Streetcar Feasibility
In 2006, the Minneapolis City Council allocated $300,000 for a city-wide Streetcar Feasibility Study to be conducted as a subset of a larger study, its Ten Year Transportation Action Plan (TAP). The transit elements of the TAP focused on a Primary Transit Network similar to Portland, Oregon’s, Frequent Service Network. Fourteen bus routes were to receive high frequency service along with fancy buses and shelters. The Streetcar Feasibility Study began by evaluating all 14 routes for possible conversion to streetcar lines and four lines were eliminated during Phase I. On December 14, 2006, Phase II of the study was presented and the ten remaining candidate routes were narrowed to seven. The Midtown Greenway corridor is one of the seven. The final and third phase of the study will take a more comprehensive look at the potential of each remaining corridor.
For the Phase I report, click here
For the Phase II report, click here
For the Phase III report, click here
For links to more information from the comprehensive project known as Access Minneapolis, click here.
Streetcars in the Greenway
The Midtown Greenway Coalition considers public transit, which is friendly to the environment, to be an important component of the Greenway vision. The Midtown Greenway Coalition believes that transit in the Midtown Greenway alongside the cycling and walking paths is appropriate as long as it is consistent with the neighborhoods' vision for the Greenway. The Coalition is opposed to a busway but supports rail transit in the Greenway. One of the important differences between a busway and a rail trolley is that a trolley could run on "lawn" tracks with grass or other turf growing in between the tracks and alongside them. In contrast, a bus would require a 28-foot-wide roadway. There are additional concerns about the sight, sound, and smell of diesel or hybrid diesel-electric busses in the Greenway.
Trolleys draw 100% of their power from unobtrusive overhead electric lines, resulting in no engine noise or on-site pollution in the Greenway. The concept for the rail trolley proposes using vintage or replica streetcars, adding not only mass transit to the Greenway, but also visual interest and fun. Finally, experience in other North American cities has shown that rail systems are much more likely than busways to attract development along the routes.
A vintage trolley in the Midtown Greenway could provide high-quality cross-town transit in what is already one of the busiest transit corridors in the Twin Cities. Connections could be made with the Hiawatha Light Rail Line, numerous north-south bus routes to downtown Minneapolis, the proposed southwest transitway from Eden Prairie to downtown Minneapolis via Highway 100, and the proposed Dan Patch Commuter Rail Line running from the southern suburbs to downtown Minneapolis via a route just west of Highway 100. In addition, the Greenway Trolley could be connected with other trolley lines such as a trolley running to downtown Minneapolis via the Avenue of the Arts (3rd Avenue South), and the existing Lake Harriet vintage trolley, which could be extended to downtown Linden Hills.
More information about vintage trolleys around the country can be found at the
Heritage Trolley website maintained by the American Public Transit Association (APTA).
APTA also has a paper by Weyrich and Lind on streetcars:
Bring Back the Streetcars!: A Conservative Vision of Tomorrow's Urban Transportation
Information about the Southwest Transitway can be found on this website.
In 2004, the Coalition's Streetcar Committee dedicated a series of meetings to Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). To learn more about those meetings and the resolution that the Coalition Board passed, click here.
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