Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[alleycat]

Interesting note on the C Line:

• Identify long-term (Phase II) east-west alignment and station locations (Olson Highway or Glenwood Avenue)

Maybe someone's listening to David Greene out there.

Or their listening to the Penn Avenue Community Works committees and residents. Harrison would be the single best served neighborhood with SWLRT, BLRT and C Line running down Glenwood. Didn't David want the C Line to run to SWLRT Penn Station?

[EOst]

He's the oldest mention of the idea I can find on here, anyway: https://forum.streets.mn/search.php?keywords ... mit=Search

[alleycat]

It was also brought up a few times at PIC meetings. Looks like I'd give Mulad the real credit here. Either way it's a good idea.

mulad wrote:
Seems more practical for the bus to be Penn -> Glenwood -> Van White/Dunwoody, going past the Van White station rather than Penn.

David Green wrote:
I could really dig this if the 19 were also routed to Penn station.

[David Greene]

No, I did not come up with this idea. Harrison residents did. Their position has been, "route to Penn station if at all possible, otherwise use Glenwood."

Glad to see some movement here! I and others have certainly harped on this enough.

[twincitizen]

Metro Transit studying pilot program to offer $1 fares for qualified low income households.
http://www.startribune.com/metro-transi ... 331103021/

As long as the discounted fares are only available when pre-loaded on a pass (i.e. not cash), then yes DO IT ALREADY.

[acs]

Great timing MT... not. You're going into a critical legislative session begging for more transit money and you're only reinforcing the image that your service is just straight welfare for the section 8 crowd. On top of that, your farebox recovery rate dropped a lot last year to 26.4% and you're trying to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. Bad time to risk large financial losses just to score some social equity points.

[masstrlk67]

to score some social equity points.

I might call that, "meaningfully improving the lives of some of our least well-off people," but y'know, different strokes.

[intercomnut]

Goodbye what was left of Northstar's reliability:

Oil Trains Rerouted Into Downtown Through Fall

[Silophant]

Ah. I had been wondering why the MT twitter had been so active lately.

[Tcmetro]

SW Transit canceling Sat. SW Prime service.

http://swtransit.org/wp-content/uploads ... ervice.pdf

[grant1simons2]

Lasted a couple months? SW has no idea how to run successful local route or even a taxi type service.

[FISHMANPET]

Well they're only cancelling Saturday, it still runs M-F. But still.

[Nick]

Lasted a couple months? SW has no idea how to run successful local route or even a taxi type service.

How and why would you suppose a local route or even taxi type service would be successful in a second ring Minnesota suburb?

[grant1simons2]

Most of their stops are put far away from any sort of housing or businesses. It's usually put in a random little piece of sidewalk along a busy road. Eden Prairie does have apartments and affordable housing remember, and it will be getting more soon. The demographics are changing in Eden Prairie. There are Metro Transit routes that go to second ring suburbs that are considered "local route". I felt dumb not noticing the Saturday part, but my point still partially stands.

[HiawathaGuy]

Downtown Minneapolis faces another bus detour
http://finance-commerce.com/2015/10/dow ... us-detour/

Lots of info about route detours and ridership numbers.

[mamundsen]

My bus route (61) is not detoured, but it seems busier than ever. Over the past week I've also taken the Green and Blue lines... Both are as packed as I have ever seen them. (Think sporting event ridership, but this was on afternoon rush hours.)

[Silophant]

Whoa. Seems like this would be a pretty great time to find a way to enforce the bus-only lanes.

[trigonalmayhem]

This is what happens when you hastily throw together a long term detour without good planning and treat your riders like shit.

I'm not very confident moving everything around AGAIN is going to help, especially when Hennepin is just as congested as third and the bus lanes are completely unenforced. Had they added shelters and bus lanes on third *before* the detour and then actually had traffic enforcement things might have turned out very differently. But the multi layered mess of local governments prove time and time again that they're either deeply incompetent or just give zero shits about transit riders and pedestrians. I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two.

[MNdible]

Good god, man.

This is what happens when there are about a hundred major projects going on in downtown simultaneously. It's going to be a mess; sorry for the inconvenience; it's been a struggle for everybody. Here's a secret: Metro Transit actually does care about their passengers, and the people who run it aren't incompetent.

[intercomnut]

Metro Mobility operators sue First Transit for alleged unpaid wages. According to the operators, the company only pays them for about 10 minutes after finishing their shift, when they have to do maintenance checks, fill out logs, and other stuff that takes much more than that time.