It wasn’t until after I moved away from Chicago in my teens that I realized just how powerful “the Lake is always east” is as an orienting tool. Didn’t have that in DC. And certainly not in the Twin Cities (“the River is … north, south, east, and west… all at the same time” doesn’t help much)

Following

Yes! And the left side of the departures level is even more likely to be empty at any time of day or night.

But wouldn’t it also be nice if MSP traffic control wasn’t so absolutely pathetic. Mix indifference with conflict-avoidance and you get a pure mess almost 24 hours a day.

Don’t forget when you use @transit.app GO you are asked to respond to questions about conditions at the stop/station and on the bus/train. It’s a great way to provide information to your transit agency that they can use to improve service and facilities!

Some days, following a lot of Chicago folks and not paying enough attention to details leads to some initial “Cook County” confusion.

I was trying to figure out the job duties analyzing moose and wolf counts, etc.

That probably wouldn't have been feasible, but sadly we were too constrained to think of other solutions to that problem.

/ and one last tidbit: When the Southwest line was being planned, the routing via Midtown Greenway and up Nicollet would have the Blue and Green lines at the east end of downtown, resulting in three lines running every 10 minutes. for a total of 36 trains per hour on 5th Street.

Finally, as @elindie.bsky.social notes, the introduction of the Green Line at the 35W Junction put significant constraints on the frequency and timing of the two lines. It would be challenging to reliably run 7.5 minute headways on both lines through that space /

/ while many at-grade stations were built with two-car platforms but with room to expand them to handle three-cars. So expanding from two-car trains to three-car was far easier than it might have been. All this at a time when no one knew what to expect from light rail in the Twin Cities...

As a side note, we should commend the prescient planners of the Hiawatha Line. Despite claims it would a "train to nowhere" they forecast significant future demand. The complex stations, like in the tunnel at Lindbergh and on structure at Lake Street were built with three car platforms /

And the peak schedule was also staggered, with roughly a 6 minute headway for the 2-car trains and a 9+ minute headway for the 3-car trains. Eventually, they had enough cars for a straight 10 minute headway all day.

Pretty quickly Metro Transit realized they needed more peak capacity so they a) extended the shorter platforms to allow for three car trains, and b) purchased more cars. But at first there weren't enough cars for all 3-car trains, so it was a mix of 2 and 3 car.

The original Blue Line / Hiawatha Line was limited to two car trains due to both station platform length and the number of vehicles available. To provide adequate capacity the service ran every 7.5 minutes (well actually it was a 7 / 8 schedule...) DURING RUSH HOURS. The rest of the day was 10"

Yes. I like the “feel” of can drives but I sense that cash goes farther if you can donate that.

Yes. Thanks!!

What are your pros and cons of who and how to support ?

I seem to recall that the original PC version of SPSS has Minnesota roots but I can’t find details at this point

Yours if you want. 4 feet. Not in pristine condition but pretty good