Metro Transit makes route and schedule changes four times each year. Each quarter, retired transit planner Aaron Isaacs explains them and gives an insider’s perspective on what’s happening.
Replacing the Northstar train, Phase 2
The demise of the Northstar Commuter Rail ushered in a suite of replacement bus service in the corridor, offering much greater frequencies. It turns out that was only phase one of the makeover. The June 13 service change finished the job. It cleans up the route structure, adds more service and establishes the Northtown Transit Center as a true timed transfer hub.
Going back to the Anoka-Minneapolis Bus Company in the 1940s, there had always been an East River Road-Coon Rapids Boulevard bus from Anoka to downtown Minneapolis. When the big Foley Boulevard park-ride in Coon Rapids was built decades ago, express Route 850 was created to connect it to downtown with frequent non-stop trips. Route 852 continued to serve the local stops along the entire corridor with a detour to the Northtown Transit Center. Coon Rapids and Anoka north of the Foley park-ride were served by a mix of 852 and 850 trips (extended north from Foley), including a branch on Hanson Boulevard. The idea was to continue to offer one-seat rides to downtown from the local stops north of Foley. The Northstar trains were superimposed on the corridor without changing the bus routes.
Then came Covid, dramatically reducing the downtown commuter express market and killing Northstar in the process. The 850 express shrank from about 25 trips each rush hour to nine, with half of them still extended to serve local stops north of Foley. New Route 888 replaced the Northstar trains from the former Ramsey, Anoka and Coon Rapids stations, competing with the extended 850 trips. It was decided to cut the 850 back to Foley, and that’s what happened June 13.
Following the Northstar demise, Route 852 on East River Road and Coon Rapids Blvd. was replaced by Route 827. Same alignment, except that it followed Marshall Avenue all the way into Minneapolis instead of I-94.
Now Route 827 has also been shortened, to terminate at the Northtown Transit Center. The portion of 827 from Northtown to Anoka is now Route 802. Cutting the route in half eliminates the one-seat ride from local stops in Anoka and Coon Rapids to downtown. The tradeoff is that it allows both routes (802 and 827) to make timed transfers at the Northtown Transit Center, improving the ability to move about within the northern suburbs. Also, afternoon frequency between Northtown and Anoka has doubled to every 30 minutes, and Sunday service has been added.
Route 805, which also connects Northtown with Coon Rapids and Anoka, has likewise seen its afternoon frequency double to every 30 minutes, plus new Sunday service.
Six routes now radiate from Northtown and they connect with each other on the hour or the half hour.
- 10 to Spring Lake Park, Fridley and Columbia Heights
- 25 to Blaine, Mounds View, New Brighton and St. Anthony
- 725 to Brooklyn Park and Osseo
- 802 to Coon Rapids and Anoka
- 805 to Coon Rapids and Anoka
- 827 to Fridley and Minneapolis
The Northtown Transit Center is further strengthened by having a Metro micro dial-a-ride to fill in the gaps between the fixed routes for nearby destinations.
Visiting Northtown and its Transit Center
I like to see transit changes in person, so I visited Northtown a week after the changes described above. It was also an opportunity to see Northtown Mall and its new tenant, the Asia Village, which has gotten positive press.
I took the E Line from my south Minneapolis home to the corner of University Avenue and Central Avenue, where I transferred to Route 10, the transit workhorse of northeast Minneapolis. The 10 runs through Columbia Heights, Fridley and Spring Lake Park to Northtown every 15 minutes all day and will be converted to the F Line BRT in a few years. I was pleased to see decent ridership along the entire trip.
I hadn’t been to Northtown for well over a decade. As Metro Transit’s facilities planning manager in the 1990s, I had helped design the transit center. It had two parts: local buses circling a large island and shelter inside the ring road, and a park-and-ride lot with an express bus stop outside the ring road. From the local buses, it was a bit of a walk to the mall entrance, but not too bad.
Not long before I retired in 2006, the Northtown owners evicted the local bus transit center, moving it out to the park-and-ride lot. Supposedly they wanted the land for an outlot development. It never happened, and now there’s an oval scar where the original transit center was, covered by parking spaces that are never used. And it’s a super long, lonely walk from the current transit center to the mall entrance.
The current transit center’s layout is fine — three islands with gate signs clearly marking the boarding locations for each route. The bus routes run by Metro Transit park at their assigned locations. Those run under contract by a private contractor didn’t. Buses assigned to Gates C and D consistently pulled into Gate E. The contractor-operated Route 802 buses to Anoka displayed no destination signs. The contractor-operated Route 725 to Brooklyn Park left 5 minutes late because the driver was chatting with the others who were parked at the wrong island. I’ve seen this kind of amateur hour before. These companies are hired and supervised by the Met Council, and the product is just not up to Metro Transit standards.
Here’s another thing that makes me unhappy. The Northtown Transit Center also has Metro micro dial-a-ride service that should have an assigned spot at the transit center to encourage walkup transfers. Instead, they lay far away in the middle of the now-vacant park-and-ride lot. It would be easy to give them a designated spot closer, but someone in the office made a decision not to do that. This is the case at every Metro micro location.
By the way, I made it to the new Asia Village for lunch. It’s located in the big box on the west side of the mall that was formerly Becker Furniture World. It was packed with people having lunch in a huge new food hall. There’s also a big Asian grocery and some other retail on the second floor. I recommend visiting it, but it’s a super long walk from the transit center.
Headed Home
For the first leg of my trip home, I rode the new Route 725 to the Starlite Transit Center in Brooklyn Park. This is a gutsy experiment to link the northern suburbs together via the Highway 610 Mississippi River bridge. It also extends first-time transit to Osseo. The driver told me it averages 2-3 passengers per trip, although somewhat more when the online colleges, North Hennepin and Hennepin Tech, are in session. Sure enough, we picked up three passengers. Hopefully it will catch on.
The Starlite Transit Center is named for a long-gone drive-in movie theater. It sits in the parking lot of a Target Store and a now vacant Cub grocery. Besides the 725, it’s served by Route 705 to Crystal, New Hope and Golden Valley, and Routes 723 and 724 to Brooklyn Center Transit Center (BCTC).
The latter two routes and BCTC are part of a suburban transit success story. Brooklyn Center and north Minneapolis have a large transit-dependent population. The routes radiating from BCTC include:
- C Line to Minneapolis via Penn Avenue
- D Line to Minneapolis via Fremont Avenue
- 22 to Minneapolis via Lyndale Avenue
- 717 to Robbinsdale and Plymouth
- 721 to Crystal and Hennepin Technical College
- 722 to eastern Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park
- 723 to North Hennepin College and Starlite Transit Center
- 724 to Starlite Transit Center (runs every 15 minutes due to demand)
- 801 to Fridley, Columbia Heights, St. Anthony and Rosedale
On the hour and the half-hour these routes converge on BCTC and exchange lots of passengers. It’s the best example of suburban transit mobility in the metro area. I encourage you to check it out.