Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[DanPatchToget]

From what I can see on MnDOT's website about the 494 project, nothing will be abutting the Best Buy HQ, so I don't see why the park & ride has to be closed for the freeway expansion. I can see it being closed because they're using the parking lot for construction equipment staging, but it would've been nice to keep a small parcel of the parking lot open for park & riders.

My guess is they intend to use it as a staging area for future phases of the interchange reconstruction (current phase is 1 of 3?) and it doesn't make sense to build a P&R which they might need to close or remove for future construction staging.

I'm not suggesting closing the park & ride lot whenever they need/want to use it for construction staging, I'm saying it should've been kept open throughout the entire construction process or find an alternative parking lot (probably the one at Dick's Sporting Goods) to use as a park & ride. Seeing construction for a freeway expansion project get prioritized over an existing park & ride lot with no alternatives provided just doesn't sit right with me. Yes the closure of this park & ride isn't decimating Orange Line ridership, but it's still a lost ridership generator.

[mattaudio]

Seems like park & rides are a quasi-ridership generator, because if someone is parking to ride transit they can probably drive to another nearby place to park and ride transit.

Similarly, this is why I'm probably somewhat ok with larger structured parking for park and rides (if priced) vs more and smaller facilities. Might as well concentrate P&R demand to larger facilities where service can be more frequent, robust, scalable.

Oooh, my screed on this just hit its 10th anniversary. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/19/ ... de-parking

I still propose it would make more sense to eliminate the express fare, and instead charge a fee for parking at a park and ride. This would also be easier to facilitate at larger P&Rs. Today, the off-peak standard fare is $2 and the peak express fare is $3.25 ($6.50/day). Do some fare table rationalization, maybe to all fares being $2.25. Then charge $2-4+/day for parking at these facilities. Scan a go-to card to get into the parking. Simplify transit fares and decouple parking.

As I noted in my article a decade ago, this would also eliminate the weird artifacts of our current fare structure where someone riding the 94 between downtowns, or riding a 477 to their transit-adjacent home in Apple Valley, is paying the same rate as someone consuming a parking space in an expensive parking garage.

[DanPatchToget]

Seems like park & rides are a quasi-ridership generator, because if someone is parking to ride transit they can probably drive to another nearby place to park and ride transit.

Similarly, this is why I'm probably somewhat ok with larger structured parking for park and rides (if priced) vs more and smaller facilities. Might as well concentrate P&R demand to larger facilities where service can be more frequent, robust, scalable.

Oooh, my screed on this just hit its 10th anniversary. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/03/19/ ... de-parking

I still propose it would make more sense to eliminate the express fare, and instead charge a fee for parking at a park and ride. This would also be easier to facilitate at larger P&Rs. Today, the off-peak standard fare is $2 and the peak express fare is $3.25 ($6.50/day). Do some fare table rationalization, maybe to all fares being $2.25. Then charge $2-4+/day for parking at these facilities. Scan a go-to card to get into the parking. Simplify transit fares and decouple parking.

As I noted in my article a decade ago, this would also eliminate the weird artifacts of our current fare structure where someone riding the 94 between downtowns, or riding a 477 to their transit-adjacent home in Apple Valley, is paying the same rate as someone consuming a parking space in an expensive parking garage.

From Knox Avenue Park & Ride the only alternative park & rides are Southdale, which would be a much longer bus trip to downtown on Route 6, or 98th & 35W on the Orange Line, which for most or all people who previously used the Knox Avenue P&R would require backtracking to Bloomington just to go north, so only a few people at most would probably do that.

[Tcmetro]

No point in charging for park and ride space when they're all empty now.

Agree on changing the fare structure. No need for peak/off-peak (as it's an uncommon practice). Getting rid of the express fare zone isn't a bad idea either, given that express service is a small proportion of all service. A compromise may be to increase the express distance from 4 miles to 6 miles so that routes like the 94 would fall into the lower fare bucket.

[twincitizen]

To get a P&R back at 76th & Knox, Richfield would have to lobby/convince Metro Transit to pay to lease some parking spaces from Dick's. That northern wing of the parking lot behind the store can't possibly be seeing that much use. I imagine Dick's would be a willing partner. There's no way they don't have surplus parking available and the monthly lease revenue couldn't hurt either.

At Knox-American Station, I think there's so little demand that the few people who want to could just hide & ride by parking on 80th 1/2, 81st, etc.

[MNdible]

I'd wager on any given day, the Best Buy parking ramp is maybe a quarter full. Plenty of space there to be rented out, at least short term.

[twincitizen]

Agreed, no doubt Best Buy has empty space in their ramp. I suggested Dick’s because it’s a surface lot and probably easier/cheaper for Metro Transit to lease a few dozen spaces out in the open vs. inside a secure ramp. Much longer walk for riders too if they had to go in the ramp, use an elevator, etc. The north lot behind Dick’s is almost perfectly set up for use as a P&R, with its proximity to the platforms

[angrysuburbanite]

In other news, February ridership is on the performance page https://www.metrotransit.org/performance#mtservice

Highlights:
- Ridership has stayed impressively stable from September/October overall, and has pretty much fully recovered from the usual January dip.
- Regular bus, C Line, D Line, and Green Line categories all displayed this well
- D Line continues to generate super impressive ridership (~13k) and the Green Line continues to do pretty well (~30k), but still a bit below pre-2020 levels (no surprises there)
- Northstar is basically the same as it was before more service was added
- C Line ridership still fluctuates massively, follows absolutely no pattern whatsoever
- Orange Line appears to be stuck around 1,700 - not terrible, but not great either
- The Blue Line ridership is still somewhat troubling to me, as it is not much different than the D Line despite being a train. It is hovering around 17k riders it looks like, which is a far cry from the 35k it experienced in 2019

I really have to wonder when (if ever) transit ridership will recover to where it was during the 2010s... maybe in the late 2020s-early 2030s? With all of the new transit projects underway, new fare system, and secure funding/no fiscal cliff, our region has a much more positive outlook than many in the United States, I hope the future ridership reflects that.

[Tom H.]

I read the data slightly different than you, but I still draw most of the same conclusions. I wouldn't say C Line has "no pattern" - it appears to be following the same "January dip" pattern as most of the lines, albeit with a higher amplitude than the others. I also wouldn't say the Orange Line is "stuck"; rather, it appears to have pretty robust underlying growth if you mentally disentangle the annual winter slump.

Green Line appears to be gaining something like 5k riders / year, which implies recovery of pre-Covid ridership in about 4 years if that trend holds.

In fact, I'd argue that almost all of the categories shown on the ridership report have pretty encouraging long-term growth, with the exception of "regular bus", which is probably actually a good thing since that mode is being selectively cannibalized by the success of the aBRT lines, and the Blue Line, which appears to have basically peaked.

My guess is that the Blue Line is suffering from 3 major interrelated categories: (1) MoA is less of a trip generator than pre-Covid due to changing retail trends; (2) most of the recent bad press about light rail conditions has seemed to be Blue Line-focused, particularly at the Lake Street station; and (3) Blue Line historically pulled more "choice" riders from the airport who have probably switched modes (to Uber/Lyft among others) due to the bad press.

I think the Green Line suffers from these 3 much less, since it's more of a "neighborhood" line and the U of M student passes create such a strong natural ridership constituency.

[J. Mc]

My guess is that the Blue Line is suffering from 3 major interrelated categories: (1) MoA is less of a trip generator than pre-Covid due to changing retail trends; (2) most of the recent bad press about light rail conditions has seemed to be Blue Line-focused, particularly at the Lake Street station; and (3) Blue Line historically pulled more "choice" riders from the airport who have probably switched modes (to Uber/Lyft among others) due to the bad press.

Blue Line also had a ton of weekday P&R usage pre-covid. Looks like they finally opened the upper levels of the 30th Ave ramp again so maybe it's starting to come back. (Well the rider alert is gone anyways) I'm sure remote work is still impacting P&R ridership though.

[twincitizen]

MOA foot traffic has been at or above pre-pandemic levels for a while now. I wouldn't be surprised if ridership at MOA Station is back to >90% of pre-pandemic. So I don't think fewer LRT trips to the mall are a likely explanation for the Blue Line's slower ridership recovery. It's mostly remote work and reputation. Another likely factor could be frequency reductions on connecting bus routes. I recall they used to claim that something like 40% of Blue Line riders were transferring from a bus.

With the Timberwolves playoff bound in the next few weeks, there should be a noticeable bump from bringing riders to multiple sold out home games, and thousands more fans coming downtown to watch.

[Nick]

My "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs on a train" counter is now at "don't recall specifically," which is nice. The "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs at a train station" counter is at two, though. I did see a UMPD cop physically push a guy off the train for holding a door a few weeks ago. Conditions have been steadily improving for a while, but I think it's going to take years for choice riders to be fully back on board.

[UrbanMPLS]

With the Timberwolves playoff bound in the next few weeks, there should be a noticeable bump from bringing riders to multiple sold out home games, and thousands more fans coming downtown to watch.

I’m actually a little worried about this. Last year, the two Wolves’ playoff games started at 8 and 8:30. Assuming 2.5 hour games, you’re looking at games ending around 10:30–11, possibly later. That means there are at most two trips on each line after the game ends, with 30 minutes between them.

I’m hopeful MetroTransit will stack up some trains for after the game. But if I had tickets, the risk of waiting 30 minutes and then getting stranded downtown because I couldn’t get on a packed train would be enough to convince me to drive.

All that to say, I think one key reason ridership hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels is that service hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

[Mdcastle]

Have to agree MOA appears to be doing just fine. The place is absolutely packed on weekend nights and there's very few vacancies.

A lot of the will ride trains but not buses people from the suburbs that would drive their car to a park and ride and take the train downtown to work are still working in their pajamas at home.

[alexschief]

I thought this Tweet was interesting:

@Nerd4Cities
I’ve been checked by fare enforcement on (Twin Cities) Metro Transit more times in the last four days than I’ve been checked on basically all other light rail systems combined in the last five years. Not saying it’s good or bad, just saying it’s interesting

This is, as we all know, a new thing. I was in Seattle last summer and Phoenix last fall and saw a public safety presence on the former light rail and was fare checked on the latter. All the while, no fare checks on transit here.

But my recent experience has been the same as the tweeter, I've had my fare checked repeatedly on the train in the past couple weeks and I've also seen MTPD. They seem to be targeting the infamous middle car as well. So clearly the agency now has enough support and staff to do what they've wanted to do for a while and it's interesting to see visitors noticing.

[amiller92]

Have to agree MOA appears to be doing just fine. The place is absolutely packed on weekend nights and there's very few vacancies.

While I think it's doing fine, aren't two of the former anchors spots still mostly empty? And there are a lot of what look like pretty low revenue generating spaces too.

[Nick]

My "days since I've seen someone doing hard drugs on a train" counter is now at "don't recall specifically," which is nice.

Flipping the card back to zero

[StandishGuy]

Slow Blue Line ridership recovery is almost certainly due to huge cutbacks on feeder bus service. Routes #7, 9, 23, 46, etc. were all cut back to once an hour or worse for much of the day and frequencies were only just improved somewhat. The #23, for example, used to be near the top 20 regular bus routes for ridership, but I fear terrible service over the last several years before and after the pandemic has driven people away from the route. The long construction and George Floyd Square detours made it very slow and unreliable. I used to see lots of people from Uptown taking the #23 to the Blue Line headed to the airport based on seeing their luggage. Anecdotally, I never see anyone doing that anymore. It's sad because it was always well-used, but now buses are often empty even at rush hour.

[angrysuburbanite]

It's really unfortunate how much service--and subsequently ridership--we have lost in just the past few years. I find it very frustrating because the gridded areas of the Twin Cities are perfect for a frequent grid bus network---and to some extent had that for many years.

A thought I had would be to extend the A Line to cover the 46 (which apparently doesn't run weekends? HUH?!? ) and provide a solid E-W connection, but first there should be a goal to run every core and supporting local route in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the first-ring suburbs at least every 15-20 minutes every day. It would help ridership return relatively quickly, I think. Just need to find drivers... maybe Metro Transit could lure in some Uber/Lyft drivers?

[StandishGuy]

I love the idea of extending the A Line to take over the route #46 bus route. It would make connections to both the D-Line and Orange Line. However, I don't remember whether there is a D-Line bus station at 46th St.. If not passengers would need to walk two blocks south to 48th & Chicago to make a transfer.