‘Transit’ Archives
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
Adapting traffic ”“ Construction Update: New Lake Street & 35W Transit Station By MNDOT adapted by GUSTAVO MANCILLA Computer rendering of the Lake Street &35W Transit StationPHOTO COURTESY OF MNDOT & GUSTAVO MANCILLA As part of the 35W@94 project, MnDOT and Metro Transit are building a new transit station at I-35W & Lake Street Transit Station. The transit station is scheduled to open in late 2021 with the launch of the METRO Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit service along I-35W. A new stage for this construction project at Lake Street will begin this spring (early April) ”“ if weather permitting - and is anticipated to take two years and be completed by Fall 2021. Pedestrians and drivers must know that Lake St. will, in general, remain open with one lane available in each direction and access to all businesses will be maintained during the con-struction. The new transit station will include great new amenities, such as bike parking, [...]
TRANSIT””Transit Changes in the Med City
By JOHN CHARLES WILSON Unfortunately, there is no significant transit news in the Phillips neighborhood, or even the Twin Cities, for me to report this month. Therefore, I am going to digress from my usual local focus and talk about changes coming to the transit system in Rochester as of the 12th of July. The last time I wrote about Rochester Public Transit in the Alley was about three years ago when I first started this column. RPT was in the midst of a major service improvement from six days a week to seven. That”™s right: until a few years ago, buses didn”™t even run on Sundays in the Med City. Now, RPT is rectifying another shortcoming of their system: the complexity of routes. Most weekday routes don”™t run the same at night or on weekends: for example, to go to Apache Mall on weekdays, Routes 7 and 7A are the way there. At night it is route 7N, and on the weekends it is Routes 23 and 24. The minor variations between them are a lot to [...]
Transit – Politicians and Light Rail Safety
By JOHN CHARLES WILSON The Minnesota State Legislature is finally trying to do something about the rising tide of crime and harmful behavior on public transit, particularly on the Light Rail system. While many members of the community are saying, “It”™s about time!” it looks like what should be a universal issue is rapidly becoming partisan. Republicans from rural Minnesota and the outer Twin Cities suburbs have one vision of how to make urban transit safer, while Democratic politicians including the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have different ideas on how to achieve the same thing. Unfortunately, given Minnesota”™s history of gridlock at the Capitol, this may well mean nothing will get done, as it happens: another robbery, another stabbing, smoking on trains, loud and boisterous disturbances, etc. I have a friend who was robbed in broad daylight as he got off a Green Line train in Saint Paul a few months ago, so this is personal to [...]
