Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[Eoin_Urban]

Does anyone know how to get data on specific Route numbers for the "regular" bus?

There is or was a way to look up very detailed info on individual routes, even stops IIRC. If someone can explain that again I'd like to know as well. The link was posted and referenced a few years back I think.

There are two backdoor ways to find this information. The Met Council publishes ons/offs of every stop for every route they are responsible for. You can take the spreadsheet they provide and then create a pivot table. Filter by Weekday, Rows should be the routes, and the use the sum of Ons. This is a rough estimate and the metadata states you shouldn't use the data this way but it can give you a rough answer. Latest data is fall 2022. Next release is likely in spring 2024 for the fall 2023 data. Suburban transit agencies aren't usually included.
https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/us-mn-st ... alightings

The Met Council releases a report on Regional Route Performance and looks at subsidy among other things. It includes annual ridership data by service day which you could divide by the number of weekdays in a year (usually 255). I don't know how accurate this method is either. The subsidy metric is complicated as there is disagreement among the agencies on how to define subsidies and costs. You can see Southwest Transit's dial-a-ride number is particularly suspect. The latest data is from 2021.
https://metrocouncil.org/Transportation ... urce=child

Or maybe someone can do a public records request.

[twincitizen]

Meanwhile, 2023 ridership report covering January to August is on the next Transportation Committee agenda. There is a graph in there showing the top 8 bus routes by average weekday ridership for 2023.
https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... rship.aspx

From page 8 of this presentation, the eight highest ridership bus routes are now as follows:

D, 21, C, 3, 18, A, 10, 54, 3 (Route 3 listed twice to show its ranking during the school year and the summer, respectively)

I was curious how this compared with ridership from way before the pandemic (IIRC, overall Metro Transit ridership actually peaked a few years prior, maybe 2016-18ish). I found this streets.mn post reporting the top 10 bus routes in 2014, which were:

5, 21, 18, 6, 10, 3, 16 (Green opened in June of that year), 19, 17, 4.

My first reaction to seeing the current top eight routes was "Where's the 6?" Also, what's driving the strong ridership recovery on the 54? It went from being outside of the top ten a decade ago to surpassing the 6, 4, and 17.

[Tcmetro]

My guess is that there's a larger decrease on 4/6/17 compared to the 54. 54 has a lot of airport workers compared to the 4, 6, and 17 that serve a lot of downtown workers. 6 and 17 used to run every 3-5 mins at peak but are now down to 10-15.

Also the 54 got the Maplewood Mall extension sometime after 2014. Can't remember the exact year.

[Tcmetro]

Discussion at the state level around separating Met Council and Metro Transit:
https://www.minnpost.com/state-governme ... dependent/

[Trademark]

Does anyone know how Metro Transit hiring is going? With all the frequency increases dependent on hiring, I wonder if it's more likely than not that those targets can be hit.

Also, with the new transit sales tax replacing $300 - $400M of county contributions, what are the counties planning to do with those funds? I believe the counties receive a portion of the sales tax directly as well. Is this the backdoor to filling the SWLRT funding gap?

They are only replacing the county contributions of transitways which is about $50 million combined.

[Silophant]

Now that the 3rd Avenue Bridge is finally open, Rts 10, 17, and 25 will end their detour and return to that bridge on Wednesday, Nov. 1st.

[Bakken2016]

Now that the 3rd Avenue Bridge is finally open, Rts 10, 17, and 25 will end their detour and return to that bridge on Wednesday, Nov. 1st.

Don’t forget, also routes 250, 264 and 270!


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[daveybabymsp]

Metro transit published monthly ridership through September:

https://www.metrotransit.org/performance

Highest post-covid ridership yet, which I think was somewhat expected since September seems to be the highest ridership month. Driven by jump in ridership on the green line (likely caused by college being back in session) as well as nice increases on regular bus and the C and D lines.

New post-covid ridership highs for Green Line, Orange Line, C line, D line, and North Star. Likely a new post-Covid high for regular bus if you exclude route 5 from last year’s data.


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[Bakken2016]

December 2023 Service Changes for Metro Transit:
https://www.metrotransit.org/Quarterly% ... 20Dec.%202

3rd Ave Bridge Reopens, though buses returned on Nov 1st.

A few big changes for routes 21 and 724!

Route 21 - Extend the 21 to Lake & France, increase Minneapolis frequency to 6-8 mins, and St Paul to 15 mins. The whole route is now part of the high frequency network.

Route 724 - Increase to 15 min service all days of the week.

Smaller Changes:

Route 9 returns to Glenwood Ave Bridge since SWLRT construction in that area is finishing up.

Route 7 returns to Plymouth Ave Bridge due to construction being done.

Route 540 is realigned to run on 77th St due to opening of I-494 underpass opening.

4th & Minnesota stop in downtown St Paul reopens.

[alexschief]

Metro Transit just posted the October weekday ridership numbers, and it's a pretty good report. September is typically the biggest month for ridership by a good margin, but in 2023, it looks like October was much closer than is typical. While the C and D Lines fell slightly from their October records, the Orange Line and Green Line hit their peak monthly (or post-COVID monthly) numbers and the Blue Line did very well.

All of that sums to a post-COVID record month for LRT and BRT (obviously, since it's just the Orange Line now). aBRT and overall ridership were only slightly off their September highs. Together, October 2023 had the highest % of ridership recovered from the equivalent pre-COVID month (October 2019) of any month so far, at 57.37%.

Recovery is slower than anyone would want, but it is also steady. No sign yet of a peak.

[Anondson]

Fascinating video take on the UK’s experiment in privatizing busing (except London).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc0DFCVzAEY

Less than 10 minutes long.

[alexschief]

Metro Transit's November weekday ridership numbers are out, and they're even better than October. Ridership on most services fell surprisingly little in real numbers between those two months, less than is typical, and so November 2023 achieved 59.5% of November 2019 ridership, the best recovery percentage yet. The Green Line even hit a post-COVID monthly high in ridership, which given the month is especially notable.

[J. Mc]

Fare Collection System Upgrade presentation for the upcoming Transportation Committee.

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... grade.aspx

[UrbanMPLS]

Fare Collection System Upgrade presentation for the upcoming Transportation Committee.

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... grade.aspx

That’s great news. The ability to pay directly with a debit or credit card removes a huge barrier to new or infrequent riders. One thing that will help: promote the hell out of it. Stories in the local news, billboards around town, banners in the “what to expect” emails that teams send out to ticket buyers, ads at those games. I think if people know they can just tap their card and don’t need to mess around with ticket machines or create an account on an app, they’ll be much more willing to make the occasional transit trip.

[Tcmetro]

I like fare capping to replace the bus passes and even paper transfers. It would also be nice get rid of the peak and off-peak fare distinction, which seems to be an uncommon practice.

The biggest hurdle to using the GoTo Card now is that it takes a day or so for value and passes to be added unless it's done at the light rail ticket machine. The cloud based system will really allow more people to adopt use of the smart cards.

Being able to use debit and credit cards will be a big win for travelers. Even the Metro Transit app tickets have made the system a lot more usable when I visit.

[mattaudio]

Bumping my suggestion from a decade ago to ditch the express fare and instead use GoTo and other means to convert free parking to paid.
Thus if you take the 94, or get dropped off at a major park & ride, it would be a local fare. But if you park at a park & ride, it would be a local fare + parking rate. Along with getting rid of the rush hour window this would reduce four fare types to one. https://streets.mn/2014/03/18/the-dirty ... ark-rides/

[Mdcastle]

Considering everyone had a credit card and cellular techology was everywhere even back in 2004, why did they buy a system that couldn't accept credit cards on the buses?

[Wezle]

I'd wager with the rise of contactless payments, implementation is a lot easier these days than it would have been with swiping cards in 2004. Contactless and cashless payment systems are the standard now. Removing barriers of entry to transit ridership is a huge win for metro transit if they can get the word out about these changes.

[Bakken2016]

Considering everyone had a credit card and cellular techology was everywhere even back in 2004, why did they buy a system that couldn't accept credit cards on the buses?

Contactless debit/credit cards were not widely available in the United States in 2004. The country as a whole was a slow adopter for this technology.

[Tcmetro]

The GoTo Card was one of the first US transit smart card implementations. As an early adopter agency, it isn't surprising that they are now behind the curve. The benefit is that Metro Transit will get the latest technology instead of being a tester for the 2nd gen fare payment systems.