Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[Silophant]

Very cool! I'm hoping it's a precursor to eventually allowing fare purchases through the app like other cities do. It's so nice when traveling to have a single app that just works pretty much wherever you go.

[angrysuburbanite]

Some ridership updates to share!
https://www.metrotransit.org/performance
January
Lowest ridership month since the beginning of 2023 with a daily ridership of 124,947 - same month in 2024 was 135,210.
- Blue Line slips further to 13,810, below Jan 2024's 16,117, now within a thousand riders of the D Line, which saw 12,372 rides
- Green Line falls from post-covid highs in September of 32,959 down to 22,957.
- Orange Line rebounds slightly to 1,789, though down from 1,998 (also September)
- Regular bus plummets to 65,743 - both December and January saw slightly lower numbers this year than last year. The high from 2024 was 80,284.
- Saturday ridership sees a large drop to 81,241 from 94,906 the previous month, further down than the high of 130,233 in August.
- Sunday takes the biggest hit with 65,910 rides from 97,169 in December. Same time last year was 75,568.
2024 Year End
https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... nfo-1.aspx
- 2024 saw sizable increases in ridership during the spring and summer, but growth slowed by the end of the year and fell slightly behind 2024 in December.
- Overall ridership for the Metro Transit system was 51,874,415, up 6% from 48,736,824.
- Maple Grove Transit saw an 11% increase from 216,123 to 240,608
- MVTA saw a 3% decrease from 1,255,515 to 1,223,343
- Plymouth Metrolink saw a 21% increase from 180,874 to 218,436
- Southwest Transit saw a 23% increase from 446,391 to 550,938
- U of MN saw a 9% increase from 2,442,872 to 2,663,750
- Midday bus ridership saw the most growth. Peak hour ridership in the fourth-quarter is given as the reason for the ridership decline.

Despite a less than optimal beginning to the year, the new BRT services and amenity improvements on local bus services will probably increase the ridership momentum (especially since the B and E lines hit some historically very choice-rider heavy areas)

[kdo5581]

Hey why has the Green Line been such a disaster through the U campus lately. Slow running, missed signal priority windows. Very strange. Seems to start at West Bank station - every train entering from downtown has been crawling as it approaches the station.

[DanPatchToget]

Hey why has the Green Line been such a disaster through the U campus lately. Slow running, missed signal priority windows. Very strange. Seems to start at West Bank station - every train entering from downtown has been crawling as it approaches the station.

Speed restrictions due to track breaks from the freeze thaw conditions this winter.

[kdo5581]

Hey why has the Green Line been such a disaster through the U campus lately. Slow running, missed signal priority windows. Very strange. Seems to start at West Bank station - every train entering from downtown has been crawling as it approaches the station.

Speed restrictions due to track breaks from the freeze thaw conditions this winter.

I'm not seeing anything on Metro Transit's website about a plan to address this. Does anyone know if there's any (even loose) plan for fixing this? Was surprised to see a closure for the Blue Line South of Fort Snelling (especially since they had a big closure of this somewhat recently?) but nothing for Green Line planned. Would be nice if there was at least a formal acknowledgement of causes for slow service somewhere (unless I'm just missing it)

[COLSLAW5]

This year with the temperature swings has caused the most rail breaks in one season apparently. The plan is to fix the west half up to Raymond excluding DT MPLS over the last weekend in May and the East half into STP in Mid July.

Rail shut downs are coordinated half a year or more in advance normally to stack repairs and projects and miss any major events. So its hard but they try to minimize disruptions

[UrbanMPLS]

Couldn’t they do some of these repairs during the overnight hours? I thought this was one of the benefits to only running 18 hours a day.

[HuskyGrad]

Couldn’t they do some of these repairs during the overnight hours? I thought this was one of the benefits to only running 18 hours a day.

Usually to repair rail brakes you’ll need more than a few hours for the elastomeric grout to set up.

[UrbanMPLS]

Couldn’t they do some of these repairs during the overnight hours? I thought this was one of the benefits to only running 18 hours a day.

Usually to repair rail brakes you’ll need more than a few hours for the elastomeric grout to set up.

Makes sense. Appreciate the explanation.

[kdo5581]

This year with the temperature swings has caused the most rail breaks in one season apparently. The plan is to fix the west half up to Raymond excluding DT MPLS over the last weekend in May and the East half into STP in Mid July.

Rail shut downs are coordinated half a year or more in advance normally to stack repairs and projects and miss any major events. So its hard but they try to minimize disruptions

That's helpful - thanks for the explanation.

Are you just hearing about these plans informally? I know the agency is probably a little reluctant to post anything specific in case things change, but I feel like with the amount of slow zones, it would be beneficial to at least acknowledge the problem in a more official capacity.