Letter to Southwest LRT Planning Office

Here is a copy of my letter to the Southwest LRT planning office:

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To whom it may concern,

I have carefully reviewed the available documents from the scoping study, including appendix M on the 11/12th street sub-alternative), and have come up with a proposed routing, which would achieve the goals of the proposed 11th/12th street routing (namely providing high-quality transit service to Uptown and Whittier and interfacing with the existing light rail system in such a way as to allow cooperative operation), while at the same time better preserving the community and traffic patterns (and thus businesses) on major streets in Whittier.

My proposed routing (which can be found in Google Maps form comparing it to the studied alternative routing HERE) would follow the regular 3C routing through the 29th Street Greenway trench and turn northbound onto Blaisdell Avenue. There would be a station in the trench immediately before the turn began, probably between Pleasant and Pillsbury avenues. The proposed LynLake station would remain the same. After turning on to Blaisdell, the routing would continue northbound in a trench up to the intersection with Franklin Avenue, where it would turn at-grade into the Plymouth Congregationalist Church's parking lot. As it currently stands, this parking lot covers close to half of the block. After turning approximately 45 degrees, there would be a station, and after the station, it would execute a corresponding turns to put it onto Nicollet Avenue, heading northbound, on which it would cross I-94 and assume the regular 3C sub-alternative routing.

By placing the two stations off of Blaisdell (in the Parking lot on Franklin/Blaisdell and the Greenway trench), the need to fully shut down traffic on either Blaisdell or 1st Avenue could be avoided. If project budgets allow it and/or ridership justifies it, a below-grade station could perhaps be added at Blaisdell/26th street.

I would appreciate it if you would please consider my proposed routing, because I believe that it may solve many of the issues regarding the relations between the LRT and the Whittier neighborhood.