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Stewards of the public trust should be using the money the most efficient manner possible. What we have instead are monuments to the egos of local bedroom community politicians who in their minds I believe are building skyways to their aspirations for higher office.

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Personally I avoid Cedar at all costs right now so I don’t think your argument holds water but then again I’m not a Planner, just a person who despises unnecessary traffic created by businesses who want to hold citizens hostage so we can see their crappy street signage.

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He also points out that Cedar should either be a street, or should be more like a freeway as today it is trying to be both.

That is due to the joy of public input with a focus on placing more weight on the desires of business rather than what is really best for the public. IOW, the businesses based along Cedar freaked the fuck out when it was proposed that Cedar become a highway with interchanges for intersections instead of remaining the traffic snarled hellhole it is.

However, to respond to your point about this reducing congestion, it won’t do that at all. In fact, because the bus routes will not take any additional drivers off the road (remember, there is already rarely used bus service to MOA via Cedar Grove today) due to the poor design of the system. What this is going to do is only change capacities at non-peak times when it doesn’t matter anyway.

We’re developing a transit system based on growth projections and assumptions about mass transit uptake which are no longer valid after the housing market crash. Couple this with the reverse housing phenomenon of people who would be driving downtown instead flocking to the cities instead of the suburbs. This leaves us with a population of people possibly dependent on mass transit who aren’t going to be served well by the model currently planned for Dakota County.

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Regarding the walkways, I think they are a waste as implemented on Cedar. One reason is location. Had they been added up by 42 I might say they make more sense as there is many more businesses of interest to stop for within close proximity of Cedar. The other reason is design. I like the walkway solution created on 35W/46th Street in Minneapolis. Why didn’t they try to do something like that along cedar instead of the curbside crap?

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If anyone can make any sense of what Matt just said and/or identify his position, would you please translate into basic conversational terms please? Thx.

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Also, expanding Cedar Ave to accommodate increased traffic did the opposite of what would actually push development that would increase ridership. I heard something like 100,000+ cars use portions of the “stroad” daily. What really needs to be decided is if we want a facility designed for mobility (a road, likely a freeway) without direct local land access. Or do we want a facility designed to accommodate local uses and capture the value of adjoining property (a street, which is much friendlier to linear transit corridors). Cedar cannot be both a road and a street and be successful at both missions simultaneously.

One potential option for improving Cedar would be to turn it into a Multiway Boulevard (http://www.placemakers.com/2012/06/07/strip-mall-vs-multi-way-boulevard/ ) but this is obviously too late considering we’ve doubled down on the Stroad design of the facility.

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If anything, pro-road types should love this BRT project since a majority of the “transit” project is really being spent on road improvements… curb-to-curb redo of the aging Cedar facility. Of course, the nature of the stroad has not sustained itself financially over its lifecycle, therefore this “transit” project removed significant financial liabilities from the county’s books. Not only that, but the “transit” project is building out Cedar to six lanes far into Lakeville.

It’s strange that we have a “transit” project that was mostly about building new capacity, and removing existing long term liabilities for maintenance from the books, and now we’re having to find extra pots of money to complete the project. And even when it is is completed as intended, it will be a far cry from how BRT is often sold (like light rail on rubber tires). That said, we know the density and development patterns SOTR are not compatible with high quality transit except for express buses, which is why all of this money and effort should have been spent on improving transit inside the beltway instead.

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If they do decide to cut express routes to get people funneled through MOA, I’ll be disappointed, and probably stop riding. I don’t want it to take 2+ hours to get downtown. I can do better than that in my car, even on a bad day.

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The people who put this through are at the County Commissioner level, not the local level and their final decisions are impacted by those who are not elected and also the financial.

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To add my complaint about the project, this wouldn’t be an issue had the County decided to build real BRT with separated lanes in the middle of the road. Instead they went with the grand idea of Bus/Shoulder/Right Turn lanes.

In reality, Apple Valley should be looking at beefing up the feeder routes to the stations, so people are actually taking transit. Toronto is a prime example where ridership is high in the suburbs because buses are actually frequent and follow straight routes and they don’t have useless skyways all over the place. Of course having good transit service is too logical, we just need to build more expensive transit stations.

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Agreed. I used transit for almost ten years when I worked downtown. I am a big supporter of transit and think its necessary, but this project certainly isn’t. There are plenty of ways they could improve the current system (mainly through expanded service) without spending nearly so much money.

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