urbanSTL

eee123 wrote: ↑

Oct 17, 2023

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Oct 17, 2023

... it wouldn't run as directly to South County as the Jefferson alignment.

From a quick Google search, it looks like Houston's street-running light rail averages about 15mph. A trip from South County mall to downtown is going to be time consuming. Seems like the few long trips shouldn't even really be much of a consideration when something as slow as street-running light rail is more designed for shorter trips within the city.

It's not planned to be "street running" in the traditional sense. Not familiar with the Houston system, but looking at Wiki it appears that large portions of it are essentially a modern trolley style system; KC trolley on steroids, maybe. This won't be that. It's intended to have a dedicated right of way, albeit one in an island in the middle of the street. There will be grade crossings at every intersection, but there shouldn't be any street running, unless the plan changes dramatically. The plan involves some quite serious road diets and a lot of traffic calming. This should honestly be a great thing. Won't be as fast as the original routes, but it doesn't need to be. It's not going all that far. Should be faster than the bus, which probably also averages about fifteen miles an hour. (When you factor in stop times. Might well be less, actually.) Also, I've never seen a plan that had this going to South County Mall. Later phases, if we ever get there, might extend it to Loughborough Commons, but sadly I don't think even that's in planning right now. South County Mall feels like pie in the sky. Not opposed, mind, but . . . that'd be way down the road. (And south of Jefferson it'd probably be in a completely dedicated grade-separated right of way anyway, so much more in keeping with most of the rest of Metrolink speedwise.)

A Gravois alignment could always spur off at Jefferson one day. Would be great to connect an extended Blue line at the River Des Peres crossing.

Throw in the South Side Metrolink expansion on the UP ROW and south city is a railed transit heaven. Maybe by 2085 lmao

Has Metro talked about traffic signal priority for the N/S line?


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^ that’s a design stage issue and we’re a step away from design- environmental is current step

dtgwvc wrote: ↑

Oct 19, 2023

Has Metro talked about traffic signal priority for the N/S line?

I imagine they will have signal priority. Or else this whole thing will have gone to waste like the KC Streetcar.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Oct 18, 2023

eee123 wrote: ↑

Oct 17, 2023

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Oct 17, 2023

... it wouldn't run as directly to South County as the Jefferson alignment.

From a quick Google search, it looks like Houston's street-running light rail averages about 15mph. A trip from South County mall to downtown is going to be time consuming. Seems like the few long trips shouldn't even really be much of a consideration when something as slow as street-running light rail is more designed for shorter trips within the city.

It's not planned to be "street running" in the traditional sense. Not familiar with the Houston system, but looking at Wiki it appears that large portions of it are essentially a modern trolley style system; KC trolley on steroids, maybe. This won't be that. It's intended to have a dedicated right of way, albeit one in an island in the middle of the street. There will be grade crossings at every intersection, but there shouldn't be any street running, unless the plan changes dramatically. The plan involves some quite serious road diets and a lot of traffic calming. This should honestly be a great thing. Won't be as fast as the original routes, but it doesn't need to be. It's not going all that far. Should be faster than the bus, which probably also averages about fifteen miles an hour. (When you factor in stop times. Might well be less, actually.) Also, I've never seen a plan that had this going to South County Mall. Later phases, if we ever get there, might extend it to Loughborough Commons, but sadly I don't think even that's in planning right now. South County Mall feels like pie in the sky. Not opposed, mind, but . . . that'd be way down the road. (And south of Jefferson it'd probably be in a completely dedicated grade-separated right of way anyway, so much more in keeping with most of the rest of Metrolink speedwise.)

The green line in Minneapolis looks like what you're describing, and it takes 30 minutes to go 8 miles from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis.

Are there rail lines in the middle of streets that aren't slow?

^The green line looks to be a hybrid, and only partially in a truly dedicated right of way. Substantial portions in downtown St. Paul, for instance, are in the middle of the street. (Probably also downtown Minneapolis, but I didn't check the whole thing.) These stretches seem to be limited to a 25mph maximum. Other sections, which have a true dedicated right of way with barriers protecting them and no hard surface to confuse automobile drivers, more in line with what I think Metrolink is planning for the yellow line, have 45 mph maximum speeds. Still other sections, perhaps the majority of it, have a semi-dedicated right of way that is protected by low kerbs and chains between bollards, but still with a hard surface which a motorist or pedestrian could conceivably use, in spite of signage. (Rather like the semi-dedicated bits of Delmar Loop trolley between Delmar Station and the history museum.) Those are limited to 35mph in the Twin Cities case. I hope we can do better than that, but that's hardly terrible. You also loose time for station stops and curves, but that's true no matter what kind of RoW you have. The higher the density of stops the slower going it will be.

Are you going to see the kind of 60+mph speeds you can get on Metrolink in Illinois corn fields? No. But you don't need that. The average trip will be half the length that you're describing or less. From Jefferson and Broadway to NGA West will be about five miles. Even at Minneapolis green line speeds, that'd be twenty minutes. Most trips will be shorter than that; a few miles and ten or fifteen minutes at most to a transfer to red or blue. Now that transfer could really kill a trip unless Metrolink gets their timings back up on red and blue. But the yellow route itself shouldn't be a huge problem. The first phase will only be about eight miles end to end. A half hour, even if it is that slow (and it shouldn't be) would still be better than the 70 line right now. (Which is quite usable.) Let's get the damned thing built already!

 St. Louis has received a large grant from the federal government.  . Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited not long ago. Allocation of funds has been directed  for updated maintenance and generic infusion of cash into MetroLink's many various problems. Driver shortage, hour long waiting with no shelter needed in severe cold and hot weather.  The 5 million dollar North-South extension inspected the entire plan and it was approved. 
However, the over-extended decision was never brought forward. Because of car culture at its most.!  Those with money always will get a safe and personal vehicle that is affordable to them.  But, not the large population that don't pay the inclement payments one must pay for car driving.  The expansion of the North-South construction is needed in an extreme way. 2 hours on a bus which I have to transfer to and then get to a train.  The approved N-S extension has gone MUTE. Why?








  

I have no idea if a bot wrote this or an actual person


The NS isn’t going to start construction for at least another 3 years nor has it been funded or approved for construction yet. It’s just at the 18-24 month environmental review stage

Last night at the design consultant informational session, Bi-State provided the following timeline.
- Environmental complete early 2025.
- Design complete late 2026.
- Construction 2027 through 2030.

Whether we do it or not, I hope we can tackle some small to medium sized bus improvement problems in the meantime. Like BRT- lite on Grand, gravois, Kingshighway, Chippewa. I rode KC’s Main Street MAX bus route the other day and while its nothing fancy there are a lot of routes in STL that could use that kind of treatment. This n/s line is great but I worry it’s going to cost so much that we can’t do any more capital improvements to transit till 2050. I don’t even think the N/S line will be that transformative until we extend it West across natural bridge to connect with the red line in north county.


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addxb2 wrote: ↑

Dec 19, 2023

Last night at the design consultant informational session, Bi-State provided the following timeline.
- Environmental complete early 2025.
- Design complete late 2026.
- Construction 2027 through 2030.

I think the timeline of Infrastructure Act Funds available which I believe are being spread over 5 years and DOT still has a trainload of funds, pun intended, it hasn't dispersed, fits well for the N-S timeline.  Thinking of a couple big mega grant awards being announced by politicians last couple of days from Portland I-5 bridge replacemetn to Stuart FL rail bring replacement to Port of Long Beach landing a major rail grant.  Not mistaken, but the Phoenix light rail extension picked up a nice rail/DOT grant to fund this project.
That being said, someone with a lot better knowledge can fill me in on my thoughts being correct and or N-S is not far enough along in environmental/planning phases to land Fed dollars on the back end of Infrastrucure dollars awards to kick start city portion, first phase. 

It's kind of silly to require a full environmental study in order to put an above ground mass transit line on what is currently a stroad. This a very obvious opportunity for streamlining but the powers that be in this country won't even take the low hanging fruit which keeps costs high and timelines long.

Of course this is out of Metro's control, although even if it weren't this is an organization that's still slow speed single tracking a year and half after the flooding damaged the system. It's very hard to support transit in a country and region where the transit authorities don't even support it.

 environmental study isn't just air quality (for sake of simplicity) its a much broader study

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 20, 2023

 environmental study isn't just air quality (for sake of simplicity) its a much broader study

I understand that, but my argument is that it's an already paved and trafficked strip, there just aren't a lot of factors that will get changed by running a set of tracks down the middle of it. They're not widening anything or paving over more green space or cutting a new right of way like in the MidAmerica Airport extension. We should have policies that encourage and streamline transit expansion, the study in this instance is something that could have been minimized or eliminated.

Count me on the side of less studies, especially one like North-South which has been studied to death as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile, EIS studies barely seem able to stop actually environmentally harmful projects like widening highways and oil/gas pipelines. 

Due to decades of these types of infrastructure projects destroying minority neighborhoods and property, the environmental report also includes impacts of the project to those neighborhoods and communities.

As someone who contributes to these studies, and an unabashed "environmentalist", I agree with a lot of what was said above. The outcome can feel mostly known before even beginning. While several alternatives are evaluated, including the "no build" alternative, a lot of the text can feel like fluff. But, the reason there is so much of this "fluff" is due to lawsuits which have resulted in these studies growing larger and larger. Otherwise the project proponent can be sued for overlooking a protected resource, disregarding minority communities, etc.

STLEnginerd wrote: ↑

Dec 20, 2023

I tend to agree but there are a couple things that probably come out of environmental study that are worthwhile.  Specifically storm water retention/control/management or like geological stability concerns as examples.  The determination is forgone and i think you could come to a conclusion on 90% of it in like 10 minutes.  How will this impact migratory birds... mostly not at all.  How will this impact air... if anything its better.  Etc. etc.

The geological stability would be something that needs to be studied considering the karst geology of the area and the known history of caves in the area.

imperialmog wrote: ↑

Jan 04, 2024

STLEnginerd wrote: ↑

Dec 20, 2023

I tend to agree but there are a couple things that probably come out of environmental study that are worthwhile.  Specifically storm water retention/control/management or like geological stability concerns as examples.  The determination is forgone and i think you could come to a conclusion on 90% of it in like 10 minutes.  How will this impact migratory birds... mostly not at all.  How will this impact air... if anything its better.  Etc. etc.

The geological stability would be something that needs to be studied considering the karst geology of the area and the known history of caves in the area.

It's true, geological stability is important, but geotechnical concerns are generally an engineering issue not a NEPA one (unless an endangered cave species is likely to be impacted).

Lots of good stuff at CMT Talking Transit Presents: State of Transit in the Region in 2024


Federal funding is still very competitive. $4.6B available each year via infrastructure program nationally. 59 projects that have already been submitted for consideration. 26 of those have already received scores/ratings (low, medium, high). Jim Wild from EWG feels STL has strong political connections in DC right now but expects it'll take 3 years to fund. Taulby Roach from Metro believes the city will score high on economic justice but poorly on ridership. Application will focus on "future ridership" generated by "rebuilding much of North City." 

Metro is working with HNTB to value engineer the line with goal to get it down from $1.1B to $800 million. Taulby Roach feels confident that lower capital cost will make the project much more competitive federally. Currently being considered is expanding and sharing the maintenance facility on Ewing which could save $50 to $70M  and bridge alternatives with MODoT (I assume over 64, Rail, and 44?). 

Metro will do a layered funding that would include...

• New Starts will cover 50 to 60 percent.
• Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFA) Loan
• Local match from the City of St. Louis.