This map comes from the Met Council’s Transportation Policy Plan draft which is out for public comment right now.
It depicts what the plans for what would happen if somehow the region received more money (most likely through a local sales tax).
Here’s the description from the draft document, transit chapter:
In order to complete the region’s vision of a transitway system and do it on an accelerated timeline, the region will need additional funding for transitways. Increased funding will allow the region to:
- Accelerate the build-out of the transitways included in the Current Revenue Scenario
- Afford the transitways in CTIB’s Transit Investment Framework beyond the Phase I
Program of Projects
- Afford additional transitways not in CTIB’s Transit Investment Framework that are under
study or needing to be studied for mode and alignment by other partners
- Implement the complete system of 12 arterial BRT projects
Read through the whole plan here, and feel free to comment.
It’s inherently problematic to be planning transit on a map with that scale. Looks eerily similar to freeway planning in the 40s-60s.
Yeah, that’s a problem that keeps leaping to my mind. We need walkable/bikeable transit, but zooming out this far seems to lead to designing it in car-dependent ways.
It’s not impossible, though — if more far-flung routes actually target the Main Streets of old streetcar/railroad towns, it can be beneficial. But a number of our suburbs were built after transit/train ridership peaked in the 1920s and don’t have good old downtowns. There can still be good places to serve. Unfortunately, the planning process is still not going in the right direction, such as with the Gateway Corridor.
Old towns can basically be summed up on this list (keeping within or immediately adjacent to the 7-county metro):
– Anoka (county seat)
– Belle Plaine
– Chaska
– Delano
– Elk River (county seat)
– Excelsior
– Farmington
– Forest Lake
– Hastings (county seat)
– Hopkins
– Jordan
– Long Lake
– Maple Plain
– Newport
– New Prague
– Northfield
– Norwood Young America
– Osseo
– Stillwater (county seat)
– Shakopee (county seat)
– Watertown
– White Bear Lake (centered on Hwy 61 north of County 96)
Perhaps unsurpisingly, the initial study of “commuter” (regional) rail routes said that Northfield, MN to the Twin Cities was by far the best route and would have by far the highest ridership. (The two colleges help.)
Unfortunately, the Metro Council is currently prohibited from even *studying* it due to some fossils in the state legislature from Edina and Bloomington.
(By the way, technically Faribault is an old town too, but it’s kind of stagnated with Northfield next door.)
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Here’s a question: with Green Line ridership at about 3 times the projections, surely that creates added revenue?… which could be used for something?….
(By the way, this is the reason you build rail on busy urban corridors, ones where you can fill the train up. The corridor becomes even busier, and there are more fares than you’d get from buses.)