Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[wingedmolotov]

American Blvd may be one of the most overbuilt roads in the "Urban" designated suburbs. I've said it in another thread, but there's little chance of making it an area that feels conducive to transit ridership when you need to cross an astonishing 19 lanes of traffic on foot to get to the opposite corner of intersections like Lyndale and 24th.

I would hope that the city is open to making major changes when so much development has been focused along this corridor. A road diet is certainly in order. There will be an open house this Tuesday the 28th, so it will be interesting to see how the project team is approaching the study.

[BigIdeasGuy]

Whispers, it's only about 12 miles from Bloomington Central Station to EP Town Center Station mostly via American.

[angrysuburbanite]

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... dates.aspx
Met Council update on this year's incoming BRT lines.
- 84 new stations, 36 miles overall
Gold Line
- 34 new bus operators with 17 buses (12 are diesel, 5 are electric)
- MnDOT likely to oversee maintenance/plowing
- Majority of the busway is signed for 40 MPH with a top speed of 45, meaning it will probably not be comparable with driving.
- Unclear whether or not network now routes/restructuring will also be implemented at the same time. Routes 323 and 355 notably do not terminate at Woodlane P&R in the maps in the presentation.
B & E Lines
- Service to begin on June 14th for B line
- Service to begin on December 6th for E line

I expect both the B and E lines to be pretty immediate successes as they both hit already transit-dependent neighborhoods (midtown and the university), but also pass through some good pockets of potential urban choice riders that were maybe lost during the pandemic (Southwest Minneapolis, Uptown, Cathedral Hill, Merriam Park). Cathedral Hill in particular is a great neighborhood that will really benefit from an addition of BRT service and make it one of the Twin Cities' best IMO. I also think that the introduction of high-frequency transit through the Chain of Lakes is a win for potential tourists - by 2030 it will be really well served. And to state the obvious France and 50th as well as Linden hills will finally have high-frequency transit access.

I know it has been discussed before, but the Gold line will be interesting. I think it will be a great core backbone for east side transit, but will really need those proposed connecting routes from Network Now to really thrive.

[Nick]

It might be fun to take bets on what Gold Line ridership will be.

[angrysuburbanite]

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... pdate.aspx
I posted too soon! The Presentation was updated with more B and E line information, specifically in regards to local bus service, which diverges from the network now plan significantly.
- Route 21 will be completely eliminated. This differs from the original plan where it ran hourly along most of Lake Street.
- Route 27 will be restored as local service instead, though it spends most of its time north of Lake Street. Network Now called for its permanent discontinuation.
- Routes 612 and 23 will be officially combined as route 38, consistent with Network Now.
- Route 6 will be truncated to Uptown and run on Xerxes only and cover most of the stuff south of Southdale.
- Local service on Selby and up to Snelling & University will be covered by an extension of route 70 rather than a new route 60 proposed in Network Now. This is a significant frequency downgrade from route 60 as it is presumably going to run hourly rather than every 30 minutes. My guess for this one is that MT doesn't have enough operators to create a new route at this time. Hopefully route 60 is eventually added.

[Tcmetro]

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... pdate.aspx
I posted too soon! The Presentation was updated with more B and E line information, specifically in regards to local bus service, which diverges from the network now plan significantly.
- Route 21 will be completely eliminated. This differs from the original plan where it ran hourly along most of Lake Street.
- Route 27 will be restored as local service instead, though it spends most of its time north of Lake Street. Network Now called for its permanent discontinuation.
- Routes 612 and 23 will be officially combined as route 38, consistent with Network Now.
- Route 6 will be truncated to Uptown and run on Xerxes only and cover most of the stuff south of Southdale.
- Local service on Selby and up to Snelling & University will be covered by an extension of route 70 rather than a new route 60 proposed in Network Now. This is a significant frequency downgrade from route 60 as it is presumably going to run hourly rather than every 30 minutes. My guess for this one is that MT doesn't have enough operators to create a new route at this time. Hopefully route 60 is eventually added.

Getting rid of the 21 is a good idea. I put a comment in to Metro Transit to add B Line stops at Dupont, Grand, and 12th to get rid of local service but they said 1/4 mile spacing would be too much for those stretches (never mind that most of the other stops in S Mpls are have similar spacing).

All day 27 replacing the 21 and extending to Uptown is nice. It would be great if 26th could become a two-way at some point, but this is a great way to make that route more usable.

The 38 looks like it makes a deviation to 36th & Bryant - interesting choice.

Extending the 70 along Selby keeps the connection to downtown, which IMO makes more sense than ending at the Capitol. Not sure why there's a need for a local bus on Selby if the Lake St bus is bring eliminated, however. The Midway Center is functionally gone and only Cub/Target could really justify keeping the local route.

[Rube Dali]

Quarterly changes effective March 22nd.
https://www.metrotransit.org/quarterly- ... y-march-22

[Tcmetro]

SW Transit has put a page together for the new 686 route which operates between SW Station and the airport. The local service that stops along American Blvd is weekdays only, but the express service which makes one intermediate stop at MOA operates 7 days a week.

https://swtransit.org/686/

With the MVTA 495 route to Burnsville, Savage, and Shakopee, and Metro Transit's proposed 354 service to West St Paul, Newport, and Woodbury, it looks like a regional express network feeding the airport is starting to emerge. Will be interesting to see if any other new routes will be created in the future.

[Tom H.]

I'm hoping this 686 route at least demonstrates corridor demand and can accelerate American Blvd for aBRT consideration. This is actually a very useful route, connecting Green, Orange, Blue and Red lines.

[kdo5581]

Fully glad to see a route like this exist, but boy if I was taking this to the airport and had to sit through the massive detour to MOA, I would be so frustrated. MOA transit center feels like one of the big missed opportunities in this region - if it was on the north side of the mall I think almost every connection would be better. Of course now that the tracks loop around into that parking ramp there's no real way to redo it. Alas.

[Tom H.]

A transit station tied in to the Lindau pedestrian overpass would have been the obvious choice, but I don't think MoA is/was very interested in prioritizing transit. I think they prefer it to be tucked away out of sight.

[Bakken2016]

A transit station tied in to the Lindau pedestrian overpass would have been the obvious choice, but I don't think MoA is/was very interested in prioritizing transit. I think they prefer it to be tucked away out of sight.

Well I have seen recently that MOA is using transit access as an enticing way to advertise to get people to work at MOA.

[COLSLAW5]

Metro Transit is sponsoring "Royale" the premium subscription for the Transit App. Sounds like they are actually using the survey data that the app collects on vehicle and stop cleanliness which is awesome to hear

[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.