Scott wants an lrt stop near the ball palace. If the line needs to be extended, count on several million. Besides, the lrt doesn't work well for emptying out a stadium. Max capacity of the line being built is around 3,000 per hour with cars filled like Tokyo subway cars (pushers needed). Since this would be at the end of the line, it would take a LONG time to make much of a dent in the fantasy of a fan-filled stadium.
The line's power system is designed to run at most one 3-car train every five minutes, if they didn't lighten up on that to save money. The planned schedule is a 2-car train every 7.5 minutes in rush hour, about 2,400 per hour. If I remember correctly, there are going to be a total of 22 lrt cars, providing for spares. Even if you ran at maximum capacity, you would have all cars in operation within 35 minutes of the first train leaving the park. Now you would wait more than 30 minutes for the first train to get back to the palace. Then you have about a 10 minute layover (or a driver switch). In the meantime, because you pulled all of the trains down to the palace to wait for the end of the game, you owuld be depriving the usual riders of transit service for quite some time, especially if you have a hard time predicting when the game will end. Now imagine a fleet of buses waiting outside the ball palace. A total of 40 standard buses carries as many people as the lrt, and they are able to go in multiple directions. You could easily move several times as many people as lrt. Look to what went on in Salt Lake City for the Olympics. Buses did most of the people moving, along with many official cars, SUVs, etc. In case you don't think that buses can handle a big crowd, look to the cities that have busways. 120 buses per hour is at the low end for such facilities. Bruce Gaarder Highland Park Saint Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
