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  #11221  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 6:07 PM
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There's a dubious and devious reason for this post

'It's a big deal': C Line to bring bus rapid transit to popular north Minneapolis route
03/19/18 by Peter Callaghan/MinnPost
Quote:
It’s an ambitious plan: Convert the Twin Cities’ most popular bus routes to a newish-to-this-region form of transit. Eleven different routes have been identified as good candidates for arterial bus rapid transit — rubber-tire vehicles and enhanced stations with some of the features that make light rail so popular with riders.
I thought the Twin Cities had already done some BRT?
Quote:
St. Paul was the first to get such service with the A Line that started running in June of 2016. Its distinct buses pick up passengers along Snelling Avenue and Ford Parkway every 10 minutes between the Rosedale Mall and the 46th Avenue Blue Line station in Minneapolis.

Metro Transit says ridership is exceeding projections.
Awhile ago PLANSIT and I posted back-to-back posts of Denver Moves Frequent, High-Quality Denver Transit. Since it has a City of Denver focus there's only half-dozen routes to focus on and two: Colfax and Broadway are already a work-in-progress.

Denver News7 had a recent, decent overview of the proposed Colfax remake to a BRT corridor. Then there was this: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/new...-rapid-transit
Quote:
On Monday night, the Denver City Council will consider a bill for an agreement with RTD to spend $2-million to study the Colfax Area Planning Project, including the proposed dedicated bus lanes along the corridor.
Any guesses as to when the study after study will end?
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  #11222  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 6:23 PM
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Word on the street is that wong and bunt recently met quietly in a city park to strategize who should be allowed to fly and ride transit and who shouldn't be allowed. It's all about 'social credit' and their thinking goes along these lines:

China to bar people with bad 'social credit' from planes, trains
MARCH 16, 2018 - Reuters Staff - WORLD NEWS
Quote:
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.
What do you think?
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  #11223  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 6:37 PM
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PLANSIT PLANSIT is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive View Post
There's a dubious and devious reason for this post

'It's a big deal': C Line to bring bus rapid transit to popular north Minneapolis route
03/19/18 by Peter Callaghan/MinnPost

I thought the Twin Cities had already done some BRT?


Awhile ago PLANSIT and I posted back-to-back posts of Denver Moves Frequent, High-Quality Denver Transit. Since it has a City of Denver focus there's only half-dozen routes to focus on and two: Colfax and Broadway are already a work-in-progress.

Denver News7 had a recent, decent overview of the proposed Colfax remake to a BRT corridor. Then there was this: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/new...-rapid-transit

Any guesses as to when the study after study will end?
Two separate but linked efforts:
  1. Alternatives Analysis - Figure out what the transit/multimodal vision for Colfax is. The City is just about done with this as it recommended Center-Running as its Preliminary LPA. Public feedback was positive based on survey results shown last week to the Task Force. Next step is 30% Design, NEPA, and FTA Project Development.

  2. Land-Use Planning - This is what the $2M is referring to in the above story. This money will be used for the East Central Area and East Area Neighborhood Plans already in progress. Denver received a $1.35M grant to prepare the corridor for the BRT's arrival by focusing on land-use planning (TOD opportunities), investment w/o displacement strategies, business retention, etc.

Last edited by PLANSIT; Mar 22, 2018 at 7:39 PM.
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  #11224  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 7:32 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive
Ridership - the mother's milk of transit
Comparing specific corridors of RTD with other peer cities
Post all of RTD's!
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  #11225  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 7:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Post all of RTD's!
R-Line = (-329)
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  #11226  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 8:00 PM
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So the R line is at negative ridership now? I can't imagine more than 200 people riding that godforsaken line.
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  #11227  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2018, 10:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Post all of RTD's!
I'd be delighted to do that. One problem I need you to provide a link to where I can find them. I want weekday numbers. I found San Diego's on their Wikipedia page and I found Portland's within a paragraph of a pdf and I found the Twin Cities somewhere but they only have two lines. Phx I knew from recall.

So yeah, help me out with a linky and I'll post whatever your heart desires.
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  #11228  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 5:08 AM
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Oh poo.

Alright we'll proxy corridor ridership using RTD's station-by-station data. I've moved that data into spreadsheet form so I can manipulate it to get what we want. This proxy will, of course, be slightly different from whatever you might see RTD report and thus not precisely accurate, but it should be ballpark accurate. I'll walk you through the convoluted process to get the estimates if you want.

Here are the results:

Estimated boardings per weekday for RTD rail corridors:
  1. SE corridor: 35,900
  2. Airport corridor: 22,600
  3. SW corridor: 22,100
  4. 225 corridor: 14,300
  5. W corridor: 12,000
  6. 5 Points corridor: 3,800
  7. NW corridor: 1,400

Someone else can add in the mileage and normalize it per mile if they want. Don't forget to include the Central corridor portions within each of these corridors, because these numbers do include the Central stations for each corridor.
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  #11229  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 5:20 AM
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The thing that jumps out to me most about this is the West corridor. It's naturally a good transit corridor, unlike 225 which is naturally not. For West to perform this badly implies problems with implementation.
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  #11230  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 8:04 AM
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It's just too slow. 47 minutes from Golden to Union Station. 6th Avenue by car even during rush hour it is only a 30 minute trip, and only 20 minutes non-rush hour. The LRT needs to move at SW corridor speeds of 55 mph to be used more. Currently the W line LRTs are moving at like 30-35 mph for long stretches of this route.
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  #11231  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 8:02 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PLANSIT View Post
Two separate but linked efforts:
  1. Alternatives Analysis - Figure out what the transit/multimodal vision for Colfax is. The City is just about done with this as it recommended Center-Running as its Preliminary LPA. Public feedback was positive based on survey results shown last week to the Task Force. Next step is 30% Design, NEPA, and FTA Project Development.

  2. Land-Use Planning - This is what the $2M is referring to in the above story. This money will be used for the East Central Area and East Area Neighborhood Plans already in progress. Denver received a $1.35M grant to prepare the corridor for the BRT's arrival by focusing on land-use planning (TOD opportunities), investment w/o displacement strategies, business retention, etc.
Thanks for the clarification; so this was for land use planning which is nice but barely relevant to getting the dang BRT done. Nice to see that centerline is the LPA even if temporary?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
Oh poo.

Alright we'll proxy corridor ridership using RTD's station-by-station data. I've moved that data into spreadsheet form so I can manipulate it to get what we want. This proxy will, of course, be slightly different from whatever you might see RTD report and thus not precisely accurate, but it should be ballpark accurate. I'll walk you through the convoluted process to get the estimates if you want.

Here are the results:

Estimated boardings per weekday for RTD rail corridors:
  1. SE corridor: 35,900
  2. Airport corridor: 22,600
  3. SW corridor: 22,100
  4. 225 corridor: 14,300
  5. W corridor: 12,000
  6. 5 Points corridor: 3,800
  7. NW corridor: 1,400

Someone else can add in the mileage and normalize it per mile if they want. Don't forget to include the Central corridor portions within each of these corridors, because these numbers do include the Central stations for each corridor.
Thanks tons for doing this. Spread sheet is very interesting. Fair to say that when it comes to transit data analysis you're highly conversant while I am highly NOT.

Just a 'heads up' that you've revved up my pontification motor so when I find some time...
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  #11232  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 9:01 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SnyderBock View Post
It's just too slow. 47 minutes from Golden to Union Station. 6th Avenue by car even during rush hour it is only a 30 minute trip, and only 20 minutes non-rush hour. The LRT needs to move at SW corridor speeds of 55 mph to be used more. Currently the W line LRTs are moving at like 30-35 mph for long stretches of this route.
And too many stations. It's operating as a streetcar over heavy rail distances.
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  #11233  
Old Posted Mar 23, 2018, 10:55 PM
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Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
And too many stations. It's operating as a streetcar over heavy rail distances.
It's really the last leg out to Golden that makes up a significant part of the time problem - it's 30 minutes from the Federal Center to Union Station. ¼ of the trip from Golden is the last two stops...

I ride it from Perry to Union Station every day and it's about a 10 minute ride. Even with the walk to my office from Union Station, driving only saves 5-10 minutes.

I don't think it's speed or distance that affects ridership, but the fact that there is no other reason to take the W than to go downtown. Maaaaybe if you have a court date at Jeffco or aren't bleeding and need to go to St. Anthony's. Every other corridor has large areas of retail and office near stations. Almost every W station is surrounded by housing or parks and the only things within walking distance are fast food or strip malls. I imagine the SW line has some flow in the opposite direction from downtown and may maintain ridership a little later because people can actually take the train to and from a bar in downtown Littleton or to retail around Englewood or Mineral.

I took the train to meet my family at a restaurant on Union once: it involved a cold, windy walk through a huge empty parking lot, running across busy streets that aren't pedestrian-friendly, and then more parking lots. It probably would have been safer for me to drive home after drinking.
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  #11234  
Old Posted Mar 24, 2018, 3:49 AM
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OK method two.

This table gives us annual boardings (2016) for each of RTD's services, both rail and bus, separated out route-by-route. Cool. Unfortunately it's annual rather than daily, and it completely lacks the R line. But we can roughly estimate weekday ridership for everything except R by dividing using various methods. It's *very* shoot-from-the-hip, but that's fine for our ballpark purposes. You can track my work on the second tab from my spreadsheet.

I added a few of the big bus lines, for comparison.
  • MallRide - 39,277
  • D - 22,356
  • A - 20,689
  • 15+15L - 21,325
  • H - 18,384
  • R - (no data but probably ordered about here, close to W & FF)
  • FF - 14,191
  • W - 13,930
  • E - 13,657
  • F - 11,827
  • 0+0L - 9,172
  • 16+16L - 7,976
  • C - 4,907
  • MetroRide - 2,142
  • B - 1,437
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  #11235  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 4:22 AM
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^ Interesting numbers-I'm looking forward to the numbers that the Gold Line, North Line and the SE Extension will produce (just a guess Gold Line 18,000, North Line 17,500-higher once it gets to that mega retail near I-25 and 470 and SE an additional 4,800).
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  #11236  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 5:17 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
OK method two.
  • H - 18,384
  • E - 13,657
  • F - 11,827
I like this method's results better.

On RTD's SE Corridor page they indicated a weekday ridership of 42,000 (including the E, F and H Lines). From monthly ridership reports, I took two non-summer months (to avoid Auraria's summer) and determined that the H Line carried 40% of the ridership. It's logical enough to separate out the H Line from the E&F lines which resulted in ~25,000 for the E, F lines and 17,000 for the H Line. Your numbers are fairly close. The 42,000 stated by RTD didn't say when or what year that was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
OK method two.
  • D - 22,356
  • C - 4,907
So 27,263 for the SW Corridor. That's respectable enough for an 8.7 mile line with 5 stops. The original projection was 8,400 weekday riders which was quickly doubled. Open since July of 2000 ridership has grown but not amazingly so. What's amazing is that ridership peaked at 41,690 in September of 2006; but that was before The Plague hit and it's been downhill ever since.

In comparing ridership with other cities we should look at "corridors." The fact that the SW Corridor and the SE corridor have different routes going to a different part of downtown is unique to Denver but it's the corridors that would be comparable. Where to put the H Line is a fair question but the E&F lines are certainly one corridor. I do recall that Portland had one line that used a part or parts of previously existing lines but that's the only case like that I recall.
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Last edited by TakeFive; Mar 25, 2018 at 6:35 AM.
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  #11237  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 5:44 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
OK method two.

This table gives us annual boardings (2016) for each of RTD's services, both rail and bus, separated out route-by-route. Cool. Unfortunately it's annual rather than daily, and it completely lacks the R line. But we can roughly estimate weekday ridership for everything except R by dividing using various methods. It's *very* shoot-from-the-hip, but that's fine for our ballpark purposes. You can track my work on the second tab from my spreadsheet.

I added a few of the big bus lines, for comparison.
  • MallRide - 39,277
  • D - 22,356
  • A - 20,689
  • 15+15L - 21,325
  • H - 18,384
  • R - (no data but probably ordered about here, close to W & FF)
  • FF - 14,191
  • W - 13,930
  • E - 13,657
  • F - 11,827
  • 0+0L - 9,172
  • 16+16L - 7,976
  • C - 4,907
  • MetroRide - 2,142
  • B - 1,437
For fun comparison:

I-25 (@ Colorado) - 226,000
I-25 (@ Park) - 261,000
Santa Fe (@ Florida) - 106,000
I-225 (@ I-25) - 149,000
I-225 (@ Colfax) - 146,000
Colfax (@ Auraria) - 54,000
6th (@ Federal) - 140,000
I-70 (@ Brighton) - 160,000
US36 (@ Pecos) - 158,000
US36 (@ Superior) - 83,000
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  #11238  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 6:24 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus View Post
The thing that jumps out to me most about this is the West corridor. It's naturally a good transit corridor, unlike 225 which is naturally not. For West to perform this badly implies problems with implementation.
I do get a kick out of those that treat Aurora as one amorphous blob. And I enjoy (trying to) explain that's it's a tale of two cities: North Aurora and South Aurora.

What's interesting is when you congregated on your spread sheet all of the 225 stations. South Aurora would include Florida, Iliff, Nine Mile and Dayton. Everything else is in North Aurora and only Peoria Station has respectable ridership.

I know why you don't like Aurora
It puts to shame your theory that lines that run along freeways or freight corridors are 'bad' and lines that go through neighborhoods are 'good.' Well you could add Peoria to South Aurora stations that are along freeways and their station ridership is mostly 'good' while the stations where the line
meanders through neighborhoods in Aurora have 'bad' ridership.

It's now been determined
by me that in one short year Florida Station, with no parking and only one bus route feeding into it, easily has the best ridership for stations with no parking.

Note: RTD's list of Park N Rides includes most light rail stations and indicates the number of parking spaces (if any) plus the number of bike parking racks and bike locks. It also indicates the bus routes that feed into each station. Good stuff.

With respect to the W Line
both SnyderBock and mojiferous made interesting points and I suspect they are both right. I may not recall correctly but it seems the W Line started out with ridership in the 5,000's the first year. if so they are clearly growing their numbers.
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  #11239  
Old Posted Mar 25, 2018, 6:28 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bunt_q View Post
For fun comparison:

I-25 (@ Colorado) - 226,000
I-25 (@ Park) - 261,000
Santa Fe (@ Florida) - 106,000
I-225 (@ I-25) - 149,000
I-225 (@ Colfax) - 146,000
Colfax (@ Auraria) - 54,000
6th (@ Federal) - 140,000
I-70 (@ Brighton) - 160,000
US36 (@ Pecos) - 158,000
US36 (@ Superior) - 83,000
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  #11240  
Old Posted Mar 26, 2018, 2:46 AM
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For anybody that paid any attention to Trump's braggadocio of killing the transit and renewable energy geese... we now have a verdict.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...to-read-217701

Just to review:
Quote:
President Donald Trump’s budget proposals have taken a hatchet to President Barack Obama’s top priorities. They’ve called for deep cuts in renewable energy, medical research and nonmilitary spending in general. They’ve eliminated TIGER, a grant program for innovative transportation projects created by Obama’s stimulus bill; ARPA-E, an energy research agency launched by the stimulus; and CDBG, a community development program many Republicans consider an urban slush fund.
So what actually happened?
Quote:
The omnibus—Capitol Hill jargon for a single spending bill that funds most government functions—does not kill any of the programs or agencies Trump’s budget proposed to kill; it triples funding for TIGER, nearly doubles CDBG, and boosts ARPA-E’s budget by 16 percent. Trump wanted to slash the Energy Department’s renewables budget 65 percent; instead, Congress boosted it 14 percent. Trump proposed to keep nonmilitary spending $54 billion below the congressional budget cap; the omnibus spends right up to the cap, a $63 billion increase from last year.
It is fair to point out that TIGER funds are now being distributed to more road/bridge projects than previously but that's a small price to pay for tripling of that fund. For anyone who curious about the specific projects: U.S. Department of Transportation Announces Half A Billion Dollars in Infrastructure Investments to 41 Projects in 43 States

Republicans mollified Trump by:
Quote:
More than 64% of this round of TIGER funding was awarded to rural projects, a historic number that demonstrates this Administration’s commitment to supporting the country’s rural communities.
I think this is a good thing actually. Let's not forget that the daily bread we rely on starts its daily trip to the big city from rural areas.
Even rural Colorado benefitted:
Quote:
Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Passing Lane Project, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, $2,000,000 – to upgrades a 2.5-mile rural portion of US Highway 160 by adding approximately 6,000 feet of passing lanes in each direction, three new box culverts, signage, guardrails, widened shoulders, and access improvements.
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