The December service change consists of numerous minor schedule changes. Some trips are being added, others eliminated to match demand. Although there are some big BRT and LRT service increases on the horizon, for now adding service is constrained by a shortage of bus operators and a looming budget deficit. Currently Metro Transit is about […]
Thousands of new apartments have been built on the fringes of downtown Minneapolis in the North Loop, the Guthrie Theatre area (Downtown East) and across the river in Old St. Anthony. These new residents ought to be prime candidates for bus service, but Metro Transit has made no service changes or improvements to try and […]
Earlier this year Metro Transit and the City of Minneapolis did a demonstration of rush hour bus lanes on Hennepin Avenue between Franklin Avenue and Uptown Transit Station. Bus service has always been extremely slow due to morning backups from I-94 and afternoon backups from Lagoon Avenue. The demo worked just fine, but relied on […]
These are not good times for bus ridership. It’s down 7 percent in the Twin Cities metro area for the first half of 2019 compared with 2018. In contrast, Green Line light rail ridership is up 5 percent, the Blue Line is down only 1 percent and the Northstar line is down 3 percent. What’s […]
C Line Starts June 8 The big news on June 8 is the startup of the C Line BRT between downtown Minneapolis and the Brooklyn Center Transit Center (BCTC) via Penn Avenue N. It will largely replace the Route 19, which ran every 10 minutes and will continue to serve local stops with half-hourly service […]
I’m a casual bird watcher. I feed them in my Minneapolis back yard and keep lists of avian visitors there and at the nearby lake. It’s pretty amazing what shows up. My back yard list has 54 species, plus 42 more seen at the lake. Some are common, many are rarely seen and it’s a […]
The March schedule changes mostly represent minor schedule adjustments, but there are a few changes of note. Routes 2 and 3 have done a robust business connecting the U of M West Bank campus with southeast Minneapolis. Now a number of evening trips have been added to serve that market. December saw the elimination of […]
I remember when Transit Oriented Development (TOD) was considered a fringe idea espoused by some academics in California. The Met Council’s Livable Communities Grant program, which offers incentives for TOD, helped change the attitude among municipalities. Now it’s mainstream and really taking off. How much is detailed in a recent staff presentation to the Met […]
How incredibly stupid. The newly appointed Met Council Chair has fired the best General Manager in Metro Transit’s history and replaced him with someone who has no transit background. What? The CEO sets the tone for the organization. I know how important a good general manager is to this transit system because I served under […]
Dealing with a driver shortage, and a budget deficit Few people set out to be bus drivers. They select the job because the pay and benefits are good, even though the working hours tend to be inconvenient. So when unemployment is low, Metro Transit has difficulty recruiting enough drivers to offset retirements, let alone grow […]