¶ Doors are Closing
Doors are closing . Public transit , that's my way to roll On . A metro , I'm taking control . Bus stops , train tracks it's my daily grind . Public transit , it's the rhythm of my life . On this episode of Transit Tangents , we discuss new bus rapid transit lines headed to Minneapolis-St Paul .
We'll compare pros and cons of the two models being used and where they're headed , moving forward . All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents .
Hey everybody and welcome back to this episode of Transit Tangents . My name's Chris and I'm Lewis and today we are listening to your feedback from our top 10 transit projects to look for in 2025 . We got a lot of comments about other projects that we should have looked at and we are reading those comments and taking those suggestions .
So today we are going to dive into the sort of Minneapolis St Paul area more on the St Paul side Gold Line BRT .
Yeah , and we're also going to talk about some of the light BRT stuff that's happening as well . We'll get into one of those projects in particular , but there's a lot to talk about with the Gold Line where it's true BRT , it is dedicated space . I was really excited when I looked into this and saw how hard you all were going with the .
There's some little tunnels and bridges and it's real , real dedicated BRT and we don't see that much of that in the United States , so pretty excited to do it .
Before we get started , though , we want to call out we have some new swag , as you've probably seen on the YouTube . On the YouTube little scroller , it shows hoodies and t-shirts and socks , and stickers and hats . I am not a hat person , but I'm wearing it today .
So yeah , if you want to support the show and you're interested in some swag , check out the links under the video .
Without further ado , though , let's jump into the episode here .
Let's start off with the gold line , and throughout we're going to kind of talk about some comparisons between this gold line , which is like the true BRT , as well , as we're going to talk specifically about the B line , which is another route that's going to be opening in the area , and kind of comparing and contrasting some pros and cons between the true BRT ,
the kind of light BRT , things in between , as we kind of go . Have you been to Minneapolis ? I have not been outside of the airport . Okay , I'd like to go though . Yeah , yeah , kind of go . But have you been to the minneapolis ? I have not been outside of the airport okay , I'd like to go though .
Yeah , the bike ability in minneapolis is supposed to be really great I think I think we will at some point do a minneapolis in a day using public transit .
I've been to minneapolis and the st paul area for work before and , um , it's a beautiful , beautiful area and the connectivity between these two cities and all the potential that's there and already exists is really , really incredible . Fun fact Minneapolis is the place first time I ever saw a frozen lake .
Wow , and I saw it and I was like why is the water dirty ? And I was like , oh , no , it's just ice .
You can now tell Chris is from the south if you weren't able to tell that before anyway , the gold line uh scheduled to open this year , in 2025 , is a 10 mile project , again with true brt infrastructure along the route . Uh , it's scheduled to open in march , which by the time this comes out it might be open like close to now , very soon .
Um , it creates 11
¶ The Wheels on the Bus Go Round
new stops , primarily along the i-94 corridor , 16 total stops in general . Some of them are kind of overlap with existing stops in the downtown St Paul area . I'm sure some of them are being reworked , so those numbers might be a little off as far as what's new and what's an existing station .
Yeah , most of the project is fit within an existing right-of-way , so that's a huge cost savings , a huge benefit to the community to be able to use this existing right-of-way . You know , fewer chances of eminent domain and all that kind of thing .
Yeah , in total there's about 93,000 jobs within a half mile of the station , which is also huge for getting commuters around totally and kind of .
One last little fact about it is about 13% of the people who live within that same cashman area of a half a mile from the station don't own a car .
So this will be a major benefit to folks who already are relying on transit in the area , and we'll also have the added benefit of potentially being appealing to folks who might have a car but are thinking about getting rid of one car and being a one-car household or looking for alternatives to commute into St Paul .
I think this is also a good time to call back to our BRT episode . If you're curious about what the difference between BRT and other types of bus networks , how that kind of breaks down . We have a whole episode about BRT .
We don't see a lot of BRT in the US , so this project's really exciting because it's sort of the best thing we have is like a real bus rapid transit . What we see in other cities is maybe a dedicated bus lane that then merges back in with regular traffic . We see a little bit of thing . We saw a little bit of movement in Houston with BRTs .
The mayor there has cut most of that service , so this is a really exciting project Totally , and this project has been floated for a while actually .
So it first came up in the mid-2000s , slash , 2010s . At one point it was looked at into doing a rail line in this area , but ultimately , for cost reasons as well as for kind of ridership projections , they decided that true , brt was the way to go .
It essentially is going to act as a bit of a commuter service , but a more frequent commuter service , we'll say so . It's supposed to run service all day long . They don't give exact times on any of the documents here , so I'm not sure if all day long means 24 hours , if it means 6 am to midnight , I'm not sure of the specifics here .
I'm sure we will find out very soon . But yeah , and like we said , it runs mostly in that dedicated right-of-way , so you're going to have the benefits of not sitting at stoplights all the time . You're going to have transit priority in a lot of cases along the line Drivers will not be stuck sitting in traffic .
Essentially , you'll be able to cruise right along on the BRT line directly into St Paul or back home if you're heading the other direction .
Yeah , when we say it follows the right-of-way , it's not necessarily like just a lane of the highway that's been dedicated to this . It is its own standalone network for most of the path Right .
Yeah , most of it runs on the north side of I-94 . It kind of weaves between a mix of long neighborhood streets but also just on its own roadways it bridges over several intersections . It goes under several intersections . It's pretty cool to actually look . If you're watching , you can see . If you're listening , I'll try to describe .
It's really well integrated in and just it exceeded any expectation that I thought I was going to have of this , at least seeing the renderings and whatnot . Now I have not seen it in person . So people in Minneapolis , tell me if I'm wrong . Or in St Paul , tell me if I'm wrong .
So all in all it sounds like the project's pretty well organized . It has its right of way . It seems like it's going to be delivered on budget . It's cost-wise , it's good for the community . Some downsides with how this particular model in the St Paul area works out .
With it running along a highway it's harder to connect communities , I think in a way , so people don't necessarily want to live next to a highway . This promotes some development on that highway . Of when you're going to build things , you know , build new housing to try to connect to this BRT , you're building it really close to the highway .
That may be not the most desirable for some people it's just like I mean for most people . I don't think most people want to live with an earshot of a highway , seeing a highway having the health effects of being next to a highway .
You also don't want to cross a highway . So , with this running on the north side of I-94 , you're going to try to have a catchment area on the south side of the highway as well . So now people have to cross the bridges to get over Not the most enjoyable experience .
Right , yeah , if you figure .
And when Chris talks about a catchment area and I think I mentioned it earlier too just picture a round radius around a station and think about how far would you walk to get to a station or how far would you bike to get to a station , and if that range is somewhere you know , half a mile is probably the farthest end of that for most people and a lot of
that half a mile radius is just literally taken up by highway .
I also think about people in Minneapolis are definitely built different than I am . I cannot walk half a mile in the weather , in the cold weather conditions they get up there .
Yes , yeah , yeah , yeah , but .
I'm sure that's not a big issue for some of the people in Minneapolis .
Agreed , agreed , um , yeah , uh , a couple other , a couple positives or nice features that that the system is doing . That I appreciated seeing , um , they're , they're doing pay before you're bored at each station .
So there'll be a way to either tap or swipe , or whatever it may be , before you get on the bus , and that may sound like a small thing , but it actually saves a lot of time If you're someone who doesn't ride a bus .
Every time the bus stops , usually you spend a good bit of time people getting up there , either paying with a credit card , putting quarters into the machine , trying to scan a QR code on their phone , and if five or 10 people are getting on at a given stop , it might take a solid 60 seconds , 90 seconds , for all those people to get on and sit down before
the bus can start going again . But with this pay before you board , folks have already paid to get on the platform , essentially , and they just walk on the bus and sit down .
It feels a lot more like a train experience getting on a light rail than it does getting on a bus , totally .
There's also some trade-offs with it as far as , like , enforcement of paying the fare and whatnot . There's a little bit more of a trust system going on . But again , I think the main goal here is to get people moving and I think most people will pay their fare Absolutely .
You already mentioned the frequent all-day service . We don't have . Like I said , don't have the schedule for that , but stay tuned . And then the one that I like the most is the heated shelters . Going back to saying that Minneapolis people are built differently than I am , I would . And then the one that I like the most is the heated shelters .
Going back to saying that Minneapolis people are built differently than I am , yeah , I would have to have a heated shelter and that's honestly something I wish more transit agencies built into their system , because we have sat at some very cold bus stops Totally , and I've actually seen even on some busy local routes in the Minneapolis-St Paul area .
I've seen images and videos on Twitter of heated things where you can literally walk into like it's like a glass , usually like bus stop or like plexiglass or whatever , and there's a button you press inside and it turns on the heater when you get in there and it probably stays on for a couple minutes or whatever . Pretty cool , yeah .
But yeah , a couple other benefits here , though We've got limited stops to keep the buses moving . Obviously , if you do too many stops it's going to take a while , so the stop spacing is pretty nice along the route .
Also signal priority . Which we hammer on a lot in our reviews of Transit and City is that buses and on-street trams they need signal priority . This will have the signal priority where it encounters intersections .
Totally , and it's interesting . There's like technology in the buses that will essentially allow the drivers to ask for an extended green light or for a green light to change faster from a red to a green , which is pretty , pretty cool , and we see that in some places .
Even in Austin , apparently , there are a couple places where buses can do that , and I think I've seen some of it along the 801 and 803 .
There's also some like on Fifth Street . Near the Whole Foods there's a section where they can signal priority . There's a couple places in town .
Yep , yep , but yeah , with that let's move into expected ridership .
Yeah , expected ridership starts off around 6,500 people a day . They expect that to increase to about 9,000 people per day by 2020 . I'm sorry , by 2040 .
So for context , you know to compare that 6,500 or 9,000 riders a day . The busiest bus in the city right now sees about 10,000 riders per day . So this will be a very well-used route . On the system I-94 , which this runs along , sees a lot of traffic .
Hopefully this will kind of help alleviate some of that and also offer folks who commute along the corridor an alternative to sitting in traffic every day , to instead sitting on a nice bus and having it whisk them away to downtown .
Yeah , this will also serve a lot of low-income communities in this area . As you said , about 13% of the households don't own a vehicle .
That obviously doesn't correlate to necessarily low-income communities , but a lot of these communities may not have a car or it may be economically beneficial for them to take the bus into downtown St Paul and then the train to Minneapolis or wherever they need to go .
It's also worth noting that there is a planned expansion to the Gold Line which will continue this route all the way to Minneapolis , totally Along with this project . We kind of talk about the importance of housing and transit .
A lot now on this channel We've done , if you're interested , we actually had a really interesting episode with a friend of ours named Cutter who kind of works in that space here in austin . Um , we'll put a link for folks who are interested . But there are quite a few potential areas for transit oriented development along this line .
So a couple stations in particular include the etna station , the sunrise station uh , the maple wood station , as well as the last couple stations on the line , uh , which are currently set up more as park and rides . Um , there's a lot of room over there .
Yeah , looking at the satellite imagery , a lot of sort of woodland around those parking ride stations .
And you know others include , like the Sunray station that I mentioned is essentially a strip mall . You know we've talked about how those can be kind of redeveloped in a couple episodes on the show as well .
Your favorite phrase .
Yes , where you see surface parking lots , I see potential . I keep saying we're going to make a t-shirt for that , but maybe by the time this comes , out , I'll make a t-shirt . With those transit-oriented developments , though the one thing I will point out is , again , they're going to be along a highway .
It's not the best spot for this , and this is like an issue that we see in cities in the us and north america in general is that so often dense housing , like it's always built on just terrible roads for the most part , not always , but , and oftentimes it'll be concentrated on these main arterial roads um , because folks in the neighborhoods don't want an apartment
in their neighborhood , and you end up with tons of folks living on these really busy , dangerous roads that are . Yeah , it's not a great scenario , but it's kind of what we have , so we'll take it , I guess .
The Gold Line is not the only development that's really happening in this St Paul area . There are other lines , like the Green Line . We're not really going to get into those , but if you are interested in learning more about what St Paul and Minneapolis area , what they're doing , there is a great website .
When you look up or you kind of Google , the Gold Line kind of goes through all the other connections that are going to kind of intersect with this line . So a lot of good connectivity , a lot of really good work . A lot of good connectivity , a lot of really good work , I think , coming out of this area .
We do want to sort of compare this to some other lines in the area that are labeled as BRT , but they're not really BRT , as we mentioned in our BRT episode .
When we talk about BRT , we expect it to be a pretty much separated network from your road networks , that's , dedicated bridges and tunnels and intersections that are meant just for this , stations that are off the road , that sort of thing .
The best example of that in the world is probably the I think it's the Transmilenio in Bogota . There are in Central and South America . There are a lot of good examples , yeah .
Buenos Aires has really great .
VRT , yep . Not tons in the US or Canada for the most part , but there are some coming . But this line that we're going to focus on right now , the B line and , like Chris said , there are others like this already existing in Minneapolis and others under development the B line is one that will also open this year .
It is a 12-mile route currently being served by the 21 bus . The 21 bus , for context , is the busiest local bus route in the Minneapolis-St Paul area . The route runs kind of just south of the downtowns and kind of runs east-west , connecting them in between .
Essentially , it makes a beeline between Minneapolis and St Paul .
It makes a beeline between south Minneapolis and south St Paul .
Yes , as you said , that 21 route is the busiest route in the sort of metro area and it serves about 9,000 riders per day currently . It's comparable to what the Gold Route will have in 2040 .
Right . Also notable , this is not going to run in any dedicated busways for the most part . There might be a few areas where there's a lane for a period of time , uh , but it mostly is running with mixed traffic . Um , the reason for this is there's not that much room on the right of way here .
Uh , it's running through neighborhoods , it's running through businesses and all that sort of stuff . Um , there's , without taking a lot of extra land , there's really just not space , unless you were to do something drastic , which I'm totally in favor of , things like this , when there are parallel cross streets and whatnot .
I mean you could , in time , turn something like this into a transit corridor . It's not being proposed or anything right now , but I was about to say like , oh , it makes total sense . You could never do this , you could do this sort of thing , but I'll take this for now .
A couple of the features , though , we want to go over that , surprisingly , are actually similar to along the Gold Line , which I like to see , the first being
¶ New Developments in Minneapolis
we're seeing pay-before-you-board again at every station along this line , yeah , which is great .
There's also about one station for every 0.4 miles , so less frequent stops than a local line . So it gets us a little closer to BRT , almost more like an express line .
Totally yeah . We're seeing larger vehicles and more frequent service than what the 21 used to have . Bendy buses . Yes , there will be bendy buses . You were looking at me smirking . I was like what ? Yes , there will be bendy buses . That's just my face , lewis .
I smirk .
And as well as more frequent service . So I would imagine and folks , if you ride the 21 in the area , let us know , but I'd imagine the 21 , given the ridership , you probably see a lot of standing room only on the bus and whatnot .
Hopefully this will help alleviate that sort of thing by providing both more frequent buses , and when the buses do come , they will be bigger . And then another thing that I thought was interesting here the stations . It's not like one uniform station throughout . They're going to vary based on where they are along the route .
So with a route like this , you know , some of the stations are going to be much more dense and will have more amenities at the stops . They'll be nicer , they might have more shade or heated stops or anything like that , whereas some of these are more surrounded in single family neighborhoods .
They're not going to see as much ridership and maybe a more traditional bus shelter makes sense there .
Yeah , absolutely . So a lot of positives there . We can kind of talk about pros and cons a little bit . One of the cons , if we're comparing these two projects , is that the beeline is going to be slower than the gold line . It is mixed in with traffic .
It is harder to do signal priority that way it doesn't have the whole dedicated right away the whole way through this part of the city . So it is going to be a little slower .
At the same time , it is also going to be much cheaper to construct this sort of thing . But again , there is that trade-off there We've talked about this a little bit before the phrase BRT creep , and I want to spend a second on this , actually .
So the idea of BRT creep is that you know , you propose , oh , we're going to do this great BRT line , something that looks more like the gold line , dedicated right-of-way , the whole way bridges , signal priority , all this sort of stuff .
And then as the project continues along the process and things start to go over budget and oh , this might be more expensive than we thought or this is going to take too much time slowly the project gets whittled down , and whittled down , and whittled down , and now you just have a bus , a regular bus , that sits in traffic with everything else that doesn't have
signal priority , and sure , you might have saved some money or done it on time , but you no longer really have BRT .
At best you have BRT light , and this is something that , like this , is a big reason why I feel like I push for light rail in a lot of cases when it makes sense is because it's harder to have BRT creep when you're doing a light rail necessarily , although you can you can run into the same issues .
Once you build a light rail it's also a lot harder to justify stopping that service . What we've seen with BRT Houston's a good example . You have areas near the sort of Galleria area , uptown area of Houston and you have this beautiful dedicated bus lane that runs through this part of the city and it had signal priority .
Well , it had sort of signal priority at each of the intersections it could have been better .
But it is just this nice little strip of bus lane that's separated by these little gardens , just as we saw . It was very easy for the mayor to say , no , we don't need that , let's use a smaller bus , let's make it cheaper to operate .
Let's run it less frequently , yeah .
One other thing , too , is studies have shown that with bus lines and BRT lines , yes , the upfront cost is cheaper to build these , but over the long term you spend a little more than you would on a light rail operation . With the operations you have to pay bus drivers , the buses require a lot more maintenance .
There's just more operational expense that goes into this BRT line versus light rail , which comes with some more streamlined operations .
Yeah , Not to get into the whole light rail thing , but the concept of BRT creep , though , is not something that people think about all the time . I would imagine A few other pros and cons with this system . In particular , I think , well obviously is getting stuck in traffic .
We've already kind of covered that but uh , having these kind of even brt light lines , uh like the b line , will be , uh , totally easier to understand than a regular bus line for the most part .
Usually , systems like this are branded better , they might be shown differently on the maps and almost be drawn out more like a metro line would be or a train line would be , and I think it is a good first step for someone who isn't a transit person to like learn how to ride the bus .
I absolutely agree . Before starting this podcast , one of my things I was sort of apprehensive about with buses it wasn't the normal things people are , you know refuse to ride buses about , like the people on the bus and all this kind of stuff it was .
I don't know where this bus is going , right , obviously , google Maps and Apple Maps , things like that , do a really good job of helping you navigate , but buses , it's a little uncertain . They can deviate from their existing path . A light rail can't do that and a BRT also has a really hard time doing that hard time doing that . Right ?
I think that when you have here's point A , here's point B , here's exactly where this bus is going to go People can wrap their heads around that a little easier , totally .
So I think you know with that , that sort of thing right there being solved here also can help with increasing ridership . Right , the 21 bus people just see a bus with a number on it and like sure , the 21 did run a fairly straight line , from what I can understand by just kind of looking from afar here .
But having this kind of branded differently , having less stops on it , having more defined stops on it , makes it easier for folks to understand who are not necessarily riding the bus every day .
And increases service for the people who were , because now you know if you can get on that express bus , essentially , and skip some of the stops and get to your destination faster , that's a win .
Yeah , we always say buses aren't sexy , but then , like BRT , maybe people are going to look at it and be like hey look at that .
That's a pretty sexy BRT light , damn . One other point I want to make here too , I guess I want to make here too , I guess . So , comparing the Gold Line to the B-Line and other similar ones , the Gold Line , I think you could actually have potential for real TOD to happen , real transit-oriented development .
With a BRT Lite , I mean , you can see some of it Again . You will have higher levels of ridership , and people who live there and do take transit might be like oh , I would rather live near the B line stop , or something . I would say that it's probably to a much lesser extent , though .
that you see significant transit oriented development around these areas Doesn't mean none , but yeah , and as you said at the beginning , the feasibility study looked at light rail in this area , originally with more I think it was commuter rail , but either way , Either way , but with a rail line , but with more TODs maybe being built up in this area , maybe in 40
years . they look at this and they say , well , now we have the population to support a light rail and now we already have the dedicated right of way . So there could be some even potential future benefits that we aren't even aware of .
Totally , but yeah , this was a pretty interesting one . Again , this was requested in the top 10 transit projects to look forward to in 2025 . Excited to see both the Gold Line , the B Line , as well , as there were a couple other lettered lines that are scheduled to open this year , next year and , I believe , even into 2027 .
So certainly a lot of interesting stuff going on in the Minneapolis-St Paul metro area . I'd love to get out there and visit you all someday . If you're from the area , definitely reach out . We'd love to hear from you .
Especially if you're part of any sort of Twin Cities urbanist group .
Please reach out to us . We'd love to have those contacts .
If you have other projects in that region that you would like us to focus on , please also share that in the comments .
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But with all that being said , no-transcript .