Best direction for the Green line at this point?

  • Go ahead with the current option of Eau Claire to Lynbrook and phase in extensions.

    Votes: 42 60.0%

  • Re-design the whole system

    Votes: 22 31.4%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 6 8.6%
  • Total voters
    70
darwink said:
What an analysis like ^this^ lacked is a few more lines: estimated cost and $ per 'point'. With operating and maintenance estimates, you can combined cost into an npv. then you can use ridership estimates to get nov per incremental rider.

Also, the financial section for some reason negatively scores acquiring property, assuming that buying twice as many lots is as equally bad as paying twice as much for the entire project.
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Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't even consider that. In hindsight, it's almost crazy that the capital costs and constructability of a >$1B project only counted for 10 points out of a 140 point scoring scheme.
 
accord1999 said:
Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't even consider that. In hindsight, it's almost crazy that the capital costs and constructability of a >$1B project only counted for 10 points out of a 140 point scoring scheme.
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Almost like the project was out of control for a long long time. It just didn't seem blatantly obvious since decisions were all in service of delivering the project as conceived between 2003 and 2006.
 
Surrealplaces said:
Thanks! We were having a discussion at work, and none of us knew the approximate difference.

I don't remember the costs either, but I was one of those in favor of the subway. Under the previous cost assumptions, I was okay with paying extra to do the subway. If the elevated is 1/5, 1/4 or even 1/3 of the costs, then we need to look at it for sure.
My only concern about the elevated option was the effect on the street vibrancy, but on top of cost there are also some benefits to elevated. Maybe it's just me but as a rider, I always prefer natural light and scenery to nothing but black and perhaps there's a way to tie the DT stations into the +15?
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I’m really not too concerned with street vibrancy. It isn’t a detractor at all in other cities I’ve been to and seen extensive usage in dense areas (Tokyo, Taipei etc). It’s still fine in Chicago too, albeit extremely dated so quite noisy.
 
whatchyyc said:
But IMO if you're building a subway under 8th ave you might as well just bury the Red Line instead and put the Green Line on 7th Ave, rather than kneecap the Red Line with the interline
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CBBarnett said:
Not a bad idea - do this above ground Green Line thing, but split the Red Line out with it's Stephen Ave subway project. For a similar length of tunnelling you get some total system improvements and a broader capacity bump, especially on the always-busy Red Line. I mean if we are going to spend $5B+ on some complicated big-city train system, this would be a really good upgrade.
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^This seems like the best alternate option I’ve read so far.

Actually, I’d prefer if the Green Line shared the 8th Ave. tunnel with the Red Line up to 2nd St. SW and then turned north to terminate at the surface level Eau Claire station per the last GL plan.

The Red line would utilize the full 8th Ave tunnel to the west end of Downtown where it turns north per the current future 8th Ave. subway plan.

If it’s too expensive to construct the 8th Ave. tunnel now could they run all three lines on 7th Ave for the next 10 years ?

And my final question:
Is there a long-range plan for a tunnel under 7th Ave. In addition to the 8th Ave. tunnel ?
 
FCC1982 said:
Is it actually feasible to interline all 3 lines on 7th Ave.?
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There's a study from 2006 that actually claims the limit on 7th Avenue is 36 trains/hour in one direction.

1725950834208.png

1725950864105.png

I'm not sure if 36/hour really is possible. But due to loss of DT employment, WFH and other commute shifts, rush hour demand doesn't appear to have grown as expected. Right now the Red Line can't even use 4-car trains because of work at Haysboro and its peak frequency is still only about every five minutes. With 4-car trains, there should be room to reduce frequencies on the Red and Blue Lines to fit in 5-6 trains/hour for the SE which should be sufficient for the short-term and get an understanding for what the ridership from the SE will actually be. Whether it's enough to justify the 8th Avenue Subway, or to start on an independent NCLRT.
 
accord1999 said:
There's a study from 2006 that actually claims the limit on 7th Avenue is 36 trains/hour in one direction.

View attachment 595146
View attachment 595147
I'm not sure if 36/hour really is possible. But due to loss of DT employment, WFH and other commute shifts, rush hour demand doesn't appear to have grown as expected. Right now the Red Line can't even use 4-car trains because of work at Haysboro and its peak frequency is still only about every five minutes. With 4-car trains, there should be room to reduce frequencies on the Red and Blue Lines to fit in 5-6 trains/hour for the SE which should be sufficient for the short-term and get an understanding for what the ridership from the SE will actually be. Whether it's enough to justify the 8th Avenue Subway, or to start on an independent NCLRT.
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I’d be interested in knowing the data, but Red Line ridership includes a lot of pass-through traffic to get to the NW university and SAIT.

7th Avenue is a beast of ground-level efficiency, but it’s also slow. Trains can only go 20km/h for most of the core due to so many stations, a ton of trains, and the sharp turns to enter and exit the core for the Red Line. A subway could simplify this and centralize the number of stations to 3 for the whole core, allowing the trains to go faster.

Removing the red line also opens up consideration for what to do about Blue Line west. It has the lowest ridership, but frequency is high because of high demand on the NE line. You don’t need that many trains on the far west blue line.

Perhaps the play is:
1. Red line subway, remove from 7th.
2. Add greenline to 7th.
3. Extend green/blue to MRU from Westbrook.
 
whatchyyc said:
But IMO if you're building a subway under 8th ave you might as well just bury the Red Line instead and put the Green Line on 7th Ave, rather than kneecap the Red Line with the interline
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Yeah. You could do either one. That's the beauty of maintaining the same rolling stock of LRT cars. You could run the red line under 8th and the SE-LRT on 7th ave. Or vice-a-versa. Mix and match.

The only problem is that the 8th ave subway is going to be ridiculously expensive. That's why I think stage one of the 8th ave subway/SE-LRT would only have stations at City Hall and Centre street. It would be a stub-line. Having a station at Centre street is still central enough for most people to walk to.
 
Has the city abandoned 4 car trains? As soon as they added them to 7th, it was completely overwhelmed. Haven't noticed many since the downturn / covid.
 
Mountain Man said:
Has the city abandoned 4 car trains? As soon as they added them to 7th, it was completely overwhelmed. Haven't noticed many since the downturn / covid.
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The city in replacing the U2s, retired them faster than replacements arrived I believe, due to the office ridership slump, then the COVID slump. 4 car trains will be back.

4 car trains slightly reduced the trains per hour iirc, but of course raised the people per hour.
 
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