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Central Corridor: our transit to nowhere
About a year ago, Shoreview Green Community decided to look at the Central Corridor LRT proposal, to learn the process of obtaining rapid transit, so we could advance transit in the northeastern part of the metro area. It quickly became apparent that the $900 million Central Corridor will not be a wise transit investment, given the fact that the corridor already is well-served by bus transit, that 75 percent to 90 percent of Central Corridor riders would come from existing bus service and that the Central Corridor LRT would be very slow and not extendable.
Voices: Central Corridor: Our transit to nowhere
Impact on traffic
Central Corridor light rail, as currently planned, will navigate through 40 traffic signals, a 30 mile per hour speed limit, and 20+ transit stations, while sharing the road with approximately 500,000 vehicles per day. The various segments of University Avenue in St. Paul carry approximately 25,000 vehicles per day. Crossing streets have up to 35,000 vehicles per day.
The 500,000 daily drivers will waste millions of hours in congestion, and will pay for millions of gallons of fuel and higher insurance premiums. The planners did not adequately consider the time wasted by riders or the possibility of extending the line to the eastern metropolitan area. The Central Corridor light rail does nothing to relieve the congestion on I-94, the second busiest highway in the metro area.
Plans call for light rail trains to have a 20-second priority to proceed prior to vehicles making left turns on University Avenue. Pedestrian crossings will more than double. Thousands of hours and gallons of fuel will be wasted daily by drivers where a traffic signal is added, priority given, signal time extended and pedestrians cross the street. Businesses will be negatively impacted with the loss of more than 600 street parking spaces. There will be more pedestrian and vehicle accidents. Operating the Central Corridor light rail in the middle of busy streets creates additional problems rather than solving problems.
Bus service in the central corridor is among the best in the Twin Cities. There are fast, frequent I-94 non-stop express buses between the downtowns, and limited stop Route 50 buses along University Avenue. Route 16 buses on University Avenue run every eight to 10 minutes during peak hours, and stop at every block. This route serves about 4.7 million passengers a year, many of whom are taking rides of three miles or less and then transferring to other routes. The LRT line will pick up passengers every half-mile or longer, which will require some riders to walk three to six blocks more to get to a station. Such steps at best would inconvenience some persons and at worst would deter them from riding
A Central Corridor LRT brochure from the Metropolitan Council stated a travel time of 35 minutes between the two downtowns. After looking at details, it is evident to me that the actual ride would take approximately 45 minutes from start to end. Moreover, many express buses that now provide a 30-minute ride on I-94 between the downtowns would be removed from service, with passengers expected to take LRT instead.
Cost factors
Bus riders now have the option of selecting the service that best meets their needs, rather than the less convenient light rail, which would stop approximately every mile outside of the downtowns. Bus service along University Avenue currently is among the most cost-effective in the Twin Cities area with up to 70 percent of operating expenses being recovered from the fare box. Fares yield about 30 percent of such expenses system wide.
Slow LRT vehicles on the Central Corridor means slower travel time for riders, which inevitably increases the cost per rider per trip and the operating costs. Projections of operating expenses on the Central Corridor exceed the bus system.
Washington Avenue Bridge
Closing the Washington Avenue bridge and Washington Avenue will force the estimated 22,500 vehicles that use this roadway to alter their route, which will increase congestion on adjacent bridges, roads and highways. Modifying the 52-year-old Washington Avenue bridge to carry approximately a million pounds at a budgeted thirty million dollars is questionable at best. Accessibility to the Weisman Art Museum, several student dormitories and parking ramps, the University medical facilities and commercial establishments will be very difficult. The commercial establishments on Washington Avenue will suffer financially. The congestion caused by the Central Corridor light rail and the loss of Washington Avenue to vehicles, will leave the 50,000 fans attending University football games spitting tacks for hours getting to and from games. The University is considering adding a road that would greatly improve traffic flow, but would cost approximately $100,000,000.
Toward a different plan for light rail
The Central Corridor group did not consider the negative impact upon others and the short and long-term transit needs of the metro area.
The metro area needs a fast intercity rail transit system. A better route would run through the University of Minnesota, and then adjacent to I-94 to the Union Depot in St. Paul. Reducing the number of transit stations by 25%, tunneling, elevation, bridges and exclusive right-of-ways should be utilized to the maximum extent. These changes to the current plan could yield time savings and reduced equipment and operational costs, as well as attracting riders from I-94 and reducing congestion on roads and highways.
This route would serve the same St. Paul transit customers, and encourage urban development. A rail line adjacent to I-94 could link to other transit, would be extendable, and would offer easy ways to increase capacity. Total transit time between the two downtowns should be 26-28 minutes, in contrast to the 45 minutes projected under current University Avenue light rail plans. This would annually save riders millions of hours and allow fare increases.
Let’s use transit money to improve travel throughout our metropolitan area.
Scott Halstead is a resident of Shoreview, who recently retired from a 27-year federal career in several capacities, including purchasing and contract management, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is co-chair of the Citizens Forum, a member of Shoreview Green Community, an environmental and transit group, the Shoreview Environmental Quality Committee, and the Citizens League. Material in this article was originally presented to the Civic Caucus. Scott Halstead can be contacted at snhalstead@gmail.com
Comments
Silly. The point is to
Silly. The point is to reinvigorate development along an already-existing corridor, which has much room to grow but which already has many essential components in place — i.e. University Ave. To run the rail along I-94 makes no sense: that area is residential, and St. Paul does not need more homes to be destroyed on I-94’s account.
The point is not only to get people from downtown to downtown, but to get people around in the corridor between them, which has a lot of room to grow (up, especially) right along University Ave.
As for using transit money to improve travel throughout our metropolitan area, it’s worth noting that transit is only really viable in densely populated, compact areas. Popular transit lines have the ability to attract a ton of development very close by, resulting in really great synergy between the two. Freeways have the opposite effect: property values very close to them are inevitably depressed. It doesn’t make sense to negate the appeal of light rail by jamming it up against I-94.
While some of the figures
While some of the figures used in this Opinion Piece are obviously incorrect, the basic premise of the article and underlining arguments hit the problems with the Central Corridor Project dead center. The only one to gain from this White Elephant is the Met Council and it’s Transit Operations Division.
Re: Central Corridor: our transit to nowhere
Scott Halstead’s article appears written by someone who seldom uses transit at all, and even less in the corridor he is concerned with.
The CC Rail is primarily a match to the existing Route 50 limited-stop bus service. In that guise, it should be able (because of its quicker acceleration and better stopping abilities) to make better time along that route than the current bus system. It can do so with approximately one-third the number of vehicles for the same passenger-carrying capacity. Reduce that even more because with quicker start-stop abilities the LRVs can make better time than the bus over the same route, so the vehicles can make more trips in the same duty shift than are possible by bus.
Even more importantly, one-third of the vehicles means one-third the number of operating personnel are required. The cost of operating personnel, or “platform cost,” is one of the largest expenses in running any transit operation. Even that number is reduced by the fact that at peak hours, the LRVs can be coupled two or more together, all under control of one operator. Adding buses during peak hours means adding an operator for each bus.
The interval between LRV runs can remain constant, because at peaks extra cars can be added to each run. The coupled cars do not require reaction time or braking safety space between vehicles, since they all accelerate and brake at the same time. The amount of space required by LRVs to haul an equivalent number of passengers is less along the roadway than using multiple buses, because of this factor. This, along with fewer necessary vehicles, has the effect of reducing, not increasing, congestion.
LRVs, according to records on file with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the American Passenger Transportation Association (APTA), cost roughly two-thirds per passenger mile to operate as opposed to buses running on the same systems, and often on parallel routes. That is a significant savings of money to a transit district. Since the LRVs handle more passengers per unit and thus require less units, their maintenance bases are smaller and require less maintenance personnel than do buses. And there is a hugely lower hazard to workers in electric transit bases than in Diesel bus bases. LRVs average almost 15,000 miles between on-route failures, where buses record between 5000 and 7500 miles. Moreover, in most cases the LRVs can limp back to the base despite the failure, where buses almost invariably will require towing; the latter can be attributed to simple and redundant motors, brakes, and gearboxes on the LRVs, where if the complex Diesel, airbrake system, or complicated automatic transmission fails on a bus it is dead on the road. And LRVs don’t have flat tires.
What’s more, the LRVs do not generate a plume of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants everywhere they go, something that even the most efficient Diesel-electric hybrids can’t claim. Neither do the LRVs require the mitigation of pollutants such as used engine oil, used hydraulic fluid, worn-out tires, used coolants with antifreeze and other chemicals, and so on. These are all a dead cost to the transit operator. Moreover, light rail cars themselves reduce the recycling of vehicle body and frame components, since the life expectancy is from two to four times that of any bus. Typically, rail cars operate from 30 to 50 years in service, buses from 10 to 12.
I would consider the expansion of electric rail transit to anywhere in this metro area to be a considerable plus, all told. However, it has to be done within a consideration that the best locations for rail are in primary corridors (which the CC would certainly be) and not traveling through sprawled-out neighborhoods where not even buses could make a reasonable return on investment.
— Tom Fairbairn
Re: Central Corridor: our transit to nowhere
I don’t think we should plan on another LRT until we are willing to separate the grades. Assuming the inner city area continues to grow as oil prices increase, an at grade solution will look more and more foolish.
In the mean time, we could put in electric trolley buses. They wouldn’t pollute as much, and would reduce our oil consumption
Citizens League remains anti-rail
A couple of years ago, the Civic Caucus published a paper proclaiming light rail to be a failure every place it had been built. The problem was that it hadn’t ‘solved’ congestion.
I doubt that it’s possible to build any rail line that would meet with the approval of someone associated with the Citizens League.
My recollection is that the Citizens League always argued that better bus service was all we needed. But they were always AWOL when it was time to talk about that better bus service.
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