Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[angrysuburbanite]

Service changes were added to pantographapp.com for December. These were what I could find, including the already announced 345, 725, and 827:
Northstar: Hourly bidirectional bus service introduced between downtown and Ramsey P&R, with 30 minute frequency during peak hours—this appears to be starting on December 8th as per pantographapp.com, so I'm not sure what the deal is here. 3 trips per direction added on weekends (bus service). Note that the 882 to Big Lake and Elk River is not included in these service changes. The bus to Ramsey arriving at 11:05 PM is indeed a thing that will happen.
E Line: service begins. Frequency improves on France Avenue and north of downtown from every 30 to every 10-12 minutes on all days of the week. Service on Hennepin Avenue improves from every 15 to every 10-12 minutes on all days of the week. End to end travel time is about 50 minutes-1 hour. Southdale to 5th Avenue downtown takes about 30 minutes.
Route 6: discontinued and replaced with E Line and Route 36
Route 9: frequency improved to every 30 minutes on Sundays
Route 27: rerouted to Blaisdell, Nicollet, and 1st Avenue near I-35W (rather than 1st and 4th Aves) when leaving/entering Lake Street
Route 36: replaces Route 6 on Xerxes Ave and south of Southdale. Runs every 30 minutes all days of the week, roughly the same as route 6 along these segments.
Route 156: restored with 2 trips per peak period on weekdays
Route 275: 3 trips added per direction during rush hours on weekdays
Route 345: new route between Woodbury, Airport, and MOA running every 60 minutes all days of the week. End to end travel time is 40 minutes–Airport to Woodbury is about 30 minutes. Operated by MTS
Route 645: Some sort of routing change? I can’t tell where
Route 725: New Osseo-Northtown via Brooklyn Center route operating every 60 minutes all days of the week. Operated by MTS
Route 827: replaces route 852; service introduced on East River Road south of Northtown Mall. Frequency improved to every 60 minutes on middays and Saturdays. This route will now be directly operated by Metro Transit as a part of this change

[Tcmetro]

Route 645: Some sort of routing change? I can’t tell where

Weekday service is every 30 mins, alternating between "A" trips that end at County Road 73 and "E" trips that go all the way to Mound. Nights and weekends are still the "C" that ends in Wayzata. The "B" branch to Plymouth Road is cancelled along with the peak hour deviation to Ford Rd.

[angrysuburbanite]

Unfortunately, it looks like APTA overestimated the extent of this fall's ridership surge. According to Metro Transit, average weekday ridership was 150,423, down 4.03% from September 2024. This is the first year since before COVID that september ridership has been lower than that of the previous year. However, Metro Transit seems to have once again included days the Blue Line wasn't operating in its average numbers, so it is hard to say for sure. I'm also incredulous about that Green Line number; there's no way this fall's average ridership was lower than 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. These numbers would have been fine in like 2023, but at this point are really really embarrassing for an agency in a metro area of 3 million.
- Blue Line is down 30.55% from 2024, though if you divide the overall number by 20 (the number of days it operated), the average is about 20,000 instead. Metro Transit has the average weekday ridership at 11,921.
- Green Line had a really weak fall semester surge at 23,777 daily rides, down 27.86% from 2024.
- Orange Line continued its surge to 2,493 daily rides, up 24.77% from 2024
- Gold Line saw a healthy increase to 1,608 daily rides, which is 10% higher than last month
- A Line is up 10.31% from 2024 to 4,344 daily rides
- B Line saw a significant jump to 9,801 daily rides, much higher than previous months
- C Line is still down 6.67% from 2024 at 5,699 daily rides
- D Line is also still down 2.16% from 2024 at 3,526 daily rides
- Regular bus is down 4.32%, but it is worth nothing that it has mostly rebounded from losing Route 21 at 76,816 daily rides.
- Total bus ridership on an average weekday is 114,287, which is down 1.73% somehow despite service increases across the board. This is a combined total of all bus categories on the system (BRT and local bus)
- Saturday ridership is down 2.65% and Sunday is down 9.62%

[daveybabymsp]

Thanks for compiling this. I thought total bus being down vs last year sounded off so I downloaded the CSV and I’m calculating it as up 7.7% vs avg weekday last year (114,287 vs 106,151), offset by total rail being down 28.6% (36,136 vs 50,583) on the average weekday vs last year

[angrysuburbanite]

Oops! Yes, that’s what I ended up with too, I entered the number backwards on here! Thank you. That LRT number is so depressing… I know there were shutdowns but these are low enough that it would have still been quite a bit below 2024 even without that happening.

[StandishGuy]

Why Are Metro Transit Buses So… White?

I’ve always wondered why all of Metro Transit’s buses are plain white. Don’t get me wrong — they’re clean and functional — but visually, they don’t do much to add character to the city. So many other cities have colorful transit fleets that help give their streets some life and personality.

Even here in the Twin Cities, our light rail trains show how much color can matter. The blue and yellow LRT vehicles look great gliding through downtown or across the river — they feel like a part of the city’s identity. By comparison, the buses look almost unfinished.

If it were up to me, I’d love to see buses in a rich purple or gold color scheme — something bright, eye-catching, and uniquely Twin Cities. But honestly, just about anything would be better than plain white, especially in the middle of a gray Minnesota winter.

I know this is probably one of the lowest priorities for a transit agency, but it seems like such an easy, fun change that could make a difference in how people perceive the system. Maybe there’s a good reason — like maintenance costs, visibility, or the effect of salty winter roads on paint — but I can’t help wondering if a little color could go a long way in making our buses (and our streets) a bit more vibrant.

[Mdcastle]

Back in the 1980s before Mom learned how to drive so we'd use buses ocassionally, we'd always be excited when we got a white bus instead of a red bus because they were new and had air conditioning. My thought is they picked white to draw attention to the fact that they were buying brand new air conditioned buses.

[J. Mc]

Quarterly service changes begin December 6th:
https://www.metrotransit.org/quarterly- ... rday-dec-6

RED, D, E (new), 2, 3, 6 (discontinued), 7, 9, 17, 22, 27, 30, 32, 36 (new), 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 72, 74, 113, 114, 156 (restored), 275, 294, 345 (new), 355, 363, 645, 725 (new), MGT 781/784/789, 827 (new), 852 (discontinued)

A number of the routes with changes are simply due to construction projects/detours ending.
EDIT: some of the routes serving DTSP via 5th/6th will also be switching to serve the stations vs. the old stops. On one side I do like that for easier connectivity and having just one spot to wait vs. having to figure out which stop the 'X' goes to, on the other side I do wonder if this will lead to delays with buses needing to wait until the platform clears to pull up and board/alight riders. I already see this at the Minnesota stations currently during busy periods.

[DanPatchToget]

I wonder how many people who take the part of Route 6 that's being replaced with Route 36 are going to/from downtown and will now have to transfer in Uptown.

[Bakken2016]

Quarterly service changes begin December 6th:
https://www.metrotransit.org/quarterly- ... rday-dec-6

RED, D, E (new), 2, 3, 6 (discontinued), 7, 9, 17, 22, 27, 30, 32, 36 (new), 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 72, 74, 113, 114, 156 (restored), 275, 294, 345 (new), 355, 363, 645, 725 (new), MGT 781/784/789, 827 (new), 852 (discontinued)

A number of the routes with changes are simply due to construction projects/detours ending.
EDIT: some of the routes serving DTSP via 5th/6th will also be switching to serve the stations vs. the old stops. On one side I do like that for easier connectivity and having just one spot to wait vs. having to figure out which stop the 'X' goes to, on the other side I do wonder if this will lead to delays with buses needing to wait until the platform clears to pull up and board/alight riders. I already see this at the Minnesota stations currently during busy periods.

The BRT stations will still only be served by the Gold Line, B Line, 54 and 94. All other routes will use local stops. Except Rice Park & 6th & Washington Station due to spacing.

[J. Mc]

Quarterly service changes begin December 6th:
https://www.metrotransit.org/quarterly- ... rday-dec-6

RED, D, E (new), 2, 3, 6 (discontinued), 7, 9, 17, 22, 27, 30, 32, 36 (new), 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 72, 74, 113, 114, 156 (restored), 275, 294, 345 (new), 355, 363, 645, 725 (new), MGT 781/784/789, 827 (new), 852 (discontinued)

A number of the routes with changes are simply due to construction projects/detours ending.
EDIT: some of the routes serving DTSP via 5th/6th will also be switching to serve the stations vs. the old stops. On one side I do like that for easier connectivity and having just one spot to wait vs. having to figure out which stop the 'X' goes to, on the other side I do wonder if this will lead to delays with buses needing to wait until the platform clears to pull up and board/alight riders. I already see this at the Minnesota stations currently during busy periods.

The BRT stations will still only be served by the Gold Line, B Line, 54 and 94. All other routes will use local stops. Except Rice Park & 6th & Washington Station due to spacing.

Oh I see now, my apologies for the confusion. That makes much more sense. Though based on the posted PDF schedule it looks like 74 being noted as serving 5th/Smith and 5th/Kellogg stations is an error.

[angrysuburbanite]

Has anyone else here who uses https://pantographapp.com to track buses noticed a decline in quality over the past few months? The new METRO Lines' info is messed up (wrong color and the Gold Line is just called "MET"), an increasingly larger portion of the fleet is not identified at all, buses will falsely begin tracking for the wrong route, and MVTA just hasn't been tracking for almost a year. The Transit App is more reliable but drains my phone's battery like crazy and doesn't have a web version. Not that Pantograph is unusable but it definitely needs some updating. Just wanted to know whether I'm extremely pedantic or if others care about this too!

[wingedmolotov]

Yeah, I tried to email the "support line" on the website about the Gold Line thing a while back but got no response. It also only shows a handful of SW routes, and then only certain trips.

[angrysuburbanite]

October ridership update. Slightly lower average daily ridership than September, though total ridership for the whole month is stable. Both are still a bit lower than 2024. The most notable stat is that the D Line is now only 164 daily riders away from beating the Blue Line's weekday number. Pretty wild! Average daily ridership is 145,420 which is down 3.74% from 2024.
- The rail system is still not doing great. The usual fall boost on the Green Line was very weak this year in September and is basically completely gone at 22,081 daily rides (-26.18% from last year). The Blue Line shutdown ended in the first week of October but the daily ridership is listed as only 13,538 (-17.44%). I'm getting a little annoyed at the silence from the Met Council on this since this trend has existed for almost a full year now.
- Interestingly, the A Line is finally surging, with a 12.79% increase to 4,373 daily rides. Despite the State Fair boost, the A Line has basically been stable most post-COVID times so this is nice to see.
- B Line breaks 10k! Average daily ridership of 10,051, which is now about what Route 21 was seeing before the pandemic.
- C and D Lines are basically steady with a change of +/- 1% each. C Line is at 5,760 and D Line at 13,374.
- Orange Line's momentum finally stalls at 2,367 daily rides. Still up 20.83% from last year but lower than September.
- Gold Line continues to post healthy increases, up to 1,706 daily rides. For what it is I'm surprised this number continues to rise!
- Regular Bus is at 71,792, down 9.34% but still absorbing Route 21 losses well. Total bus ridership is up about 5% from October 2024.

[twincitizen]

Aaron Isaacs' quarterly transit reports are always a good read: https://streets.mn/2025/11/24/the-quart ... mber-2025/

In this one he covers the E Line, new suburban local routes 345 and 725, and the Northstar replacement buses.

[wingedmolotov]

Does anyone know if there is ridership data Metro micro available?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Wezle]

I know that it sometimes pops up in some Met Council meeting presentations, but I wouldn't know off the top of my head.

It seems that most if not all of the ridership drop this year is coming from the trains?

[angrysuburbanite]

Does anyone know if there is ridership data Metro micro available?

Full data will be available around this time next year, but echoing Wezle I'd poke around Met Council and Transportation Advisory Board meeting agendas. You might find some data there.

The Riders Club newsletter from yesterday had a "Metro Transit Vehicle Onboard Real-time Signage" survey. You can take it here:
https://forms.office.com/pages/response ... e=shorturl

Am I misreading this or does this mean Metro Transit is considering digital display boards in buses (finally)?

[Bakken2016]

Does anyone know if there is ridership data Metro micro available?

Full data will be available around this time next year, but echoing Wezle I'd poke around Met Council and Transportation Advisory Board meeting agendas. You might find some data there.

The Riders Club newsletter from yesterday had a "Metro Transit Vehicle Onboard Real-time Signage" survey. You can take it here:
https://forms.office.com/pages/response ... e=shorturl

Am I misreading this or does this mean Metro Transit is considering digital display boards in buses (finally)?

Yes, I’m on the project team. We are going to pilot onboard screens on BRT and LRT.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[J. Mc]

MVTA is proposing service changes in 2026 for routes 4FUN, 440, 442, 475, 497, 499. They are currently accepting feedback on the proposed changes:
https://www.mvta.com/news-items/spring-service-changes/

4FUN - Combine with existing service on 495 to have more consistent schedule, 60 min frequency, and span of service along Hwy 13 corridor, 4FUN would also serve Amazon, DT Savage, MSP. Earlier/Late service added
440 - extend to Mall of America, switch from 30 min peak/120 min off-peak weekday to 60 min weekday/weekend
442 - end route at AVTS, discontinue service to Mall of America, some additional changes to stops
475 - MN Zoo service discontinued, route goes directly along Cedar to Minneapolis (via Cedar Grove TS)
495 - Discontinued (combined with 4FUN)
497 - Service to St. Francis Hospital discontinued, a couple late evening trips also removed
499 - Add service to St. Francis Hospital, Eagle Creek P+R, remove service to Mystic + Canterbury (replaced by 4FUN), Valley Park Dr. Valley Industrial