This post could also be subtitled "How Not To Screw Over the Suburbs".
In my post the last week, I talked about what I would do if I could rebuild the Metro Transit system and got to make all the decisions. Primarily, I laid out what my thoughts on public transit it should be, who it should serve, and what the overall goals it should accomplish are. I started with the easy part: tying together Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, like they are now, with a couple of changes.
Now, to tackle the part that I think is the worst with the Metro Transit system: how they deal with the suburbs. Or, how they just kind of ignore them.
I live in Brooklyn Park, not far away from the big new Park and Ride they built at Nobel and 610. This is a great facility and it was needed to help with all of the traffic that the park and ride is getting. But it seems mostly to be focusing on an older crowd. I say this because of how early the bus service stops to there. As far as I can tell, the latest you could really leave downtown Minneapolis and make it back would be 7:30pm for an 8:00pm arrival time. Not great if you're a younger professional who likes to go out after work or wanted to head downtown for a few drinks and not worry about driving.
And forget the weekend. There isn't service out of that station at all on the weekends. It would be a great place to park so you wouldn't have to drive downtown for weekend sporting events, theatre shows, or just to go out with friends. But it's just not possible.
I'm guessing that the main argument against adding service is that nobody would ride it. I think this is partly a chicken and the egg problem. The housing market up here is such that younger (35 and under) professionals can buy a decent house with a nice lawn for not too much money. A number of my friends live near here. All of us are in favor of going out downtown now and again and would probably do so more often if we could take a bus.
When we lived in Plymouth, right at the corner where 55, 169, and 394 come together, it was the same problem. The last bus out from downtown left a little before 10. After that you were on your own looking for a taxi. We would always see a lot of younger people riding the bus in to go downtown but unless you wanted a shorter night, there was no way to get back out to the suburbs to make it home.
So, if I was in charge, I would increase the number of routes out to the outer ring suburbs and make a big push to try and increase ridership. Buses running to the outer right that have a last leaving downtown around midnight should be more than enough to help people get home who wanted to go out safely, especially on weekends.
The second thing that needs to be done is to increase the number of suburb to suburb routes without going to downtown for a transfer. The hub-and-spoke system has a lot of advantages and really does make a lot of sense but there are a lot of big suburbs that should be able to support inter-city transport without routing through Minneapolis (yes, I'm focusing on the west because that's where I live. I'm assuming the same holds true for the east).
For example, one or two routes a day running between Maple Grove, Plymouth, Minnetonka, and Eden Prairie down 494 would link the west together quiet easily. Even on the weekends it would help get people out to the various shops and malls along that route. It would take quite a bit of promotion to help get it going but a few pictures of a bus zooming by the parking lot that is 494 or 169 during rush hour I would think do the trick.
Really this last part boils down to you need to link the four parts of the outer ring suburbs with each other in a way that doesn't involve downtown. You could do this via bus or via train. I think the logical grouping would be Maple Grove to Eden Prairie in the west, Eden Prairie to Inver Grove Heights in the south, IGH to North St. Paul in the east, and NSP to Maple Grove in the north. There might be a few better breaks in their (Fridley in the north, Bloomington in the South) but that gets the general idea across.
Next up, I'll try to talk about the inner ring suburbs (not an area I have a lot of experience with) and non-motorized transit.
I think is a very valid point here, but I think one common misconception people have is that this would need to be the full size bus service. You could easily create a more Shuttle type service that would be more efficient from both a fuel and cost perspective. I think you could even raise the rates a little (not as much as Uber does) and people wouldn't mind paying a little extra for the convenience.
ReplyDeleteI think the hub-and-spoke concept works well, but I think what is lacking in Metro Transit's case is more hubs. The hub-and-spoke concept works so well with the major airlines as most of the airlines have several hubs, which allows airlines to operate more efficiently (in theory) and get customers to different destinations with more options. With only a couple hubs in Metro Transit's system focused on the downtowns, it limits the resident's ability to get around the suburbs without going through downtown. For some situations that's fine (going from Brooklyn Park->Bloomington), but not for others (going from Maple Grove->Minnetonka).
An easy thing you could do is add smaller hubs around the light rail stations (MOA/Airport, Eden Prairie, etc). That would connect the trains to the buses in a more efficient manner.
One other thought on that is that you could add service around the "loop" (494/694) between certain points (Woodbury->Bloomington, Bloomington->Eden Prairie, etc). That wouldn't solve every case out there, but could improve options amongst the suburbs at key points.
Just my two cents
PS - I'm a little disappointed as a Brooklyn Park resident that you mis-spelled "Noble".