Purple Line BRT (Rush Line Corridor)

[DanPatchToget]

Several years and how much money (hundreds of thousands? millions?) spent just to pretty much go back to square one on this.

I'm not opposed to rerouting the Purple Line on White Bear Avenue, but this plus Riverview still considering BRT and a new route needed for the Blue Line Extension makes me believe we need to do better in the evaluation process of these projects.

[Trademark]

Rails to trails stay trails.

Greenway
Vento

[at40man]

Purple Line on White Bear Ave is not a good move due to lack of housing on much of the Maplewood portion, and would be duplicitous with the already-existing route 54 bus. Meanwhile, there is no meaningful transit closer to the Bruce Vento right of way.

[bptenor]

It is absolutely worthwhile exploring aBRT on WBA but the Purple Line should not go here. Adding dedicated bus lanes to White Bear would conflict with the county's desire to get rid of 4 lane (or 6 lane) death roads and it is already an unpleasant place to exist. The Vento alignment provides new service in a new corridor serving new residents/businesses/potential development. I'm still livid it is not going to downtown White Bear; Century College might be an acceptable 2nd choice.

[Bakken2016]

It is absolutely worthwhile exploring aBRT on WBA but the Purple Line should not go here. Adding dedicated bus lanes to White Bear would conflict with the county's desire to get rid of 4 lane (or 6 lane) death roads and it is already an unpleasant place to exist. The Vento alignment provides new service in a new corridor serving new residents/businesses/potential development. I'm still livid it is not going to downtown White Bear; Century College might be an acceptable 2nd choice.

Century College has been ruled out as well. Bruce Vento doesn't make sense for the federal funding mechanism anymore especially with White Bear Lake pulling out. It's either have a project on White Bear Ave or no project at all at this point. The NIMBYs win this one unfortunately.

[LakeCharles]

Kind of amazing that one of the reasons for this line was "regional equity", because Ramsey County wanted fancy buses too. But it looks like all the cities within Ramsey County are pretty clearly saying they don't actually want any transit investments!

[Tom H.]

Would an elected Met Council help with this? Could Met Council routing decisions be more binding if the authority of the Council derived more directly from the electorate?

I feel like if an elected Met Council is the path we take, municipal consent / veto just be considerably weakened or eliminated.

[pannierpacker]

I know it's easy for to blame stagnant suburbs in this region for not wanting the Rush Line to go out there, but the truth is that engagement was pretty terrible on this one. If you look at the video on 3/22 you'll note Ms. Longrie's frustration with met council about lack of engagement. If you watch the previous meetings/worksessions you'd see that the "No Rush Line Coalition" actually did a lot of engagement and had hundreds of surveys filled out by Maplewood residents. Granted, they could have had a more diverse audience (most respondents were retirees or approaching that age and most were women). But, the bottom line is that Maplewood was caught off guard.

Furthermore, Met Council's preliminary plans for what they wanted to with the trail next to the busway looked pretty terrible. The biggest frustration I had with it was that the trail would 'switch sides' with the busway to give the busway better access to parking lots, schools, etc. When this switch would happen, they would use cross-streets to make the transition. The busway would get a dedicated bridge over the intersection while the trail would descend to be at grade with the roadway and use the cross-street to move to the other side of the roadway. The trail would then ascend back to the busway level. This is very unflattering for cyclists as they effectively have to exit the trail and on-ramp back to the trail just to stay on it.

The met council also left many unanswered questions about corridor implementation such as lighting along the busway/trail-corridor (for safety reasons there should be lighting), how much vegetation would need to be removed (no conservative effort was announced or suggested for preserving vegetation), and what the ridership would actually be like on this thing post-pandemic. Given all of the shifting in transportation since 2020, these things really need to be restudied to see if the corridor still makes sense, if it needs to be realigned, or if the money should be invested elsewhere.

[Oreos&Milk]

Wait so the terminus might be in fact a Park and Ride?

...it's beginning to look a lot like Red Line.

Somewhere living in the downtowns area is a parking lot fanatic who doesn't drive. he or she is surely the most happy fan of our METRO network. We build all of our lines terminating in big beautiful parking lots and connect other parking lots to even more parking lots! Land of 10,000 parking lots!

[daveybabymsp]

I think the terminus is usually the best place for a park and ride (if you are going to build one at all). It gives people who live further away from the city the option to park and ride for work, events, etc. And people coming from the city never have to waste their time stopping there since they will always get off before they get to that station

[Trademark]

Wait so the terminus might be in fact a Park and Ride?

...it's beginning to look a lot like Red Line.

Somewhere living in the downtowns area is a parking lot fanatic who doesn't drive. he or she is surely the most happy fan of our METRO network. We build all of our lines terminating in big beautiful parking lots and connect other parking lots to even more parking lots! Land of 10,000 parking lots!

This project is way better then the Red Line. The stops on the East side connecting the 64 and the 54 bus will be very useful for route reorganization and walk up ridership. Also Hmong Village and the Cub and Aldi's near Maryland are great stops. And Maplewood Mall is still a destination. There will probably be less parking on this line then the Gold Line.

[pannierpacker]

This project is way better then the Red Line. The stops on the East side connecting the 64 and the 54 bus will be very useful for route reorganization and walk up ridership. Also Hmong Village and the Cub and Aldi's near Maryland are great stops. And Maplewood Mall is still a destination. There will probably be less parking on this line then the Gold Line.

The 64 bus will probably be decommissioned after this project takes place, like the way the 84 did when the A Line went in. Will it not?

[Trademark]

This project is way better then the Red Line. The stops on the East side connecting the 64 and the 54 bus will be very useful for route reorganization and walk up ridership. Also Hmong Village and the Cub and Aldi's near Maryland are great stops. And Maplewood Mall is still a destination. There will probably be less parking on this line then the Gold Line.

The 64 bus will probably be decommissioned after this project takes place, like the way the 84 did when the A Line went in. Will it not?

What would run to North St Paul and on English/Prosperity then? The 54's routing is more duplicative, but Arcade and Payne are both good corridors to run on.

I could see the 64's routing on Payne consolidated with the 71 to provide service north to Vadnais Heights Walmart. Maybe the 80 could go towards Century College and the 219 could run on 11th to Maplewood Mall? Or maybe cut the 80 entirely and have Maplewood to Sunray traffic transfer from Purple to H? Maybe the 54 could take the 64's branch on English? Maybe a new north south route near Johnson and English?

There's a lot of questions regarding service there that doesn't have an easy answer.

[Tcmetro]

I would imagine the 54 and 64 would be restructured, but the 64 and White Bear alternative of the Purple Line have only a short overlap.

[at40man]

Kind of amazing that one of the reasons for this line was "regional equity", because Ramsey County wanted fancy buses too. But it looks like all the cities within Ramsey County are pretty clearly saying they don't actually want any transit investments!

No, not the cities, really. A vocal contingent of people aged 60+ who don’t want any change — despite the right of way signs announcing it was going to be used for transit since the 1990s.

[Tcmetro]

The CMC held a meeting yesterday (materials here: https://www.metrotransit.org/purple-lin ... committees)

Of note:

• The route modification study puts forward two alternatives, both ending at Maplewood. One via Beam, and another that detours to St. John's Hospital.
• The Arcade St station has been refined to one alternative on the north side of Phalen with a ped ramp up to Neid/Arcade, and another that detours the bus via Neid, then cuts back to Phalen before the light at Arcade. That alternative keeps the stop at the same grade as Arcade, but is a little more costly.
• Preliminary findings for the White Bear Ave route are expected in June. Ramsey County reiterated the point about bus lanes on White Bear Ave, so hopefully they are able to follow through on that.

[Vagueperson]

The Arcade St station has been refined to one alternative on the north side of Phalen with a ped ramp up to Neid/Arcade, and another that detours the bus via Neid, then cuts back to Phalen before the light at Arcade. That alternative keeps the stop at the same grade as Arcade, but is a little more costly.

I could be mistaken, but when I read the pdf it appeared that they settled on A2 because none of the survey respondents liked option B. What is described above sounds like option B.

The 64 bus will probably be decommissioned after this project takes place

This seems like a horrible idea. I ride the 64 and there is a lot of ridership along Payne Avenue. Many businesses and homes nearby (whether or not people pay is another question). They could change the routes, but they need to maintain some service up and down Payne. Perhaps this would all change if they created a crosstown route along Maryland. Then there could be a bit more of a grid layout than all the turning routes we have now.

Overall, a White Bear Ave route has a lot more potential given the land use along WBA. I think this was originally rejected due to the county having no appetite for lane reduction at that time. Plus they purchased the Bruce Vento trail for LRT use and that weighed *heavily* on the route choices.

If they have bus only lanes along WBA and it is enforced in some way (how?) that could do a lot to make the street feel safer. Obviously, this would end at Maryland Avenue, and I wonder what they would do south of Maryland down to I-94. There are several schools along this stretch of WBA, so having dedicated lanes north of Maryland might make it easier to shrink the street south of Maryland.

[Trademark]

The Arcade St station has been refined to one alternative on the north side of Phalen with a ped ramp up to Neid/Arcade, and another that detours the bus via Neid, then cuts back to Phalen before the light at Arcade. That alternative keeps the stop at the same grade as Arcade, but is a little more costly.

I could be mistaken, but when I read the pdf it appeared that they settled on A2 because none of the survey respondents liked option B. What is described above sounds like option B.

The 64 bus will probably be decommissioned after this project takes place

This seems like a horrible idea. I ride the 64 and there is a lot of ridership along Payne Avenue. Many businesses and homes nearby (whether or not people pay is another question). They could change the routes, but they need to maintain some service up and down Payne. Perhaps this would all change if they created a crosstown route along Maryland. Then there could be a bit more of a grid layout than all the turning routes we have now.

Overall, a White Bear Ave route has a lot more potential given the land use along WBA. I think this was originally rejected due to the county having no appetite for lane reduction at that time. Plus they purchased the Bruce Vento trail for LRT use and that weighed *heavily* on the route choices.

If they have bus only lanes along WBA and it is enforced in some way (how?) that could do a lot to make the street feel safer. Obviously, this would end at Maryland Avenue, and I wonder what they would do south of Maryland down to I-94. There are several schools along this stretch of WBA, so having dedicated lanes north of Maryland might make it easier to shrink the street south of Maryland.

I would want south of Maryland to still have dedicated lanes for the H Line

[Vagueperson]

I forgot about the H line...

[Tcmetro]

Update from this month's CBAC Meeting:
https://www.metrotransit.org/Data/Sites ... _ada-1.pdf

Proposed station locations for White Bear Ave are anticipated to be developed by late August, the preferred concept by March 2024, and a recommendation in September 2024.