Public Transit News / Current Events (MN only)

[Bakken2016]

How many of these bus lane projects have been in the works since 2018/2019 and have been implemented, really only 7th St. I have a strong feeling that certain people on the city council have been pushing against them.

[Nick]

Ooh, good find. With the operator shortage, it would sure be nice if they could get more than one route per year through the Better Bus Routes program. And I'm not just saying that because the 11 is my route and I want it to be improved before 2026.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone suggest consolidating stops (even temporarily) as a solution for the driver shortage? It seems like that would help a lot.

[Trademark]

Will Hennepin through downtown get bus lanes? Also I'm surprised why there isn't any push to put bus lanes on 8th street.

[PLGTMD]

I just saw that Apple Maps has added the D Line to their transit map of the Twin Cities (it already had the Blue, Green, Red, Northstar, and Amtrak lines). But still no Orange, A, or C lines. Anybody know why they would add the D line so hastily but not these other lines which opened earlier?

[Bakken2016]

I just saw that Apple Maps has added the D Line to their transit map of the Twin Cities (it already had the Blue, Green, Red, Northstar, and Amtrak lines). But still no Orange, A, or C lines. Anybody know why they would add the D line so hastily but not these other lines which opened earlier?

Not sure, wasn't aware that D Line showed up, I thought they were only doing our rail lines. I will reach out to them to hopefully get them added in.

[Tiller]

It's been a few years since there was discussion on the topic, but I've been curious - has the tech in our go-to cards changed at all? Now that we have a DFL Trifecta, it would be nice to have a universal public transportation fare payment card in MN.

Tap your card and hop on the light rail to downtown Minneapolis. Transfer to the Northern Lights Express to Duluth with another easy tap of your payment card. And then use the same payment card on Duluth's buses when you get there!

Same kinda thing with whatever else we might build and connect. Mankato? Saint Cloud? Rochester? As we eventually get connections to those places, having a seamless payment system would be awesome. Have the balance pay out until it hits whatever that fare type's cap is, and then transition it automatically into a weekly then monthly pass!

Much better than a balkanized payment system like in the San Francisco or New York City metro areas. It would be even better if micromobility, rideshare, and privately run transit (like intercity buses) were also required to accept payments from a universal MN payment card (whether that's a goto card or something new!)

The last time we talked about go-to cards and fare payment tech:

My guess is that you'll be able to link your Hourcar account to your Go-To card, so you only need to carry one of them around.

Interesting fun fact, you probably couldn't do this with the Go-To card and Car2Go (the car share that to me would seem more compatible with a transit pass) because they use different NFC techs. Go-To cards are Mifare 8k chips (which are not truly compliant to the NFC standard) and Car2Go uses a "correct" tag (ISO/IEC 14443 seems to be the best name for it). The GoTo readers should have no problem reading the Car2Go tags, but Car2Go cars might not be able to read the 8k GoTo cards (My Nexus phone, for example, can't read the 8k cards).

Anyway, a bit of nerd stuff for you.

I suppose it's possible that the GoTo readers wouldn't be able to read "standard" cards but it's very unlikely. They should be able to read cards just fine. It kind of comes down to how MetroTransit has the system setup. THe 8k cards are called that because they hold 8 kilobytes of data, the standard cards hold much less data. If MetroTransit is using all that space, they'd have to pretty seriously reengineer their system. It could just be that they went with what was around when they implemented the system.

I don't really understand the history of the specifications enough to understand why there was a prevalence of these out of scope 8k cards. From what I know and some Wikipedia reading (on the NFC page and the Mifare page) it appears that MIFARE is a trademark of a company that makes the cards, and it's a proprietary superset of NFC standards. So there are probably licensing costs involved in procuring the readers and the cards. But MetroTransit must have made a concious decision to choose MIFARE, unless there was nothing else on the market when they started this over 10 years ago.

Another interesting aside, the Washington Metro (WMATA) SmarTrip card is standard NFC, so it is possible.

E: Just scanned my GoTo card, it's a Mifare Classic 1K, not 8K. But they do make up to 8k.

[LakeCharles]

It's been a few years since there was discussion on the topic, but I've been curious - has the tech in our go-to cards changed at all? Now that we have a DFL Trifecta, it would be nice to have a universal public transportation fare payment card in MN.

Tap your card and hop on the light rail to downtown Minneapolis. Transfer to the Northern Lights Express to Duluth with another easy tap of your payment card. And then use the same payment card on Duluth's buses when you get there!

Same kinda thing with whatever else we might build and connect. Mankato? Saint Cloud? Rochester? As we eventually get connections to those places, having a seamless payment system would be awesome. Have the balance pay out until it hits whatever that fare type's cap is, and then transition it automatically into a weekly then monthly pass!

Much better than a balkanized payment system like in the San Francisco or New York City metro areas. It would be even better if micromobility, rideshare, and privately run transit (like intercity buses) were also required to accept payments from a universal MN payment card (whether that's a goto card or something new!)

Why have a separate card at all? I love that in NYC you just use your credit card, and it automatically handles passes after a certain number of trips per week.

[COLSLAW5]

New fare collection machines are being installed on the busses that would be able to accept tap to pay on phones eventually but would have to be turned on. I think the short term idea is to get rid of the separate go to card readers on the buses.

[Silophant]

Bakken2016 posted a few pages up thread that they're working on a backend upgrade to the fare card system that would enable NFC payments and fare capping, etc.

[twinkess]

Why have a separate card at all? I love that in NYC you just use your credit card, and it automatically handles passes after a certain number of trips per week.

Ugh, except they don't have this system for the JFK Air Train even though it takes NY subway fare cards... Had to buy a pass in November.

[Bakken2016]

Why have a separate card at all? I love that in NYC you just use your credit card, and it automatically handles passes after a certain number of trips per week.

Ugh, except they don't have this system for the JFK Air Train even though it takes NY subway fare cards... Had to buy a pass in November.

OMNY is great, but LIRR, Air Train, and Metro North still haven't implemented it. Along with New Jersey Transit and PATH deciding to go with their own system instead of opting into OMNY.

[Trademark]

My girlfriend just went to the Metro Transit Hiring Fair to apply and she said it was absolutely packed there!!! Great signs for service increases coming soon!!

[Trademark]

https://mnsenate.granicus.com/player/cl ... 28e744c5bd

https://www.senate.mn/committees/2023-2 ... erview.pdf

Metro Transit is facing a fiscal cliff in 2026-2027 of over $260 million and this is with their assumptions that they will only return to 70% up to about 90% of pre-covid service levels, and reflecting 15 minute Light Rail Frequencies. (55:45 in the audio) Mary Bogie speaking.

[COLSLAW5]

Just in case anyone was interested or wanted to share with people Metro Transit is doing a "drive the bus" hiring event on Saturday February 4th from 9am to 12pm at the new North Loop Garage.

https://www.facebook.com/MetroTransitMN ... tid=2Rb1fB

[grant1simons2]

huh...

https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/ ... ro-transit

[Silophant]

Ooh, maybe we can get someone that at least lives in the MT service area this time.

[Bakken2016]

huh...

https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/ ... ro-transit

oh yeah, Wes is retiring on February 3rd. Chief of Staff "Lesley Kandaras" will be the interim manager until a new one is hired.

Also, reminds me of in 2018 when they ousted Brian Lamb saying the GM was appointed by the governor, which I guess is just not simply true.

[Silophant]

Mod note: The tunnel discussion was getting extensive enough that I moved it to its own thread.

[Anondson]

Asking for feedback on reduced, consolidated, relocating stops on route 17.

https://www.metrotransit.org/route-17

[Silophant]

A little frustrating that they're not currently considering removing stops on Central - this is the perfect time to change that up, no one even remembers where the stops were back in 2018 anyway. Guess that's what the comments are for, though.