The last (for now) part in this involves something I'm not great at - the inner ring. I've never lived in an inner ring suburb and I don't have a lot of friends that I know that have lived in an inner ring suburb. So, what I'm really saying is that this post is going to be a little light.
Now my only experience here is with the west metro. East metro inner ring.... yeah, sorry, I have no clue. I can't remember half of your names sometimes... sorry about that. From what I can tell, there is quite a bit of bus service into the inner ring, which is a good thing. I think that this can serve as a model for the outer ring. There's not much of a difference between the east parts of Plymouth and Minnetonka than there is from Golden Valley and St. Louis Park.
I'm not sure why Metro Transit treats the cities so differently. It's almost like 169 is a giant "NONE SHALL PASS!!!" and every now and again a Metro Transit bus sneaks by. It should be better than that. If you've ever played Sim City (and you should) one of the things the adviser tells you with transit is that people won't walk real far between bus stops. If you've ever lived in an area where there's more than a 5 to 10 minute walk between stops, you know how true this is.
The inner ring seems to get this. I see quiet a few stops, especially along major highways (3, 7, 5, 9, 10) rather frequently that would encourage and allow people to take a bus. What I don't understand is why more cities don't expand on that concept. While the park and rides are nice, if I'm going to drive 10 minutes or so to get to a park and ride, you better make it worth my while.
We also need to keep improving on our biking system. Minneapolis has done a good job starting to add bike lanes in. The trail system is actually rather amazing to wind through the city while avoiding a lot of traffic. The next step is for those of us that are drivers to do a better job of paying attention to bicyclists and sharing the rode. And none of the crap of "well bikers violate traffic rules too". Yes, sure they do. But I would be willing to bet 95% of them do it because trying to share the road with drivers is so blasted unsafe that rolling a stop sign or a red light is just easier than being bunched with a bunch of 3500+ pound death machines.
I know all of the ideas I offer here are overly simplistic and assume unlimited money and assume that the "If you build it they will come" theory holds true: add routes and people will ride them. I know that's not really the case and it would take a lot of work and time to get people to ride the trains and buses in the numbers it would take to really put a lot of these into place. It also involves a complete rethink of our relationship with cars, especially in the suburbs.
We are a changing society though and I think some of these things are going to start to have to happen. More and more stories are coming out where teens are driving less and I don't think that trend is going to reverse. People want more walkable, transit focused areas. This is a good thing but it does come at a cost, which is mostly a change in mindset.
If you think transit could be better in the Twin Cities, or wherever you live, talk to your local city council members, state representatives or senators, or county commissioners. Anecdotal evidence and surveys are wonderful but nothing can drum up support like letters and phone calls directly from constituents.
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