I’ve long been a defender of the METRO Orange Line. Opening in December 2021 at the height of the pandemic, ridership was initially disappointing compared to the pre-pandemic estimates. With each passing month, however, ridership has increased as well as frequency, creating a virtuous cycle for the line. Anecdotally, I’ve heard from many friends about how they’ve discovered the Orange Line recently and find it to be an invaluable connection to destinations in the south metro.
I say all this because I believe the METRO Red Line could become a similar success story, but currently falls just short of greatness.
The Good
The Red Line is the shortest route in the METRO system, serving only 5 stations from the Mall of America to Apple Valley Transit Station. There’s a lot to love at each of those stations, with connections to at least a dozen other transit routes, the Twin Cities Premium Outlets, and of course, MOA. Apple Valley Transit Station is particularly great, with an abundance of great shops and restaurants within a reasonable walking distance, such as Pizza Karma and Satay 2 Go.
With a bike or MVTA buses, you can reach many more destinations, like the Minnesota Zoo. My boyfriend and I recently used the Red Line and MVTA Connect service for a date night at Texas Roadhouse, and we were very impressed with how easy it was to transfer between the two services.
The line is also incredibly fast, utilizing Minnesota Highway 77 for most of its length, and operating on the shoulders of Cedar Avenue to avoid getting stuck in traffic. The line also has full transit signal priority. There is also a center median station at Cedar Grove Transit Station, so the buses don’t need to exit the freeway, just like Lake Street and 46th Street stations on the Orange Line. In total, it takes just 17 minutes to run the entire length of the route.
The Red Line is the only BRT route in the system to feature true level boarding as well as platform screen doors. It’s a very luxurious experience to step directly from a climate-controlled station into a climate-controlled bus, without ever needing to step outside.
The Not So Good
Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. The Red Line runs 30-minute headways all day, resulting in long wait times if you don’t time it right. This problem is made worse by the fact that the Red Line ends at MOA, meaning the vast majority of riders will need to transfer from another route. On multiple occasions, I’ve seen the Red Line pull away as the METRO Blue Line was pulling into the station, leading to the worst possible wait time of 30 minutes. Frustrated by these experiences, I decided to do some research to see how often this kind of thing happens.
I set up a web server to pull Metro Transit’s real-time departure times via GTFS and store the results in a database every 15 seconds or so. After storing about a month of data, I had what I needed to answer a few questions.
So how often are riders experiencing this “worst-case” scenario? According to my data, the Red Line departs less than 5 minutes BEFORE the Blue Line arrives 28.2% of the time, with an additional 16.5% arriving so close, you might still miss it if you don’t run fast enough. This means a full 44.7% of riders are having this incredibly frustrating experience!
This problem is partially due to the recent improvement of the Blue Line from 15-minute headways to 12-minute headways. Since 12 doesn’t divide evenly into 30, you are essentially guaranteed that every other bus will leave just before the train arrives. With this in mind, I decided to do the same comparison against the METRO D Line, which should arrive every 10 minutes. However, due to more frequent delays on the D Line, the number of missed connections is actually slightly worse, at 29.7%.
Curiously, the average wait time from both the Blue and D lines is nearly identical, at roughly 14.8 minutes. This number is somewhat promising, being 0.2 minutes better than random chance, but I think it hides the real-life experience, where roughly half of riders are getting ideal sub-5-minute wait times, and the other half are caught waiting more than 25 minutes. This inconsistency makes riders lose faith in the route and discourages future trips.
What to Do
When I started my research, I originally planned on recommending changing the Red Line schedule to line up more directly with the Blue Line. However, after further consideration and seeing real numbers, I don’t think that would make a meaningful difference.
For one, the 12-minute headways on the Blue Line are only temporary; Network Now calls for trains every 10 minutes. The other obvious problem is that MOA serves over a dozen other routes, and these riders would potentially be hurt by an uneven departure schedule on the Red Line.
Instead, I think two larger changes may be necessary to meaningfully increase ridership.
Most obviously, more frequent service would result in shorter wait times. This is self-explanatory, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be 15-minute headways; even 20 minutes would be a major improvement. Plus, the short travel time on the line means Metro Transit shouldn’t need to add a lot of in-service hours to make this happen.
A more ambitious change would be to extend the Red Line to one of the two downtowns. The Red Line is the only current or future planned METRO Line which operates entirely in the suburbs. Connecting to a downtown would put the line within easy walking distance of thousands of additional riders, thus entirely eliminating the issue of transfer times.
My preference would be to have the line travel north on Highway 77, west on 62, and north on 35W into downtown Minneapolis. This would be similar to route 475, and a proposal which Wrigley Brick goes into more detail in his piece on MVTA routes. This would allow the line to reuse the existing Orange Line stations at 46th and Lake Streets. It would also create a much better connection to MOA from neighborhoods in southern Minneapolis, and an easy trip to Uptown with a transfer to the future METRO B Line.
Another potential option could be to travel east on 494 and Hwy 5, stopping at Terminal 1, then exiting on Shepard Road and running express to Union Depot in St. Paul. I think this would be a less valuable route overall, but would serve as a higher quality connection between downtown St. Paul and the airport than route 54, especially given the recent cancellation of the Riverview Line.
Upcoming Changes
Starting on Saturday, December 7, the Red Line will be changing its Gate assignment at MOA Transit Station to be closer to the Blue and D lines, from Gate E to Gate B.
Hopefully, this more prominent stop placement is a sign that Metro Transit wants to do more with the Red Line. However, the current Network Now plan does not indicate any changes for the Red Line before 2027. The Network Now comment period ended on Nov 15th, but the plan is not set in stone. We’ve already seen another METRO line exceed the Network Now plan, with the METRO Gold Line extending to Minneapolis. Ultimately, the best way to encourage Metro Transit to improve the Red Line is to use it, so give it a try the next time you have a chance!