Met Council gets funding to start planning the BLUE line (Minneapolis: 2015, homes)

[pete6032]

The Metropolitan Council has received federal approval to begin designing the Blue Line extension, a 13-mile light-rail line that will connect Minneapolis to the northwestern suburbs of Golden Valley, Robbinsdale, Crystal and Brooklyn Park.

Local rail supporters say the Blue Line extension, also known as the Bottineau line, is needed because traffic in the metro area’s northern tier is expected to increase in coming years. Planners expect the line to have 27,000 weekday riders by 2030.

“Without major transit investments, it will be difficult to effectively meet the transportation needs of people and businesses in the corridor, mitigate highway traffic congestion and achieve the region’s goal of doubling transit ridership by 2030,” said Met Council spokeswoman Sue Haigh.

The line is expected to connect several key businesses, colleges and hospitals, retail centers and major transportation hubs such as Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

It is a part of a bigger light-rail network planned for the region that includes the already operating Central and Hiawatha lines, as well as the controversial Southwest Corridor line, which will connect Minneapolis to Eden Prairie.

“The Blue Line extension and the future Green Line extension [the Southwest Corridor] will help Minneapolis residents and those from northwest and southwest communities get to work and school, delivering on our promise of equity,” Haigh said. “Completion of these lines is the key to building a fully developed multimodal system to serve the people of this region.”

To proceed with the Blue Line extension, the Met Council, the project’s sponsor, will have to obtain final engineering approval, expected in late 2016, and approval of a full funding grant agreement, expected in 2018.

It also needs funding. About half of the project’s $997 million budget is expected to come from the Federal Transit Authority, 30 percent from the Counties Transit Improvement Board, and 10 percent from both Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota.

The Met Council, along with the state Department of Transportation, plan to ask legislators in 2015 for a dedicated source of funding for the project.

“Dedicated funding for transit will replace the state’s 10 percent share and send a clear signal to our federal partners that this region is committed to making both the Metro Green and Blue Line extensions a reality in the very near future,” Haigh said.

[Mr. In-Between]

That's going to be an expensive one before it's all over, and there's going to be a lot of pushback from some of the communities it will be passing through. They're going to need to take out a lot of residential properties along the way, and some neighborhood groups are not going to like it. This one will be interesting to watch.

[Black Panther]

That's good news I'm moving from Louisville,Kentucky to Minneapolis,Minnesota. Soon.

[Min-Chi-Cbus]

Welcome (I'm jealous)!

I'm looking forward to this simply because it's the last leg of four critical spokes of the (hopefully initial) light rail transit network (aka Green and Blue lines, both about 25 miles long when lumped together). I wish the more options would service North Mpls residents but like one poster semi-accurately stated it would require a lot of demolished homes for ROW (right of way). In actuality none of the current route options that I've seen would eliminate more than a dozen homes, and much of the north metro's blue collar areas are still being served by the line. I'm wary of the potential for TOD (transit-oriented development) opportunities along this route however, especially south of I-694.

[polo_golf_guy]

This will be a huge win for Brooklyn Park and Target's Northern Campus. I live fairly close to the terminus and look forward to have this transit option.

[1stpontiac]

Originally Posted by polo_golf_guy

This will be a huge win for Brooklyn Park and Target's Northern Campus. I live fairly close to the terminus and look forward to have this transit option.

I wouldn't regularly use this line, but since I live in Maple Grove just off of 610, I can see using it for an occasional twins game.


It will be interesting to look at which lines have the most ridership 10 years after these first 4 are done. Central and Hiawatha should be set for lots of riderships, but the SW and Botteneau lines strike me as a bit more of a gamble, and I'm not sure which line is the bigger gamble.

Assuming some level of success on those lines, it will be also be interesting to see where attention turns to next (for LRT, I know where some of the commuter lines under consideration are). A spur connecting Maple Grove/Plymouth to the Bottineau line? Complete the Minneapolis/St. Paul/MSP triangle? Snake some lines out toward woodbury?

[Drewcifer]

I'm really worried that our next two lines (technically extensions of the blue and green lines) will be failures. I use transit and support it in general but if you look at track record with recent investments the urban oriented lines have been much more successful than the suburban ones. The Red Line BRT and Northstar commuter rail both have pitiful riderships. Because the next two lines are mostly routed through parkland in the city and bypass dense, walkable areas and commercial nodes outside of downtown we are building the lines away from their natural constituency.

The first two lines worked because they ran through areas that had a built form and density that was already conducive to transit and they connected places that people wanted to go. People don't just use those lines to go to work, they also use them for other trips in their daily lives and they make it much easier to live without a car in the areas they serve. The next two lines are basically just suburban commuter lines to downtown. From the experience of other cities and history here, we have seen that model doesn't work as well. The best option IMO is to spend the money to do it right. The second best option is to not build the lines at all. The worst option, which is what we are doing, is to spend a significant amount of money on poorly designed lines.

The Southwest Corridor ideally should connect Downtown Hopkins, Excelsior and Grand and Uptown to Downtown Minneapolis. Right now it hits two of those locations. The Blue Line extension should serve the north side in some useful way rather than getting out of the city as fast as it can with no useful stops. A stop on or near Broadway (or Lowry) would really help revitalize that area. The problem is that we don't want to spend the money to do that. We would rather follow the Dallas model of the path of least resistance, the problem is nobody lives there. So we are going to get lines that avoid major commercial nodes and places where people live.

[polo_golf_guy]

I think the blue line going to out to BP will be more successful than the SW line. It will carry trips to Target, running down Broadway an Bottineau it also serves NHCC and the site where BP's new library is being built. I also think the ridership will be higher due to the community it serves.