urbanMSP

I think we've discussed the previous Better Bus Routes projects (Rt 2 and Rt 63) in the Public Transit News/Current Events thread, but that's a little unwieldy and impossible to search, so I'm making a new one.

Despite the pandemic, Metro Transit's been pressing ahead with the Better Bus Routes program, and just launched public engagement for the next project - Route 3. This one's a little more in-depth than the Rt 2 and Rt 63 reworks: in addition to the stop consolidation and stop/shelter upgrades that the previous routes got, they're also considering:

Scrapping the 3K branch, replacing it with a Rt 33 circulator that does a clockwise loop around 15th, Elm, Kasota, 280, and University/4th to connect to the Green Line as well as the remaining Rt 3 mainline.

Moving the downtown Minneapolis routing from 3rd/4th to Washington, via Seven Corners, then all the way up Washington to 10th Ave N. Strangely, this includes stop consolidation in the North Loop, changing N. Washington's haphazard stop locations to include pairs of stops at Hennepin, 3rd, 6th, 8th, and 10th, (presumably affecting the 14 as well), but doesn't touch the Mill District or Gateway stops beyond adding a pair at Washington and Marquette, so it would still stop every block or so in the Mill District. I'm hoping the 10th Ave S, Park/Portland, and NB only 2nd Ave S stops can be dropped - we may be stuck with the LRT stopping way too often and crawling through downtown, but there's no reason that has to apply to buses.

There's a survey at that link, fill it out! They're saying that construction is slated for this summer, so I don't think it'll be too long of a public engagement period.

I wonder if this is Metro Transit tipping their hand a bit on the ABRT route selection process. It's hard for me to imagine them doing this if they're planning to replace Route 3 with Como-Maryland BRT in a few years.

You'll probably have to take smaller areas and add them together and try to estimate.


"This dataset consists of housing unit, household, and population estimates for census tracts, census block groups, Transportation Analysis Zones (TAZs), school districts, and ZIP codes in the Twin Cities Region."
https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-st ... -estimates

I wonder if this is Metro Transit tipping their hand a bit on the ABRT route selection process. It's hard for me to imagine them doing this if they're planning to replace Route 3 with Como-Maryland BRT in a few years.

Having asked this very question to someone on the inside recently, the answer is a pretty resounding no. This seems like a case of two departments being too siloed to talk to each other and coordinate projects. Route 3 was chosen as the next BBR project before the Network Next effort got going, and the fact that Como/Maryland was such a high-priority aBRT candidate blindsided the BBR project team. I wouldn't read too much into this.

I am confused about the 2 stops down on 7th street in downtown Minneapolis. Any idea what those are for?

Those are for the late night line up when all the buses meet at 7th and Nicollet at 12:10 and 1:10 am.

I wonder if this is Metro Transit tipping their hand a bit on the ABRT route selection process. It's hard for me to imagine them doing this if they're planning to replace Route 3 with Como-Maryland BRT in a few years.

Having asked this very question to someone on the inside recently, the answer is a pretty resounding no. This seems like a case of two departments being too siloed to talk to each other and coordinate projects. Route 3 was chosen as the next BBR project before the Network Next effort got going, and the fact that Como/Maryland was such a high-priority aBRT candidate blindsided the BBR project team. I wouldn't read too much into this.

Glad to hear it, honestly. It wouldn't surprise me for MT to not bother with BBRing the 3 if it was known that it was in line for an aBRT upgrade, but this is going to happen this year. Even if Como-Maryland is selected as the F Line, it wouldn't be coming until 2025 or 2026 - these improvements will have been helping people for four years by then.

I wonder if this is Metro Transit tipping their hand a bit on the ABRT route selection process. It's hard for me to imagine them doing this if they're planning to replace Route 3 with Como-Maryland BRT in a few years.

Having asked this very question to someone on the inside recently, the answer is a pretty resounding no. This seems like a case of two departments being too siloed to talk to each other and coordinate projects. Route 3 was chosen as the next BBR project before the Network Next effort got going, and the fact that Como/Maryland was such a high-priority aBRT candidate blindsided the BBR project team. I wouldn't read too much into this.

Glad to hear it, honestly. It wouldn't surprise me for MT to not bother with BBRing the 3 if it was known that it was in line for an aBRT upgrade, but this is going to happen this year. Even if Como-Maryland is selected as the F Line, it wouldn't be coming until 2025 or 2026 - these improvements will have been helping people for four years by then.

In addition, the aBRT selection will likely be made before construction begins on the small enhancements for this project, so there will be a window of time to coordinate.

These are good changes, I wish they would move the #7 and #14 to Washington as well. There will be a strong case for bus lanes on Washington in the near future. Wish the timeline on these changes could be faster, there should be at minimum two to three of these BBR overhauls a year.

Route 4 is up next for better busification. It's probably too much to ask to have all trips go up to Silver Lake Village, but it would be cool if the north endpoint of the 4 could be at Central/Hennepin/8thish so that all trips crossed the bridge.

I think I've asked this before, but does the 4 layover at the Gateway Ramp?

4 does not layover at Gateway.

Hasn't 4 been identified for aBRT-ification in the mid-term future? Line J or K?

Yes, I believe the J Line between Southtown in Bloomington and Silver Lake Village was/is proposed.

If I remember correctly, Route 4 scored the highest (like, even higher than the 10 and 18) on the rubric they were using to select the recent wave of aBRT lines a couple years ago, implying that it would get aBRT'd soon, but they didn't actually confirm it would be next.

I'm still holding out hope that the Network Now process leads to the 4 and 22 getting reconfigured into a pair of "crosstown" lines running on Johnson/10th/Cedar and Lyndale N/S (maybe jogging over to Van White instead of doing the freeway frontage road bit of Lyndale?) to allow direct trips to be made from North to Southwest and Northeast to South instead of having every single one seat ride be NE-SW or N-S. Pretty easy to imagine either of those being aBRT-worthy.

Are there enough N-S crosstown trips to justify not going through downtown and depriving many other riders of the trips and transfers available downtown? While E-W crosstown routes are different, seems like Minneapolis' grid (downtown askew) and geography (Bassett Creek, river corridor, etc) are favorable to N-S lines overlaying into an X pattern via downtown to provide transfers and downtown O&D trips.

Edit: I'm still hoping for C Line extension down Cedar to MOA someday... C Line is for Cedar.

Yeah, the obsession with killing the downtown hub-and-spoke in favor of a cartesian grid is truly baffling to me. You're benefiting hardly anybody, and hurting lots of people who do want to go downtown (or who would like to make a different connection there).

Yeah, the obsession with killing the downtown hub-and-spoke in favor of a cartesian grid is truly baffling to me. You're benefiting hardly anybody, and hurting lots of people who do want to go downtown (or who would like to make a different connection there).

Chicago has a great bus grid, but I think it only works because the L covers the high-demand radial routes. Then the bus sort of fills in the gaps.

Not sure what we're arguing about here? Any N/S route is going to have to pass through downtown. Wanting a grid network with N/S connecting buses and wanting downtown service are compatible goals because we have Twin Cities that are both functionally laid out like hourglasses.

Re: the #4 bus and future aBRT plans, my understanding was that Metro Transit is going to regularly reevaluate the next routes in the queue, so what comes next after F, G, and H is fairly up in the air. You'd certainly expect that the Lyndale/Johnson corridor would be in pole position however, along with Nicollet. It would be a good goal to have the J and K Lines (I expect they'll skip I?) up and running by 2030, although I wouldn't mind if focus went on extending the C and F Lines instead (but I'm a broken record on this).

This comment could go in the aBRT thread or here, but I wonder if going with lettered rapid lines instead of numbers is going to seem like a good idea long-term, once we're in the middle of the alphabet. Instead of A-K (minus I), the first ten aBRT routes could have been labeled Routes 1-10. Obviously that would require a prerequisite action of renumbering the current single-digit routes to higher numbers. Or they could've done what many other cities have and do R1, R2, etc.

As it stands, we're going to have colors, letters, and numbers. Outside of NYC, I'm not sure another US city has all three. For a transit system of our relatively small size and relatively low complexity (i.e. just two transit modes: ignoring Northstar, we have only buses and LRT; no streetcars, ferries, etc.), it seems like we could manage to only use two of the three route naming schemes. Metro Transit does a great job with consistent branding across the system, I think we could tighten up the route naming/numbering a little bit.

This comment could go in the aBRT thread or here, but I wonder if going with lettered rapid lines instead of numbers is going to seem like a good idea long-term, once we're in the middle of the alphabet. Instead of A-K (minus I), the first ten aBRT routes could have been labeled Routes 1-10. Obviously that would require a prerequisite action of renumbering the current single-digit routes to higher numbers. Or they could've done what many other cities have and do R1, R2, etc.

As it stands, we're going to have colors, letters, and numbers. Outside of NYC, I'm not sure another US city has all three. For a transit system of our relatively small size and relatively low complexity (i.e. just two transit modes: ignoring Northstar, we have only buses and LRT; no streetcars, ferries, etc.), it seems like we could manage to only use two of the three route naming schemes. Metro Transit does a great job with consistent branding across the system, I think we could tighten up the route naming/numbering a little bit.

I actually very much disagree on this. I think it’s important to differentiate these from regular bus routes. If we end up with 26 of these things, that’s a good problem that we can deal with then.