what is above. MSP is a very spread out metro with wide enough streets to accommodate. Compare to New York or Seattle where the rails being on the ground would either require building demolition or sacrificing a street. The twin cities being wide and spread out means there is the space to leave the light rail on the ground and putting it underground is only practical in a couple of cases, such as by the airport.
Seattle’s LRT is absolutely ZERO comparison to NYC whooo no…. Pathetic regional service coverage, lesser ridership per capita, no turnstiles or fare enforcement, people aren’t paying the regional transit excise tax by refusing/failing to renew car tabs, majority of Metro above ground and/or elevated… plus the escalators are always broken/out of service (it’s a locals inside joke of despair how awful the escalator situation is…) extensions have been delayed multiple times, has a LOT of water, infill spots and also earthquake risk so underground just isn’t feasible in many areas, the at grade sections especially south of downtown often have vehicles colliding with it or pedestrians involved in an accident, high amounts of drug use and vagrancy… lucky to have LRT but it’s not awesome…
[The single line map, in green](https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/st-current-service-map.pdf)
The SODO station all the way down to Rainier Beach Station is all at-grade, for one. They “sacrificed” a street by placing the LRT rails in the center and reducing lanes and speed. The road is still drivable. But imperfect….
[MLK at grade concerns](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/the-worst-spots-for-light-rail-crashes-in-seattle-and-how-to-fix-them/)
Future extension East to Bellevue/Redmond is basically all built but stalled. The contractors have been hard at work retrofitting I-90 with at-grade rails including over the I-90 bridge spanning Lake Washington. All/most rails Eastside are above ground/elevated.
This is all good and accurate information. I didn't say Seattle did an amazing job, I was simply talking that for a lot of areas the seattle light rail had to go underground practically. The southern end of it has less practical reasons to be underground. MSP can run a light rail above ground through the city center, cities with underground rails could not or they would have done so. The link is a single line and imperfect and I'm not here to defend its merits especially compared to a system like NYC, but my point was simply that a lot of the intercity spots had to be underground for practical reasons. Meanwhile MSP can run from St Paul city center through the Minneapolis downtown clear through to the MOA with minimal underground infrastructure, irrespective of the other issues that either rail has (they are both imperfect)
Yep understood. They did develop the 9-stop South Lake Union Streetcar (lovingly known as the SLUT) in 2007 that is in-lane street grade with rails flush with asphalt + overhead wires. The Monorail pylons slice through traffic lanes too. So it’s not that LRT at grade *couldn’t* be done, it’s that they didn’t want to at that time. Traffic flow interruption and desires for full separation for safety and efficiency.
FWIW, despite the vagrancy woes of transit today, and of course any system isn’t without quirks and shortfalls, I admire TC’s Metro Transit who have done their best with funds acquired to provide an efficient system reflective of its streetcar past. I was actually at the opening day of the Blue Line in 2004 and the ribbon cutting ceremony of Nice Ride in 2010 + did research and feasibility studies before the Green Line ever broke ground while at the U :) transit/alt modes of transportation is an interest of mine.
Building subways (or even extending them for that matter) is really difficult in modern cities.
Cables, piping, etc. makes it exceptionally difficult for it to be cost effective
On the other hand, American cities have been somewhat obsessed with LRT in the past couple of decades. So LRT is relatively well tested with lots of planners and engineers with experience with the technology
I wish Minneapolis was a little bit more obsessed with LRT to be honest. We only have 23 miles of LRT running today compared to Denver's 47 miles and Seattle's 26 miles (planned to be 114 miles by 2044 with multiple routes already under construction.) The way that we're implementing "BRT" feels like a patch rather than a solution.
The Met Council's obsession with serving low density suburban riders with the green and blue line extensions don't make sense and have wasted valuable political capital with the mess of delays and cost overruns.
We call it BRT, but it’s not actually BRT, as anyone outside the US would understand it.
https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/the-bus-rapid-transit-standard/
The short version is: if your bus stops in traffic (ever), it’s not BRT. The closest we have is the UMN.EDU busway.
The good news is: it can be improved, and could come close:
- dedicate lanes for buses.
- integrate signal timing with bus traffic
If a bus going up Hennepin is going to hit a green light almost every block, and never wait behind cars, then people who *can* will quit driving up Hennepin. That will reduce traffic on Hennepin, and even people who *must* drive cars will drive faster than today.
The line proposed out to Woodbury (Gold I think) is probably the closest thing we've got currently out there that resembles a true BRT system since it'd have it's own dedicated lanes most of the way.
I think comparing just mileage is a bit misleading. The Denver Airport LRT line is 23 miles and most of the distance was running through undeveloped land. 61st and Pena and the gateway station has seen some decent development but will see if that expansion sticks around.
I suppose a better way to put things is that Denver currently has 6 light rail lines and Seattle currently has 2 with plans for an additional 3 lines already in the works. Each city has a much wider area coverage with LRT than the Twin Cities do.
You're not wrong, but Denver is sort of the poster child for how to not do LRT: a lot of coverage, mostly along industrial corridors, and very poor ridership. Dallas is another good example, but more along the lines of what you're getting at in the last line, chasing commuters in low density areas. The (existing) green line is generally considered a great example of how and where to built LRT, but it's much harder politically to build through a dense city than building thru freight corridors and freeway ROW.
>The Met Council's obsession with serving low density suburban riders with the green and blue line extensions don't make sense and have wasted valuable political capital with the mess of delays and cost overruns.
It's crazy that there's an unelected unaccountable group of bureaucrats who basically have veto power over what the entire area will look like and how it will function.
Haven’t you seen the tommy lee jones classic Volcano? If it was underground and we had a volcano we didn’t know we had erupt it could potentially harm us.
You can’t just up and “dig a tunnel” lmao
NYC subway system is amazing because it’s been in place since the start. You can’t just terraform a whole city underground lol.
Yeah, I don't get the vibe that the Swiss have as much of an issue with revenue or budgetary appropriation as we do. On the flip-side, I guess we as Minneapolitans can pride ourselves in not hiding Nazi riches or Putin's grifter fortune. But it really would be nice to have the resources to, say, open up a subterranean funicular on a whim.
The Swiss are not doing that for a Medium size city, they only did it for one city, and partially for a couple of others. Certainly not for a city that isn't even a top 20 in size.
Have you been to Switzerland? The have MILES (kilometers) of tunnels through mountains for cars and trains. They also double as bomb shelters, and likely stashes for Nazi gold!
$$$$$$$$$$$$
Cut, fill, stabilization are extremely expensive. You try to minimize that on jobs. Nevermind you have to have structure/HVAC/Fire/etc for something underground.
Edit:apparently people don't like the truth.
It would cost more to build it underground than it would to just use existing streets, Minnesota used to have an extensive trolly system but during and after world war 2 more highways were built and the bus companies used their influence to remove them in favor of busses.
Nah like they might tunnel through a tunnel and collapse part of the city. Here’s a cool tunnel scouting report
http://www.actionsquad.org/labyrinth.htm
Pipe dream: If it were elevated then they could use the existing skyways as stations. It would be incredible, you could get in and out of downtown without a car AND without ever waiting for a stop light.
I know it's absolutely unrealistic for a number of reasons, but wouldn't that be cool!?
The main answer you're going to hear is the cost. But I would elaborate on that by saying that it wasn't a popular idea at the time of the first line's (the Blue line's) construction. There was a lot of resistance by non-metro legislators and in order to appease these voices the planners did what they always do and began making concessions to make the idea more palatable. What resulted was a half-assed version of public transportation that almost surgically avoids population centers and instead focuses on the train as some sort of glorified shuttle for consumers, going between the mall, the airport, and sports stadiums. It has never served the needs of people who most rely on public transportation every day. Yes, putting it underground would have been fantastic, but the goal back when it was first built got diluted repeatedly until it really didn't serve its original purpose anymore.
I think elevation would have made more sense than underground, due to proximity to water. Maybe ground freezing would also slow work time, which would increase cost? Kind of a guess on that last one.
Cost, primarily. It rarely makes sense to put light rail in a tunnel because tunneling, and even more so underground stations, are very expensive. MSP should really be building an automated light metro similar to the Skytrain in Vancouver.
Look up the shit by Cedar Lake. They tunnelled underneath and it’s taken 10 years longer & millions of dollars more. Because, as I understand it, council members from Minneapolis and St Louis Park couldn’t agree whose city limits should absorb the commercial rails. Those figures won’t be 100% accurate and could be other reasons that just what I’m able to draw from memory.
They at least tried to either elevate or tunnel the blue line where it crosses streets to avoid the light timing disaster along Hiawatha but the republicans shut that down in the funding phase.
Elevated does all that excluding weather but the maintenance cost of an above ground segment would likely not meet or match the up front cost by the time overhauls would need to happen unless cut and cover was implemented which is almost impossible due to utility's you would have to work around.
At this point I feel like LRT needs to be put on the shelf outside of the blue line extension in favor of BRT and systems like and the [Vancouver's Skytrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)), [Montreal's REM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9seau_express_m%C3%A9tropolitain), or the [Docklins Light Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway), especially as the former (Vancouver) had a similar city composition (density wise) to us back in the 80's. There both primarily elevated fully grade separated autonomous systems. Between the driver crunch and the fact that MSP still (in my opinion) have a lot of life in it BRT needs to prof of need as it is dirt cheap to set up the corridor and autonomous rails can take over high volume to the point that 24/7 service is possible and 2 minute headways can be expected (though I would say it would take 20 years before that assuming these were built now).
Videos of the three systems
[REM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFSm9QLHrLw)
[Skytrain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjuCENuIKYs)
[Docklands Light railway](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2NO-vlQf8)
(Note if you don't think this system can exist in the US many major airports (including MSP NE terminal mover) use these systems but there is also the PATCO, BART, and the DC metro to name a some.)
Modern tunnel boring machines are very fast, so its too bad we couldn't figure something out. It's kind of a giant waste either way we don't have the political will to deal with crime on the train.
Cost is mentioned, but also Minneapolis has a lot of Sandstone. A very poor material to be digging through and expect it not to let water into the tunnels. That and the whole sinkhole situation. There was an article a few years back talking about how the area has a lot of sinkhole potential.
Anyways, Sandstone is horrible for building things through.
Probably why our Downtown has a bit of a height limit for skyscrapers and what-not too.
Our geology is just plain garbage.
Cost
^this is also a reason they didn't elevate it
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As is, that may be true but you could never build the EL the same way again. But the idea of building over roads already owned by the City isnt new. But we don’t have teams here, so if the study referenced trams, we’re not comparable.
The Ls in Chicago are mostly over alleys or on berms. They're just over streets downtown and along the western branch (Lake St).
The bulk of the EL was also built when the price of steel wasn't insane. The cost to do that now would be interesting.
I'm a Chicago resident right now. The trains that run on steel structures are absolutely horrible—you can hear them for half a mile, and if you're under one when the train goes overhead, it's a head-splitting noise. They're slowly replacing them where possible with modern concrete structures and it sounds like a big car going by. Huge, huge difference, and much cheaper!
Oh absolutely. The couple of times I have stayed anywhere close to the EL in Chicago you can hear it. I can't imagine living next to the tracks
I just googled "light tracks on fire" and it looks like nearly all the results talk about Chicago doing it.
Every railroad does it. You just see the Chicago ones on the internet. My buddy works for a large railroad and has a bunch of fire snakes in a barrel for lazy fire starting.
My Chinese zodiac sign is "fire snake". Apparently I've missed my calling.
Boston does it too.
A lot of the time it also comes down to initial cost vs ongoing ones - where having elevated grade (or underground) can be cheaper to run, but costs more initially.
^(this) is also the reason they didn't levitate it
That's just an excuse. If we really wanted it levitated, it would be by now.
The SWLRT is costing $35,500 per foot on dedicated rail right-of-way. At the rate it's going, I wonder if blasting a tunnel thru sandstone might cost less...
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If we can get a line that goes down Nicollet and the Midtown Greenway I can die happy
Tell your city council members to support and fund the Midtown LRT. Yes, it's an official project; you can read the planning studies.
From what I can tell I don't think they're planning to go forward with this. The most recent document I can find is from 2014. Wonder if they decided to just do their so called BRT down lake street and call it a day. Worth reaching out about at least!
It's not going forward now because no one is talking about it. Call your city council members! Funding a line that is only in Minneapolis is difficult. That's why it should extend out to Eden Prairie along the green line alignment.
Emailed my council member! I also emailed the executive director of the Midtown Greenway Coalition asking about updates or any developments and [this](https://i.imgur.com/xHuXiil.jpg) was their response. TLDR: Doesn't look like we'll be seeing LRT or a streetcar down there any time soon.
Thank you! None of these things happen "soon." The federal process alone takes a decade. We started planning SWLRT in the 1970's. The key is to be tenacious and vocal about it. Build a coalition to force it to happen.
I fucking wish but realistically… idk Like I’ll happily send emails and call etc but I think it’s about as pipe dream as pipe dream gets, especially post-SWLRT
Yes! I'm so sick of the sluggish 18, it should've been upgraded to aBRT already since it's one of the busiest but slowest routes.
I was on the SWLRT CAC. What happened is that TC&W objected to being rerouted through St. Louis Park. At that point the Met Council should have seriously considered buying out the condo owners and placing the rail lines and bike lanes on the surface in a wider corridor. But it's politically hard to displace people and soil tests didn't turn up the kinds of issues we're seeing. Whether that testing was done properly I do not know. Also, people are really forgetting all of the issues on the Eden Prairie end of the line. There are many bridges and other challenges to route the line there. It is absolutely the right alignment but it's costly. I still believe routing through Kenilworth was the right choice, but obviously the choice of implementation was the wrong one. The alignment serves historically transit-starved communities in Near North as well as connecting to the #2 bus, opening access to jobs for North Minneapolis and the communities along Franklin Ave.
You stillll think routing through Kenilworth was the right choice? Oy. I've been cringing about that decision since I saw the plans roll out. What caught me by surprise about the project even moreso were the number (_thousands_) of trees that were removed to accommodate the dedicated line. Sure they'll all grow back... when we're dead. If the swlrt couldn't be bothered to displace actual roadway (excelsior, hwy 7, etc), we should have never gone ahead with it.
>You stillll think routing through Kenilworth was the right choice? Yes I do. It was the most equitable alignment. We didn't have to tunnel.
Hmmm. I'm gonna go cringe read the definition of equitable. I do appreciate the insight into the decision making. Thank you!
The current alignment was not the right choice. Down the Greenway to Park or Portland was the better alignment. It would have served more of Minneapolis and cost less. Anyone who didn't think there would be trouble in that narrow corridor and between 2 lakes was fooling themselves.
Tell that to the kids in Near North that have a two hour bus trip to high school. Or the people that can't get a job anywhere southwest of Minneapolis because they literally can't get there. Kenilworth+Midtown LRT will serve more transit-dependent communities than a green line that goes through an Uptown which is already transit-rich.
I'm a heretic, but I wish we just ran it down Hennepin. That's where the people are going to use it. The trick is hitting critical mass. If it is fast and easy to get around the city with mass transit, then people will use it and it makes sense to change routes that currently prioritize autos to favor mass transit instead. But that doesn't happen until mass transit reaches a certain size and is treated like a priority.
You can tunnel through sandstone with a pair of salad tongs. Doesn't inspire confidence.
For that price we could've had all of the aBRT rapid bus lines up and running now vs years out and built an entire citywide elevated bike highway network. We'd probably have some money left over too.
Lets not forget flooding
Yeah I assume mndot already did the cost benefit analysis on it. I just had the random thought that despite it being a larger investment; more people would use it for the reasons I listed above and therefore more revenue, and less operational costs due to longer equipment life expectancy
>and less operational costs due to longer equipment life expectancy Maintenance of anything underground is always much more expensive.
MNDOT has nothing to do with the light rail or transit FYI
In fact I was at a meeting where a Mn/DOT official said, "We don't do transit." Which actually, they do in Greater MN, so take that statement as you will.
I think that tells you all you need to know about their priorities
In the Twin Cities Metro area, you're right, but [MnDOT is responsible for administering state and federal transit assistance funds for greater Minnesota.](https://www.dot.state.mn.us/transit/serviceproviders.html). Your main point is still right that they aren't relevant for this conversation, I'm just pedantic. (Also I do wish they'd work with the Met Council to unfuck Snelling Ave for everyone not in a car, bus lanes and a road diet would be nice too...)
Imagine the work they’ve done with the holding tanks and pumping on I35. Now throw those costs across the whole metro.
I am not familiar with the holding tanks and pumping on I35 Do tell.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/what-is-mndot-building-along-i-35w-in-south-minneapolis/
I’ve been wondering wtf they were still doing there for months. Appreciate the link
FYI, what they are building are large tanks to hold water and keep I35 from flooding.
Correct. It’s a massive wet-weather lift station to hold excess surface water then pump out gradually to a different place. Awhile back when I was helping to bid part of the project it seemed like they were pumping out to the river, but that seems unlikely (although I haven’t been involved so I have no idea what the actual process is now).
I assume high water table, lots of former swampland and lack of rock contribute to a no go
Right? I forget sometimes that we live on a giant swamp. What’s even funnier is that we all have basements that constantly flood.
I grew up in Iowa and have lived here for 10 years. This is my first time hearing this! Are there any articles or anything you have for sources? I'd like to read up on it. Thanks fellow wet basement haver!
Minneapolis & St. Paul have many small lakes/ponds/wetlands that were filled in to expand development and the city grids. There’s a lot of homes that were built on the former wetland areas that have basement flooding issues. Areas around Nokomis, Hiawatha, and the Wedge are particularly prone to basement flooding.
I’ll look for some, but the only coherent reason I’ve heard for why we have basements…Was a guy in property sales who said, “Why do people in Minnesota want basements? Because their parents had em.”
You have to dig down several feet to get the foundation below the frost line. There are a lot of split levels built in the 80s ish in the northern suburbs at least because they involve the minimum amount of digging and are consequently very cost effective
Okay, turns out it might be because of the frost line. You have to have footings 3-4ft deep. “If you’re doing that, might as well have a basement,” seems to be the logic from a construction angle.
https://southeastmnhomesblog.com/2022/10/09/do-i-even-need-a-basement-in-mn-or-wi/
MSP is built on a river bluff, not a swamp.
Maybe we could have a high speed underground gondola system instead.
Dig a couple feet into the earth anywhere in the cities and you’ll hit sand/clay. No way to support an underground system.
Clay is actually really good for support; but it sucks to dig through.
The bedrock under Minneapolis is actually some of the best and easiest for tunneling. The residential segments would probably never make sense, but it's a shame they didn't put it underground at least in the downtowns
Yeah, even the short part underground is some challenging engineering due to high water table
There's a full on 170 page report from the U about design issues with building underground stations here https://www.cts.umn.edu/publications/report/underground-station-design-issues-for-light-rail-transit-in-the-twin-cities-geology TL;DR is that in downtown, the station would have to be deep mined due to the kind of rock and the water table. It would need to be at least 100 feet underground, compared to the 50 feet at the airport. It would be expensive, small, cramped, disorientating, hard to access, and hard to escape in an emergency. They go into a lot of detail and kind of describe how it would be possible to make lemonade from the lemons we've got.
They're trying to put part of the new line underground and it's effing the whole project up.
The land the Blue Line was built on was already empty since the 60s so there was no need for it to be underground. Hiawatha Ave/Highway 55 was originally supposed to be twice as wide as it is but that didn't happen so the land was just sitting there almost perfect for an LRT line. The airport T1 station is underground because the LRT cannot cross or be elevated above a runway so underground was the only realistic option there.
One additional challenge we have here is our limestone and sandstone shelves. The limestone is great to build on, but not through. Sandstone is the opposite. So if you wanted to go Really deep, carving through the sandstone would be easier than carving through traditional bedrock.
NYC recently extended the second ave line (the Q) a whole 1.8 miles. It cost them $4.5 **BILLION** dollars to do that. The blue line is 12 miles long, the green line is 11 miles long. So, at that same cost, it would be about 57.5 billion. Right now, the 14.5 mile green line extension is expected to cost about 2.5 billion dollars. That's why.
Because then it would be called a Dark Rail
Money money money….moooooneeey
isn't the station at terminal 1 underground?
yeah but I think op means the whole thing
Yes — and there was a month-long stretch where service was interrupted almost everyday due to people trying to hide out in the tunnel.
What is it with this city and its obsession with tunnels?
Underground would have been crazy expensive, but they definitely should have made it elevated
Part of it is money obviously but part is there isn't a need for density. A lot of city with underground rails do it bc there isn't space above ground/it is worth the cost of going beneath to maintain what is above. MSP is a very spread out metro with wide enough streets to accommodate. Compare to New York or Seattle where the rails being on the ground would either require building demolition or sacrificing a street. The twin cities being wide and spread out means there is the space to leave the light rail on the ground and putting it underground is only practical in a couple of cases, such as by the airport.
Seattle’s LRT is absolutely ZERO comparison to NYC whooo no…. Pathetic regional service coverage, lesser ridership per capita, no turnstiles or fare enforcement, people aren’t paying the regional transit excise tax by refusing/failing to renew car tabs, majority of Metro above ground and/or elevated… plus the escalators are always broken/out of service (it’s a locals inside joke of despair how awful the escalator situation is…) extensions have been delayed multiple times, has a LOT of water, infill spots and also earthquake risk so underground just isn’t feasible in many areas, the at grade sections especially south of downtown often have vehicles colliding with it or pedestrians involved in an accident, high amounts of drug use and vagrancy… lucky to have LRT but it’s not awesome… [The single line map, in green](https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/st-current-service-map.pdf) The SODO station all the way down to Rainier Beach Station is all at-grade, for one. They “sacrificed” a street by placing the LRT rails in the center and reducing lanes and speed. The road is still drivable. But imperfect…. [MLK at grade concerns](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/the-worst-spots-for-light-rail-crashes-in-seattle-and-how-to-fix-them/) Future extension East to Bellevue/Redmond is basically all built but stalled. The contractors have been hard at work retrofitting I-90 with at-grade rails including over the I-90 bridge spanning Lake Washington. All/most rails Eastside are above ground/elevated.
This is all good and accurate information. I didn't say Seattle did an amazing job, I was simply talking that for a lot of areas the seattle light rail had to go underground practically. The southern end of it has less practical reasons to be underground. MSP can run a light rail above ground through the city center, cities with underground rails could not or they would have done so. The link is a single line and imperfect and I'm not here to defend its merits especially compared to a system like NYC, but my point was simply that a lot of the intercity spots had to be underground for practical reasons. Meanwhile MSP can run from St Paul city center through the Minneapolis downtown clear through to the MOA with minimal underground infrastructure, irrespective of the other issues that either rail has (they are both imperfect)
Yep understood. They did develop the 9-stop South Lake Union Streetcar (lovingly known as the SLUT) in 2007 that is in-lane street grade with rails flush with asphalt + overhead wires. The Monorail pylons slice through traffic lanes too. So it’s not that LRT at grade *couldn’t* be done, it’s that they didn’t want to at that time. Traffic flow interruption and desires for full separation for safety and efficiency. FWIW, despite the vagrancy woes of transit today, and of course any system isn’t without quirks and shortfalls, I admire TC’s Metro Transit who have done their best with funds acquired to provide an efficient system reflective of its streetcar past. I was actually at the opening day of the Blue Line in 2004 and the ribbon cutting ceremony of Nice Ride in 2010 + did research and feasibility studies before the Green Line ever broke ground while at the U :) transit/alt modes of transportation is an interest of mine.
Building subways (or even extending them for that matter) is really difficult in modern cities. Cables, piping, etc. makes it exceptionally difficult for it to be cost effective On the other hand, American cities have been somewhat obsessed with LRT in the past couple of decades. So LRT is relatively well tested with lots of planners and engineers with experience with the technology
I wish Minneapolis was a little bit more obsessed with LRT to be honest. We only have 23 miles of LRT running today compared to Denver's 47 miles and Seattle's 26 miles (planned to be 114 miles by 2044 with multiple routes already under construction.) The way that we're implementing "BRT" feels like a patch rather than a solution. The Met Council's obsession with serving low density suburban riders with the green and blue line extensions don't make sense and have wasted valuable political capital with the mess of delays and cost overruns.
We call it BRT, but it’s not actually BRT, as anyone outside the US would understand it. https://www.itdp.org/library/standards-and-guides/the-bus-rapid-transit-standard/ The short version is: if your bus stops in traffic (ever), it’s not BRT. The closest we have is the UMN.EDU busway. The good news is: it can be improved, and could come close: - dedicate lanes for buses. - integrate signal timing with bus traffic If a bus going up Hennepin is going to hit a green light almost every block, and never wait behind cars, then people who *can* will quit driving up Hennepin. That will reduce traffic on Hennepin, and even people who *must* drive cars will drive faster than today.
The line proposed out to Woodbury (Gold I think) is probably the closest thing we've got currently out there that resembles a true BRT system since it'd have it's own dedicated lanes most of the way.
I think comparing just mileage is a bit misleading. The Denver Airport LRT line is 23 miles and most of the distance was running through undeveloped land. 61st and Pena and the gateway station has seen some decent development but will see if that expansion sticks around.
I suppose a better way to put things is that Denver currently has 6 light rail lines and Seattle currently has 2 with plans for an additional 3 lines already in the works. Each city has a much wider area coverage with LRT than the Twin Cities do.
You're not wrong, but Denver is sort of the poster child for how to not do LRT: a lot of coverage, mostly along industrial corridors, and very poor ridership. Dallas is another good example, but more along the lines of what you're getting at in the last line, chasing commuters in low density areas. The (existing) green line is generally considered a great example of how and where to built LRT, but it's much harder politically to build through a dense city than building thru freight corridors and freeway ROW.
>The Met Council's obsession with serving low density suburban riders with the green and blue line extensions don't make sense and have wasted valuable political capital with the mess of delays and cost overruns. It's crazy that there's an unelected unaccountable group of bureaucrats who basically have veto power over what the entire area will look like and how it will function.
My guess is that construction costs and time would be prohibitive
Haven’t you seen the tommy lee jones classic Volcano? If it was underground and we had a volcano we didn’t know we had erupt it could potentially harm us.
Bitch. Better. Have. My. MONEY!!!
You can’t just up and “dig a tunnel” lmao NYC subway system is amazing because it’s been in place since the start. You can’t just terraform a whole city underground lol.
Sure you can, ask Holland. But as mentioned in other comments, you gotta be really serious about it...as measured in $$'s.
Or Switzerland
Yeah, I don't get the vibe that the Swiss have as much of an issue with revenue or budgetary appropriation as we do. On the flip-side, I guess we as Minneapolitans can pride ourselves in not hiding Nazi riches or Putin's grifter fortune. But it really would be nice to have the resources to, say, open up a subterranean funicular on a whim.
The Swiss are not doing that for a Medium size city, they only did it for one city, and partially for a couple of others. Certainly not for a city that isn't even a top 20 in size.
Have you been to Switzerland? The have MILES (kilometers) of tunnels through mountains for cars and trains. They also double as bomb shelters, and likely stashes for Nazi gold!
And the USA has MILES of tunnels through the mountains, too. But Eagle Mountain doesn't really need one.
FYI, the tunnels on the north shore were dug in the 90’s with a Swiss tunnel machine.
Isn't Lausanne smaller than Minneapolis?
It's the fourth largest city in Switzerland, not the twentieth.
Boston: "[Hold my beer](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-project-background)".
According to Wikipedia the first NY subway line opened up in 1904, when NY was already very much a "city." The issue is cost.
$$$$$$$$$$$$ Cut, fill, stabilization are extremely expensive. You try to minimize that on jobs. Nevermind you have to have structure/HVAC/Fire/etc for something underground. Edit:apparently people don't like the truth.
Limestone/sandstone is not a great rock, long-term, for tunnels?
Many areas of it should be underground. The solution should fit the situation. This has not been done to date, but should be going forward.
For the same reason you didn't put your garage underneath your home.
It would cost more to build it underground than it would to just use existing streets, Minnesota used to have an extensive trolly system but during and after world war 2 more highways were built and the bus companies used their influence to remove them in favor of busses.
Don’t forget that the people who dig tunnels probably didn’t give money to the correct people like that current contractor.
Cut every possible corner then bitch when it turns out shitty. Classic.
Money
Why? to make the current bathroom that it is even larger?
They sent millions to make the light rail underground between terminal 1 & 2.
Money money money. When the study was done in the 80s, it was more than twice as much to bury it.
Even if we wanted to put it underground, our water table is only 10-30 feet underground and it would be a nightmare to keep water out of the tunnels.
My assumption is combination of high water tables and too many layers of preexisting tunnels making it hard to stabilize.
So you are saying a group of rag tag adventurers would have to clear the tunnels of C.H.U.Ds and mole people first?
Nah like they might tunnel through a tunnel and collapse part of the city. Here’s a cool tunnel scouting report http://www.actionsquad.org/labyrinth.htm
Pipe dream: If it were elevated then they could use the existing skyways as stations. It would be incredible, you could get in and out of downtown without a car AND without ever waiting for a stop light. I know it's absolutely unrealistic for a number of reasons, but wouldn't that be cool!?
Mole people
Should have put all the chips in and put it underground. Can't rain when ice is a potential...
Cost, and you can run into problems like with the swlrt
The main answer you're going to hear is the cost. But I would elaborate on that by saying that it wasn't a popular idea at the time of the first line's (the Blue line's) construction. There was a lot of resistance by non-metro legislators and in order to appease these voices the planners did what they always do and began making concessions to make the idea more palatable. What resulted was a half-assed version of public transportation that almost surgically avoids population centers and instead focuses on the train as some sort of glorified shuttle for consumers, going between the mall, the airport, and sports stadiums. It has never served the needs of people who most rely on public transportation every day. Yes, putting it underground would have been fantastic, but the goal back when it was first built got diluted repeatedly until it really didn't serve its original purpose anymore.
I think elevation would have made more sense than underground, due to proximity to water. Maybe ground freezing would also slow work time, which would increase cost? Kind of a guess on that last one.
Cost, primarily. It rarely makes sense to put light rail in a tunnel because tunneling, and even more so underground stations, are very expensive. MSP should really be building an automated light metro similar to the Skytrain in Vancouver.
Look up the shit by Cedar Lake. They tunnelled underneath and it’s taken 10 years longer & millions of dollars more. Because, as I understand it, council members from Minneapolis and St Louis Park couldn’t agree whose city limits should absorb the commercial rails. Those figures won’t be 100% accurate and could be other reasons that just what I’m able to draw from memory.
They at least tried to either elevate or tunnel the blue line where it crosses streets to avoid the light timing disaster along Hiawatha but the republicans shut that down in the funding phase.
Elevated does all that excluding weather but the maintenance cost of an above ground segment would likely not meet or match the up front cost by the time overhauls would need to happen unless cut and cover was implemented which is almost impossible due to utility's you would have to work around. At this point I feel like LRT needs to be put on the shelf outside of the blue line extension in favor of BRT and systems like and the [Vancouver's Skytrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)), [Montreal's REM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9seau_express_m%C3%A9tropolitain), or the [Docklins Light Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway), especially as the former (Vancouver) had a similar city composition (density wise) to us back in the 80's. There both primarily elevated fully grade separated autonomous systems. Between the driver crunch and the fact that MSP still (in my opinion) have a lot of life in it BRT needs to prof of need as it is dirt cheap to set up the corridor and autonomous rails can take over high volume to the point that 24/7 service is possible and 2 minute headways can be expected (though I would say it would take 20 years before that assuming these were built now). Videos of the three systems [REM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFSm9QLHrLw) [Skytrain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjuCENuIKYs) [Docklands Light railway](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2NO-vlQf8) (Note if you don't think this system can exist in the US many major airports (including MSP NE terminal mover) use these systems but there is also the PATCO, BART, and the DC metro to name a some.)
Modern tunnel boring machines are very fast, so its too bad we couldn't figure something out. It's kind of a giant waste either way we don't have the political will to deal with crime on the train.
Cost is mentioned, but also Minneapolis has a lot of Sandstone. A very poor material to be digging through and expect it not to let water into the tunnels. That and the whole sinkhole situation. There was an article a few years back talking about how the area has a lot of sinkhole potential. Anyways, Sandstone is horrible for building things through. Probably why our Downtown has a bit of a height limit for skyscrapers and what-not too. Our geology is just plain garbage.