With Highway 280 Closed, Why No Green Line Priority?

[Highway 280 being completely reconstructed just north of Territorial Road.]

Anyone who has talked to me about the Green Line for more than a minute knows how I feel about the train’s constant, maddening, interminable signal priority problem. The Green Line stops unnecessarily at far too many intersections as it travels through St. Paul, adding 10% to trip times even in the best circumstances. 

There’s a lot to complain about with these inadequate signals and misplaced priorities, but the worst offender is the onramp / frontage roads at Highway 280. These are not key intersections. They often carry small numbers of trucks and cars to their freeway entrances. Yet the Green Line train, carrying dozens or hundreds of people, always stops and wait to cross these streets, held for a most single-occupant vehicles.

Well, friend, the only thing worse than stopping at the Highway 280 on-ramps over and over again, slowing down transit for traffic exiting a freeway, is stopping at the Highway 280 on-ramps over and over again, slowing down transit for traffic exiting a freeway when that freeway is closed for over three months. 

That’s what’s happening now. Highway 280 is completely closed for a huge reconstruction project until late August. There’s zero traffic going down this aging, badly designed road that runs along the Minneapolis and St. Paul border. Frontage road traffic is a tiny fraction of its normal volume.

Yet the Green Line is still stopping at the stoplights.

This summer would be a great time to test out giving the Green Line to signal priority. Couldn’t the powers that be — MN-DOT, St. Paul, Metro Transit — tweak the stoplights  until the state fair? See how much time savings is on the table. How hard can that be?