Suburban Transit (Opt-out Services Providers)

[Hero]

Route 480 looks so similar I wonder if some of the projected ridership would come at its expense. I assume people who want to travel from Burnsville to Capital Rice would just take the green line. And if I'm reading this correctly 300 riders per day?

[mattaudio]

It's almost like this is a back door way to get $2.8 million from the Feds to subsidize existing routes.

[DanPatchToget]

https://www.startribune.com/maple-grove ... rq1cghpXlE

Maple Grove Transit will resume service at the Maple Grove Parkway park & ride on June 13th, and on August 22nd they will launch Route 784 with service between Maple Grove Transit Station and the Downtown East area of Minneapolis. 6 trips in the morning to downtown and 6 trips back to Maple Grove in the afternoon.

[Hero]

Out of curiosity why are the opt out service providers allowed into downtown? They seem to trow fits when Metro Transit runs a bus into their territory but I see plenty of them downtown or by the U. Instead of driving all those southwest buses into downtown maybe use 98th and have the Orange line carry the rest of the way. That way they could run higher frequency on the local routes.

[DanPatchToget]

Changes at MVTA starting December 3rd: https://www.mvta.com/news/dec-3-service ... inter_2022

Among the changes are north extension of Orange Link to the Walmart on Cliff Road and resumption of Route 498 with an extension to Southdale.

[Trademark]

Changes at MVTA starting December 3rd: https://www.mvta.com/news/dec-3-service ... inter_2022

Among the changes are north extension of Orange Link to the Walmart on Cliff Road and resumption of Route 498 with an extension to Southdale.

I love that idea of bringing the Orange Link up to the Walmart.

[DanPatchToget]

There’s a virtual meeting this evening about a possible BRT line on County Road 42.

https://www.mvta.com/news/brt-feasibility-study//

[Korh]

no one really talks about the ridership numbers for the suburban opt outs so decided to go digging in some old APTA reports and made this
Also before anyone asks, they don't have any data for Maple Grove Transit for some reason.

Edit: sorry for the bad image quality, here's an image link to a better one:
https://i.imgur.com/wKGHBOz.png

[Tcmetro]

I think the Maple Grove is included in Metro Transit figures, as they operate the express service under contract.

[Silophant]

Must be state fair service driving the August spikes for MVTA, right?

[rhettcarlson]

Wow, so to generalize, urban transit ridership (MT) is about half of pre-pandemic and suburban is 1/4? Tough to see.

[Korh]

yep, though strangely enough SW is the closest as of last September is almost back to pre-pandemic levels.
I don't know how or why but kind think it'll be funny if it beats MVTA when the later was almost 3 times bigger back then.

[DanPatchToget]

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/03/0 ... Pn4HBaBzxA

MVTA is testing a small electric bus made in Turkey on their Connect service.

[DanPatchToget]

SW Transit will move from the temporary lobby to the permanent lobby at Southwest Station on May 1st.

[DanPatchToget]

Lots of cuts to local MVTA service beginning September 5th. https://www.mvta.com/news/sept-5-servic ... 0BuB8kUXco

Also some small routing changes and a few additional southbound trips on the 475 and 490. Route 479 will be suspended.

[Bakken2016]

Lots of cuts to local MVTA service beginning September 5th. https://www.mvta.com/news/sept-5-servic ... 0BuB8kUXco

Also some small routing changes and a few additional southbound trips on the 475 and 490. Route 479 will be suspended.

Apparently in favor of MVTA Connect, which is atrocious!

[DanPatchToget]

Atrocious in terms of reliability, price, or something else?

I've only used Connect once and it was just to try it out. Seems like it can work well instead of very low-frequency fixed routes, but only if they have the drivers and buses to meet the demand.

[Bakken2016]

Atrocious in terms of reliability, price, or something else?

I've only used Connect once and it was just to try it out. Seems like it can work well instead of very low-frequency fixed routes, but only if they have the drivers and buses to meet the demand.

Reliability and Price.

It is more expensive and it's per ride. So a rider is most likely spending at least $6 to use Connect for a round trip, where a local bus trip would only be at least $2-$2.50. And the last time I tried to use them they wanted me to wait 1.5 hours for a trip.

[Tcmetro]

MVTA has massively expanded local service during the pandemic so I'm not surprised their pulling back. They've basically taken a "throw everything at the wall" approach and are probably now trying to focus on certain routes.

[Nick]

Were they trying to blow stimulus money? Weird time to expand.