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Spring work to begin on Twin Cities light rail project
I hope MNDot puts the bike trail on the west side of the new LayFayette bridge so we can view the action at the LRT shops and the SPUD.
Sad to think of how amazing WI is with the Packers, Badgers, our labor history, brand name stuff we still make here, but MN gets the nod for this project and our nitwit gov. squandered our opportunity to create a highspeed link between MN, milwaukee, and Chicago with a link to Madison.
I guess when I ride this new line in MN down the road I’ll try not to fall asleep and dream of things never to be had in WI again for generations…
The bike/walkway on the new Lafayette bridge is on the other side. That will give you a good view of Division street.
Like most modern freeway bridges, there is a shoulder on the other side (the part overlooking SPUD) so if you have car problems, you can pull over on that side (if you know what I mean).
As of now the tracks are in where the photo was taken (in front of the St. Paul Union Station). The new maintenance building is also being built which is a couple of blocks east of Union Station. University Avenue is now finished in the section where the track is either laid or will be laid. There is still quite a lot of work that has to be done in the sections of University Ave. where no work to date has started. This includes the Minneapolis section is still untouched. In the meantime the Hiawatha LRT has been running with three car trains during the rush hour as a result of the original stations being lengthened. There has not been any word concerning how many new cars will be needed for the Central Corridor nor the builder. When all is done around 2017 the Central Corridor and the soon to be built SW Corridor will be one long line.
Maxwell, the proposed rail project to extend existing ChiTown-Mlwkee service to Madison was not a high speed rail line. There were no concrete plans for it to be, only the promise that they were thinking about making it HSR some day in the future.
That nitwit government that withdrew that project also resubmitted the most compelling part of it, beefing up the existing Hiawatha service between Milwaukee and Chicago. Despite being much less expensive and having a much better ROI, so to speak, than the Madison proposal that the FRA granted fund to, that new proposal didn’t get funded. For some reason the 2nd time around the FRA thought the best of it wasn’t worth funding at all.
So when we’re talking nitwits, if that’s what they are for not spending billions to serve a few thousand upper class honkies, then don’t forget Washington has done plenty of the same.
$1400+ per inch for the project.