Regional Service Improvement Plan

[Tcmetro]

Metro Council has posted the draft version of the 2012-2016 RSIP, which will guide the use of additional funds created by the redistribution of gas tax funds from the Transportation Amendment from 2007. These funds are now in excess of the current operating budget, and Metro Council has come up with a formula to distribute these funds to the most deserving service improvements. Projects are evaluated on a variety of criteria, including operating subsidy, passengers per hour, benefits to low income and minority communities, traffic congestion relief, etc. A rating of Low, Medium, or High is assigned, showing the worthiness of the projects.

Projects can be categorized as such:

- Frequency improvements: Routes 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 19, 22, 23, 61, 62, 68, 74, 80, 515, 675, 721, 723. All projects in this category received a rating of Medium or High.

- Arterial BRT - 5 Chicago (Medium), 84 Snelling (High), 54 W 7th (Medium), 54 E 7th (Low).

- Green Line restructuring - 60 (new), 63, 65, 67, 83 (new), 87. Projects in this category don't reflect the CCLRT service plan that has been adopted this month.

- Route 110, a new U of M to Longfellow route mainly following the paths of the 7 and the 9 but serving Washington instead of going downtown. This line received a high rating.

- Orange Line, dependent on the opening of the Lake St/35W transit station. Received a medium rating.

- Red Line, received a medium rating. Associated express bus changes and local feeder routes received ratings ranging from low to medium.

- MVTA submitted projects that range from medium (421 service expansion, Sunday service to match Sat service levels, St Paul express, 35W express) to low (440 and 446 frequency improvements and "local coverage expansion.")

- Metro Transit submitted express bus improvements for lines 250, 270, 275 (new park and rides opening in 35E corridor), 376 & 386 (service to new Manning P&R), 673, 674 (Maple Plain P&R), and 766. 270, 275, 376, 673, and 766 were High ratings, 250 and 386 medium, and 674 low.

- Plymouth was seeking additional frequencies on 772, 776, and 790, but all received low ratings.

- Maple Grove requested a new feeder (788B, High), 785 expansion with a high rating, a new service to an unfunded park and ride (786, medium), and dial a ride expansion, medium.

- SW requested new service to Pioneer Trail and 169, for a new park and ride, medium rating.

- Bluexpress requested funds for expansion to the Marshall Rd and 169 park and ride, medium rating.

The top 10 projects were for routes 2, 19, 110, 721, 723, Green Line, 270, 376, 84, and 515. The Plymouth and MVTA projects notably scored quite poorly, and suggest that money is better spent restructuring those systems rather than throwing money at existing routes. If Metro Transit receives a number of service improvements, then restructuring should be considered, especially in the Rice St and Brooklyn Center cases. It will be interesting to see if any significant changes happen once new services are began and restructuring studies begin for the other METRO lines, and Arterial BRT takes off.

http://www.metrocouncil.org/planning/tr ... ov2012.pdf

[mattaudio]

How many new stinking park and rides do we need? I mean I know they are successful in the sense that they are popular and put butts in bus seats... but at what capital cost?

[FISHMANPET]

Oooh, I'd love the 2 improvements, and to a lesser degree the 22, since they both go by my apartment.

[MSPtoMKE]

I was unaware that there was any extra money for transit operations to throw around, this is encouraging news. But how much of this will they actually have the money to implement? I didn't see it specifically mentioned, but I am assuming some of this money is already spoken for to help pay for the service improvements from the Green Line restructuring. It never made sense to me that all the increased service in the restructure plan would have been able to have been paid for by the decrease in routes 16/50/94.

What would be the point in having a branch of Route 2 run from Oak and Washington along University to Raymond Station?

[Tcmetro]

The 2 branch to University and Raymond struck me as quite odd as well, but if the 2 is improved to every 20 minutes, you might as well have every other 2 continue as a 67, to provide direct service from Hennepin & Franklin to Downtown St. Paul.

[FISHMANPET]

The 2 would already meet up with the Green Line, so not sure why they would run it to Raymond. Anyone know exactly what kind of routing they're proposing for that?

[mattaudio]

Yikes... will the orange line really have a big mess of branches south of 76th as shown in the PDF's map? Seems like this sort of defeats the idea of calling this a "line" or "bus rapid transit"...

[Tcmetro]

That just shows the current service pattern offered by the 535. From what it looks like to me, there will be the main Orange Line service from Minneapolis to Burnsville, and a rush hour service from Minneapolis to Knox/76th P&R and Best Buy HQ. I would imagine some sort of associated restructure of local services (4/6/538/539/540/542) with the conception of BRT service.

[woofner]

Thanks for posting this fascinating plan. The first thing I did was turn to the appendixes for the precious data contained therein. Unfortunately it seems as though the table for service hours, expenses, etc, for weekday service is askew. For example it gives the avg weekday ridership for the 84 as 445 riders, while the Arterial Transitways profile says it's 3800. And the 83 is supposed to have 5,024 current weekday riders despite not technically existing, while the 87 gets all zeroes. Can anyone figure out the pattern?

Then there's this monkey wrench:

One evaluation factor not originally included in the RSIP procedure, subsidy per passenger express mile,
was added based on requests from committee members for a measure that recognized the value of
long-distance express routes. Subsidy per passenger express mile is determined by dividing the net
service subsidy by the total number of passengers onboard for each mile of non-stop express service.
This measure balances the increased cost of long distance express service with the larger environmental,
congestion, and customer benefits of carrying more people farther. Additional data was requested for
each express service project to support the evaluation of this factor. In many cases, the passenger
express miles value was approximated by multiplying the total service ridership by the non-stop express
miles on the service.

Not a big surprise considering the committee had majority representation from the opt-outs somehow. It was only weighted 10 points but it still must have given some of the express buses a boost.

[MNdible]

As an aside, looking at the performance metrics outlined in the document (which I may be misunderstanding):

I'm frankly baffled that the 2 performs so well relative to other lines that I perceive to be high-performing. It's PPISH number is beyond double that of the 4 and the 5. Is this just a function of the fact that the 2 is grossly underserving the demand that's there?

[Tcmetro]

The 2 has insane amounts of turnover in comparison to the 4 and the 5, where riders are mainly going to/from Downtown or transferring at Lake or Franklin. The 2 basically carries about 3 loads of people in less than an hour, on the Hennepin to Hiawatha, Hiawatha to Cedar-Riverside, and U of M to Marcy-Holmes segments. Considering how many transfer opportunities there are (every 1/4-1/2 mile) a high frequency is important.

[UptownSport]

What stops them from extending 2 farther West on Franklin? There's a school, neighborhood, park and businesses at terminus

[VAStationDude]

Frequency improvements are much needed on the 2. I ride it a few times a month to and from the Blue Line to Hennepin. The various characters make it an interesting journey but it is mind-numbingly slow. As mentioned there is tons of turnover, a good amount of riders, and lots and lots of short distance rides. People using it to get less than 1/2 mile is not uncommon. As for extending it west past hennepin, it ain't happening. Ridership drops off west of Nicollet, the Franklin area west of Fremont is mostly devoid of multifamily housing and the Lowry Hill and Kenwood folks would likely oppose the extension.

Also this study was done separately from the Green Line newly finalized and approved bus restructuring study, I doubt they'll be making route changes to the 2.

I like the Northside 22 frequency improvements but it is getting cut from 20 minute to 30 minute evening frequencies on the south side. I use the 22 so it is bit of a drag but other bus connecting bus routes off the Blue Line will ease some of the pain.

[FISHMANPET]

The 2 could stand to lose quite a few stops. Westbound, there's a stop in front of the Franklin Housing coop, then on the same block there's a stop in front of Pizza Luce. Things like that, and traffic on Franklin being pretty thick makes it slow going. It could probably benefit from some signal priority. There's quite a few students riding the 2, and making it even more frequent would open up a lot more housing to students, which would increase ridership.

[mplser]

What stops them from extending 2 farther West on Franklin? There's a school, neighborhood, park and businesses at terminus

I always wondered this when I was growing up. I lived on Franklin over there and hated walking to Hennepin for the bus.

[FISHMANPET]

Uh, it does go to Hennepin already.

[mulad]

They're referring to extending it farther west, like to Franklin & Penn.

[FISHMANPET]

They're referring to extending it farther west, like to Franklin & Penn.

Ah, I get it now.

I didn't realize there was anything west of Hennpein on Franklin, I just assumed it was a forest full of dragons or something.

[UptownSport]

Ridership drops off west of Nicollet, the Franklin area west of Fremont is mostly devoid of multifamily housing and the Lowry Hill and Kenwood folks would likely oppose the extension.

There's only one 2 stop (if you except the 22d /Hennepin and Dupont Franklin) west of Nicollet - Hennepin and Franklin.
This is a major stop! Don't understand how, in any way, one could say ridership drops off?!?!

So the'll oppose it- The 25 already runs thru Lowry/Kenwood, don't see how running the 2 down to Kenwood School on Franklin would be anything but a boon to the neighborhood.

[VAStationDude]

Except for stops at Lyndale, Harriet, Pleasant and Blaisdell/Pilsbury there are no stops west of Nicollet aside from Hennepin/Franklin. My experience has been, having lived in the Lowry Hill neighborhood for two years and riding the 2 on a regular basis after moving out of the area, that the west end of the line has low ridership relative to areas east of Nicollet. The 25 is a commuter bus with low ridership - we're talking six people on board south of the Walker. The wealthy folks in Kenwood, no matter how progressive they claim to be, will never use the 2 and don't want the dirty poors on east Franklin having direct transit access to their neighborhood.

Personally, I'm excited about the 110 route. Seward is already a popular area for students and university employees. Longfellow and Seward will become more appealing with a direct bus route.

I would really like see the recent off peak 6 bus frequency losses rolled back but apparently it wasn't included in this study.