Gosh, I'm lazy. I took this video last week and I am just now posting it. But if you scurry down to the Midway Shopping Center (Simpson to Hamline) you can see some track welding for yourself. This is the area where they'll be laying out and putting together all the long pieces of new LRT track, which will then be moved down the avenue and into place - about a thousand feet at a time! Notice the railroad ties spaced out on the ground to hold the track.
If you listen carefully you can hear another bus rider exclaim something about it being for the train (I remember this being totally hilarious in person, but it is pretty muffled) - then later asking when they will be done. The bus driver says (unenthusiastically) 2014. Ok, sort of true, but most of the construction in the Midway will be done by Thanksgiving. I shake my head a lot on the bus.
Great to see the LRT tracks! I work on University and Raymond, and I was waiting for the bus the other day when another passenger remarked on the construction. I nodded, but noted that this stretch of street would be done by the end of this fall, and she exclaimed "Oh! I thought it was going to take three years!" And on another bus ride, I heard an old man say that the longer construction takes, the more money the construction company will make, so they will take as long as possible.
ReplyDeleteI also shake my head a lot on the bus. Thanks for the great blog!
-Riordan Frost, MN2020