Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

[thespeedmccool]

Not even policymakers know the difference. Didn't Maplewood just say they want Purple Line to be a "letter line?" I know I've heard state legislators talk about how Dakota County wants Metro Transit to 'just give us a letter' about the Red Line.

The StarTribune comment section frequently showcases people talking about Northstar and NLX as 'light rail,' I guess because they think 'heavy rail' is for freight and 'light rail' is for people. Heck, in comment sections on articles and tweets about Gold Line, I've seen people beg 'don't give us light rail!'

There's a lesson here for policymakers: no one knows what the difference is between modes, so it doesn't matter which one you pick. Just pick the one that is truly best instead of handwringing over whether "the community" will accept rail, BRT, etc.

[Didier]

aBRT is needlessly technical and confusing. Why is the 'a' lowercase? Why is there an 'a' at all? Does that make it different than BRT?

They should just call it Super Bus or something.

[EOst]

Not even policymakers know the difference. Didn't Maplewood just say they want Purple Line to be a "letter line?" I know I've heard state legislators talk about how Dakota County wants Metro Transit to 'just give us a letter' about the Red Line.

This wasn't confusion, it was money. Before the sales tax passed last year, counties contributed operating costs for color lines but not letter lines. Dakota didn't want to pay operating costs for Red Line and wanted Metro Transit to take it over. Now operating costs are funded from the sales tax so that issue is moot.

[twincitizen]

aBRT is needlessly technical and confusing. Why is the 'a' lowercase? Why is there an 'a' at all? Does that make it different than BRT?

They should just call it Super Bus or something.

"aBRT" written with lowercase 'a' may actually be a unique creation of this forum and not a real thing. Big if true. Someone check.

Metro Transit uses "Arterial BRT" pretty consistently in written form. That term may actually have been invented by Metro Transit back in 2011-12 during the original Arterial Transit Corridor Study. At the time, there wasn't a commonly accepted name for this 'not quite BRT' concept, and any US cities that had such a thing back then called it "Rapid" or "Max".

If Metro Transit had succeeded in naming the arterial program "Rapid Bus" back then, we probably aren't having this conversation right now. But as the link shows, Dakota County blocked "Rapid" because they thought it would cheapen the then-new Red Line. Ironically, Dakota County would now prefer the Red Line become a lowly "letter bus" so they could get out of having to fund operations.

P.S. After this conversation peters out in a few days, I'll probably move it to the general Arterial BRT thread: viewtopic.php?t=217

[thespeedmccool]

Not even policymakers know the difference. Didn't Maplewood just say they want Purple Line to be a "letter line?" I know I've heard state legislators talk about how Dakota County wants Metro Transit to 'just give us a letter' about the Red Line.

This wasn't confusion, it was money. Before the sales tax passed last year, counties contributed operating costs for color lines but not letter lines. Dakota didn't want to pay operating costs for Red Line and wanted Metro Transit to take it over. Now operating costs are funded from the sales tax so that issue is moot.

That's true. I think my point still stands though that the only meaningful distinction to local policymakers is who pays for 'letter' routes vs. 'color' routes. They don't care that the distinction is supposed to mean something about operations, facilities, etc. They see it as a distinction without a difference, as I suspect most folks do.

[angrysuburbanite]

I usually refer to them as rapid buses or enhanced buses outside of this forum. As others have mentioned, the problem is that there is little distinction between the color routes and the letter routes in official branding like the system map, and the Star Tribune generally refers to them both as BRT, when the letter lines are not BRT, which makes it easier politically to water down both types of projects. "METRO Select" like MTA's select bus service would have been a good choice. (MetroFX like Portland sounds cool too). My biggest gripe is that it seems that implementing bus lanes is generally tied to an aBRT or BRT project rather than just painting them whenever they are needed.

[Oreos&Milk]

I honestly think the public might be more supportive of aBRT if it was called anything but aBRT.

...anything? hmm...

All aboard the new "Rubber Train" Honk Honk!

I kinda agree. Our METRO system has a nice name kinda should have a new name for it kinda play off of Metro..

say..

TRANSIT

TROLLEY

or my personal choice The "Bullet Bus" we could recycle 1994 Speed clips where the bus can't go under 60 MPH. would be edgy, but sure would leave you with the impression of it being a fast bus line. Okay maybe not the best marketing suggestion, but "Bullet Bus" being a play off "Bullet Train" I think would be a good name for the system.

[Nick]

I honestly think the public might be more supportive of aBRT if it was called anything but aBRT.

...anything? hmm...

All aboard the new "Rubber Train" Honk Honk!

I kinda agree. Our METRO system has a nice name kinda should have a new name for it kinda play off of Metro..

say..

TRANSIT

TROLLEY

or my personal choice The "Bullet Bus" we could recycle 1994 Speed clips where the bus can't go under 60 MPH. would be edgy, but sure would leave you with the impression of it being a fast bus line. Okay maybe not the best marketing suggestion, but "Bullet Bus" being a play off "Bullet Train" I think would be a good name for the system.

Back in my day, we wouldn’t stand for this.

[BikesOnFilm]

I, for one, am not losing sleep over the general public not understanding the difference between aBRT and local buses, or confusing LRT with heavy rail.

Because if the powers that be start worrying about this, they will spend the equivalent of a new aBRT line (hyperbole) to a marketing consultant who will propose a reintroduction campaign that will do nothing to solve our actual problems with the Metro Transit system, but will take up time on commissioners' calendars and make them feel like they're accomplishing something.

While I don't subscribe to this view, if the target customer's problem with riding a bus is "I don't think the public transit system is safe" or "I don't think the public transit system will take me where I want to go," it's an absolute waste of time to try and teach that person that some buses are BRT and some are just regular buses.

Because then, best case scenario, they'll just go "Oh, my mistake. I don't think the aBRT system is safe/will take me where I want to go"

[Tom H.]

..."Bullet Bus" being a play off "Bullet Train" I think would be a good name for the system.

I think this is mostly a joke, but "Bullet Bus" is just setting up the most obvious political attacks imaginable from anti-transit / anti-urban conservatives

[mattaudio]

Brings new meaning to the old Denny Hecker ads on the sides of buses:

[wingedmolotov]

The initial 17 potential candidate corridors for the J, K, and L lines have been identified! You can subscribe to the newsletter and leave a comment on the interactive map now.

1. 38th Street / Excelsior
2. 46th Street
3. 63rd Avenue / Zane
4. 66th Street
5. Bloomington / Lyndale
6. Broadway
7. Century
8. County Road C
9. Dale / George
10. Franklin / Grand / 3rd Street
11. Johnson / Lyndale
12. Hennepin / Larpenteur
13. Lowry
14. Nicollet
15. North Snelling / Lexington
16. Payne / Westminster
17. Randolph / East 7th Street

https://metrotransit.org/arterial-brt-plan

Also, didn't get the chance to take a photo but I saw some signs up for SW 686 around Normandale Lake.

[mattaudio]

Ahhh, my "C is for Cedar" call to extend the C Line down Cedar Ave to Mall of America never took off.

[daveybabymsp]

The initial 17 potential candidate corridors for the J, K, and L lines have been identified! You can subscribe to the newsletter and leave a comment on the interactive map now.

1. 38th Street / Excelsior
2. 46th Street
3. 63rd Avenue / Zane
4. 66th Street
5. Bloomington / Lyndale
6. Broadway
7. Century
8. County Road C
9. Dale / George
10. Franklin / Grand / 3rd Street
11. Johnson / Lyndale
12. Hennepin / Larpenteur
13. Lowry
14. Nicollet
15. North Snelling / Lexington
16. Payne / Westminster
17. Randolph / East 7th Street

https://metrotransit.org/arterial-brt-plan

Also, didn't get the chance to take a photo but I saw some signs up for SW 686 around Normandale Lake.

Some of these are highly questionable. I’m hoping they were just included to give geographic representation and will get screened out. County C? North snelling/lexington? I grew up in the north burbs and those have terrible ridership potential. Same is probably true of Century and some others. Even urban routes like the 30 don’t make a ton of sense for being up next.

I do like how they combined the 63 and parts of the 2, that is a cool idea.

[DanPatchToget]

I'd vote for Johnson/Lyndale, Nicollet, and Randolph/East 7th to be the next three.

[Silophant]

I'm curious how these were selected. It's strange that some of them were carefully pieced together from segments of other lines, like the 2/63 combo, and some are just an existing infrequent suburban (or urban) route plopped onto the map, weird industrial meanders and all.

My votes would be Nicollet, obviously, Lowry because there's gotta be a crosstown corridor north of downtown, and Broadway is... not great, and Randolph/E 7th, pending St. Paul/Ramsey County/Met Council figuring out what they're going to do with the W 7th corridor and the Purple Line. I'm not super familar with St. Paul's transit needs, but politically there does have to be some amount of geographic balance. For the same reason, as busy as the Rt 4 is south of downtown, I can't see south Minneapolis getting a fourth N-S BRT line in the space of a mile and a quarter. I think it's going to be Nicollet or Johnson/Lyndale, not both.

[Nick]

If they have to do something in the suburbs, Excelsior out to Hopkins would be nice, but combining it with the 23 rather than going downtown seems weird. There are a lot of apartments and destinations along Excelsior and the surrounding land is mostly on a grid and infillable. I was taking the 612 a bit midday last year and was surprised that there were a medium-number of other riders.

[Bakken2016]

If they have to do something in the suburbs, Excelsior out to Hopkins would be nice, but combining it with the 23 rather than going downtown seems weird. There are a lot of apartments and destinations along Excelsior and the surrounding land is mostly on a grid and infillable. I was taking the 612 a bit midday last year and was surprised that there were a medium-number of other riders.

Well I suppose they are showing it combined with the 23, because Network Now has the 23 and 612 combined to become a new local route 38.