Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

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wingedmolotov
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by wingedmolotov »

Nicollet and 66th would be great for sure. I think 66th should be routed onto Richfield Parkway -> Cedar though, since there's more density than on Bloomington. Maybe it could use the 77th St underpass with the D Line already serving the stops on American. Also, American is maybe on hold due to the ongoing study. Not sure what my third choice would be.
thespeedmccool
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by thespeedmccool »

Picking three from this list, I'd go
  • Nicollet, obviously
  • Grand, but I'm very skeptical of the Franklin Ave and 3rd St E portions of the route
  • Lowry, I guess, though I'd feel better about it if the west end didn't double the Blue Line Extension
Definitely fewer "obvious" corridors than there used to be. Some thoughts on the options:
  • Excelsior is tempting, but I share the concern about doubling the Southwest.
  • Bloomington is vastly inferior IMO to just extending the C Line down Cedar.
  • Johnson/Lyndale is great, but the Lyndale portion is so close to the obviously better Nicollet corridor.
  • Dale/George is intriguing, but I just don't think we can justify a circumferential route of Downtown St. Paul.
  • The three Ramsey County suburban are all super weak. Century is borderline a rural highway at points, the Snelling North corridor is circuitous for the sake of it, and County ROad C corridor is no better.
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Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by daveybabymsp »

I have to disagree with people saying there aren’t very many good options here. There isn’t a rule saying that all good transit lines must be X miles apart from each other. In fact, having multiple services available is necessary for building truly transit oriented communities. For example, don’t see why the green line extension means downtown Hopkins residents can’t also have good service to destinations on Excelsior and 38th street. And if you live on 38th street in Minneapolis then this route would certainly not be duplicative.

Out of this list, I think at least these are good options:

Nicollet
Johnson/lyndale
Bloomington or Cedar
Randolph/E 7th
Grand
Hennepin/Larpenteur
Lowry
Excelsior/38th
66th street
63rd/Zane (as a C or D extension)

And if we strengthened our network by building out these, I would imagine other routes would become more viable because of the network effect
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by twincitizen »

Get your comments in by Friday April 25: https://content.govdelivery.com/account ... ns/3dca591

Nicollet is obviously a slam dunk pick. However I think it should go "somewhere" and not just dead-end/turnaround at American & 2nd Ave.

It's hard to not pick Johnson-Lyndale too since that scored next highest in Network Next (F-G-H Lines study from 2021). That said, I still don't love that it would be the 4's Penn branch south of 50th St and not stay on Lyndale (I thought straight routes were a critical feature of BRT?). In Richfield (and Bloomington), Lyndale is the corridor where I'd want to see enhanced bus service before Nicollet or Penn. The 4L/4P split service pattern works very well as-is. This is where we start to cause problems with BRT, because the service is too frequent for the last couple miles of the route in the suburbs. Metro Transit doesn't seem willing to have a BRT route with a service pattern like that, even if it makes sense from every possible consideration except legibility/branding. IDK, maybe the 4 is mostly fine as-is and just needs to have 1/4-mile stop spacing and some signal priority on the Lake to Franklin section getting rebuilt soon.

Lowry looks good on the map but I don't know if the ridership is there for that level of service. I think it will be either this one or Randolph-E 7th.

I think my personal picks would be:
1. Nicollet but with an Orange Line connection either at Knox-American or extended down Lyndale in Bloomington to 35W-98th St.
2. C Line extension down Cedar Avenue to Richfield Cedar-66th. There are a handful of comments on the map supporting this and shockingly none of them are mine (yet). Leave the 14 local as-is on Bloomington and provide rapid service on Cedar.
3. A Line extension west on 46th. It could still "layover" and swap operators/buses at 46th Street Station. Branded as a single route but effectively operated as two separate routes to preserve service reliability, etc.
...
4. Lowry
5. a route serving SLP West End

Edited to add a crazy new idea: What if instead of extending the C Line down Cedar, Cedar is instead paired with Johnson (via 10th Ave SE), making a relatively straight N-S connection from the Southside to Northeast? Blue Line xfer at Franklin, Green Line xfer at West Bank, E Line xfer at University. If that were to happen, the Lyndale BRT could continue down East Hennepin, or turn up 2nd St NE to pick up the NE leg of the 11.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by Zkools20 »

Would it makes sense to have all the BRT lines have one central station in downtown? With the amount of aBRT lines and BRT lines having them converge into a terminal/station would allow making transfers easy. And if possiblehave a lrt connected with both this station
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by angrysuburbanite »

Zkools20 wrote: April 21st, 2025, 12:48 pm Would it makes sense to have all the BRT lines have one central station in downtown? With the amount of aBRT lines and BRT lines having them converge into a terminal/station would allow making transfers easy. And if possiblehave a lrt connected with both this station
I thought that for a long time but after having experience in both Chicago and Boston their downtowns both benefit from lacking a central downtown terminal, instead having some major transfer points situated in different key locations. Otherwise the downtown service becomes too centralized on 1 or 2 corridors rather than serving it more broadly for residents of the neighborhood.

Edited to add: From a capacity perspective, this works well in smaller systems (for example, Rochester, Duluth, and St. Cloud all have central hubs), but in larger systems a single hub could experience lots of strain or overcrowding, bunching, etc. so spreading the load out can prevent this.
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Crystal Wood
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by Crystal Wood »

twincitizen wrote: April 21st, 2025, 12:37 pm 3. A Line extension west on 46th. It could still "layover" and swap operators/buses at 46th Street Station. Branded as a single route but effectively operated as two separate routes to preserve service reliability, etc.
Swapping operators, OK, as long as the dwell time is not too much -- but buses? I don't see how that works with branding as a single route.

How far west were you thinking? Would even swapping operators be needed if it's only as far as Lyndale, which would cover a bunch of transfers to north/south routes?
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by mattaudio »

twincitizen wrote: April 21st, 2025, 12:37 pm 3. A Line extension west on 46th. It could still "layover" and swap operators/buses at 46th Street Station. Branded as a single route but effectively operated as two separate routes to preserve service reliability, etc.
I always thought an A Line extension west to Orange Line/46th could work, but it's already a long route. For an improved 46, I always thought it should continue to hit 50th/France and Grandview districts, but then hop north on Hwy 100 to a Green Line connection.

It could either exit Excelsior and head west to Blake Road (or even downtown Hopkins?). Or it could hit Excelsior & Grand, Green Line at Belt Line or Wooddale, then maybe even head north to a final terminus at West End

I'm not sure if there's an appetite for Hwy 100 Freeway BRT, but connecting West End, Excelsior & Grand, and Green Line to Grandview, 50th/France, and onward connections into St. Paul from 46th St station (RIP 46 branching into St. Paul) feels like a win.
twincitizen wrote: April 21st, 2025, 12:37 pm Edited to add a crazy new idea: What if instead of extending the C Line down Cedar, Cedar is instead paired with Johnson (via 10th Ave SE), making a relatively straight N-S connection from the Southside to Northeast? Blue Line xfer at Franklin, Green Line xfer at West Bank, E Line xfer at University. If that were to happen, the Lyndale BRT could continue down East Hennepin, or turn up 2nd St NE to pick up the NE leg of the 11.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by MNdible »

Yeah, I've always felt like the ridership imbalance on the north and south legs of the 4 was problematic. Maybe pairing Johnson with Cedar lines up better?

But would you really get that close to downtown Minneapolis and just scoot on by it? Or go Cedar to Washington to 3rd/Central and then somehow meander over to Johnson?
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by twincitizen »

With ample opportunities to transfer to LRT or other BRT, ideally yeah I would want this hypothetical Cedar-Johnson route to skirt downtown. A northbound Cedar BRT rider wanting to go downtown could hop off and get on the Blue Line at Franklin (bit of a walk), or Green Line, H Line, or 22 at West Bank / 7 Corners. Since the 22 only serves a small section of Cedar Ave, I imagine it would mostly remain as-is even with Cedar BRT.

Solving for a Johnson Avenue rider wanting to go downtown (or downtown resident wanting to go to The Quarry) is trickier since they would lack the same transfer opportunities. Hmm, I guess that does blow apart my proposal. East Hennepin would need to have BRT prior to implementing Johnson-Cedar, but even with that transfer available this change would be too detrimental for current riders on the Johnson branch, since it doesn't intersect any other routes going downtown aside from the 25. A BRT or LRT line running on 35W north of downtown with stops at Uni/4th and The Quarry would address this.

So after completing that thought exercise, the conclusion I keep coming back to is maybe Route 4 local should be left as-is, with some stop consolidation and signal priority / queue jumps in the congested parts.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by eowens »

Just my two cents -

1. Nicollet BRT - J Line
Connect to Gold Line at American Blvd
Extend north on 2nd Street to 31st Ave
2. Grand/Franklin BRT - K Line
Connects to Green Line at Raymond via Cleveland
Continues on Franklin and extends to W 21st Street Green Line station
3. Lowry Avenue BRT - L Line - pretty much leave as is shown in aBRT plan update
4. Red Line Extension -
Extends to Hwy 62 via Hwy 77 with new station at 66th Street
5. Purple Line Extension - W. 7th Street BRT -
Extend existing Purple Line corridor down W. 7th Street to MOA by turning off Robert at 5th/6th Street
6. Cedar Avenue/University Avenue BRT - M Line
Connects to 66th Street via Hwy 77
Crosses Mississippi at Washington Ave to connect to E Line corridor at 15th Ave
Extend north on 2nd Street to 31st Ave

This generally addresses the issue of providing better transit to NE Minneapolis along the 2nd Street corridor - the fact that this is missing from the aBRT plan update is very confusing as the Route 11 is the only existing high frequency service not included. This maintains the connections from downtown and the U of M to NE neighborhoods with the Nicollet corridor extension, while also simplifying the existing Route 2 corridor to connect to Grand Ave.

We would just need to modify the Route 22 if the M Line is delayed after J/K/L implementation to follow the old Route 2 corridor through the U of M - which would also allow the Route 14 to take over for the old Route 22 corridor along Lyndale after BLE is opened.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by Silophant »

The 2 and 11 were knocked out in the early stage of the last round of BRT planning (that selected the F, G, and H Lines) as being too convoluted to make a legible BRT line out of.

I think this is a good indicator of why the BRT planning process needs to get away from just upgrading routes as-is and start recombining pieces into new routes: in South Minneapolis, Lyndale is an obvious BRT candidate, right up there with Nicollet, but 3rd/4th would be overly duplicative, running an additional route within a half-mile of the Chicago, Nicollet, and 35W corridors. But, if you're just upgrading existing routes, BRTing South Lyndale and not 3rd/4th means that in Northeast you're adding BRT to the less-dense east side of Central before the more-dense west side. I like your University/Cedar proposal for that reason - it would be great for Northeast to have a direct route to campus and any part of South that's east of 35W.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by eowens »

On a side note - part of my rationale for extending the Nicollet BRT north onto 2nd Street was based on the old TCRT street car system - Route 4...not to mention the current bus route 4 is pretty much identical to the old street car route 3 on Johnson/Lyndale.

But totally agree that we need to get more creative and start combining routes to create a legible ABRT network. And if we already had a network that worked for certain routes - there is no need to recreate the wheel.
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by wingedmolotov »

I got some documents from an FOIA request of the American Boulevard study listing the alternatives for a potential American Blvd ABRT. #1 is MoA -> Centennial Lakes via American and France with a loop around Centennial Lakes. #2 is MoA -> Southdale via the same routing, but with a loop around Southdale Mall instead. #3 is MoA -> Normandale Lake, basically the same routing as 542 with minor changes around Normandale Lake area. #4 is an extension of Johnson/Lyndale ABRT along American to MoA. Curious what everyone's thoughts on this are - I wonder why a routing to SW Station wasn't evaluated or even considered.

Here's the document so you can see for yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mccAQ ... sp=sharing
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by angrysuburbanite »

SouthWest Transit's territorialism strikes again!
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daveybabymsp
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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by daveybabymsp »

wingedmolotov wrote:I got some documents from an FOIA request of the American Boulevard study listing the alternatives for a potential American Blvd ABRT. #1 is MoA -> Centennial Lakes via American and France with a loop around Centennial Lakes. #2 is MoA -> Southdale via the same routing, but with a loop around Southdale Mall instead. #3 is MoA -> Normandale Lake, basically the same routing as 542 with minor changes around Normandale Lake area. #4 is an extension of Johnson/Lyndale ABRT along American to MoA. Curious what everyone's thoughts on this are - I wonder why a routing to SW Station wasn't evaluated or even considered.

Here's the document so you can see for yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mccAQ ... sp=sharing
Intrigued by the Lyndale/Penn line going east to MOA. It would be funny if the Lyndale, Nicollet, and Chicago aBRT lines all terminate at MOA via American Blvd and there ends up being 3-4 minute frequency service between the Bloomington Walmart and the MOA


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Re: Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Corridors

Post by twincitizen »

wingedmolotov wrote: June 6th, 2025, 2:17 pm I got some documents from an FOIA request of the American Boulevard study listing the alternatives for a potential American Blvd ABRT. #1 is MoA -> Centennial Lakes via American and France with a loop around Centennial Lakes. #2 is MoA -> Southdale via the same routing, but with a loop around Southdale Mall instead. #3 is MoA -> Normandale Lake, basically the same routing as 542 with minor changes around Normandale Lake area. #4 is an extension of Johnson/Lyndale ABRT along American to MoA. Curious what everyone's thoughts on this are - I wonder why a routing to SW Station wasn't evaluated or even considered.

Here's the document so you can see for yourself: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mccAQ ... sp=sharing
Alternative #2 is interesting. In combination with Route 515 it basically makes a circulator route. I didn't initially mean to literally combine them as one route...but maybe there's a chance that would make sense? Neither route is particularly long as a standalone, so it could actually work.
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