Nobody plans on opening a big transit project during a pandemic, but that’s what happened back in December, when Metro Transit unveiled the new Orange Line bus rapid transit (BRT) that runs 20 miles between downtown Minneapolis and Burnsville. Because it travels on the freeway, the Orange Line offers swift service compared to just about any other local transit route, taking you from end to end in only 35 minutes, even during rush hour. For Twin Cities transit, that’s fast!
The only catch? It’s a freeway-running line, and so almost all the stops are right next to the massive concrete walls of I-35W, making many of the station areas quite unappealing. But with that tension in mind, I took the Orange Line this week, hoping to find out how the new project looks and feels, and what its potential might be attracting future riders.
It turns out that, thanks to a few transit planning details, the Orange Line project is as good as transit running down a freeway can be.
End of the Line: Heart of the City
Without grade separation (i.e. tunnels), there’s a fundamental transit planning tension between density and speed. The parts of the city with the largest numbers of people are almost always the slowest parts of the route, and vice versa. This is why putting BRT straight down Interstate 35W was always going to be a mixed-bag, as nobody wants to live or walk next to a busy freeway. Negotiating crosswalks across dangerous off-ramps quickly erodes even the most sanguine attitude.
This is why it’s refreshing that the Orange Line planners did their best to put the stations as close as possible to dense places. The best decision was ending the line in the midst of the apartment buildings of Burnsville’s Heart of the City neighborhood, rather than, as was once suggested, plunking the stop amidst the parking ramps of the Burnsville Transit Center across busy Highway 13.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]Burnsville's Heart of the City station, with an under-construction apartment building in the background.[/image_caption]
That last detail is the key to building transit ridership. While many of our regional suburban transit projects in the Twin Cities rely on park-and-rides to attract numbers, that’s always been a paradoxical concept to me. In most places, quality transit depends instead on serving people who don’t have to drive in the first place. That’s why it’s exciting to think about how, as Burnsville’s fledgling downtown expands, ridership on the new transit service should grow.
The Knox Avenue Detour
Another suburban transit rule of thumb: if your station is surrounded by parking lots and wide roads, rather than buildings, it’s probably going to be a dud. So it’s refreshing that the only detour that the Orange Line takes is along Knox Avenue, on either side of the job-rich 494 corridor. Instead of staying on the highway, the bus jogs a few blocks west and makes two stops, connected by a brand-new tunnel under Interstate 494. Both stops bring potential riders closer to key destinations.
The first is an obvious win for Orange Line ridership. The Knox and 76th stop stands next to the Best Buy corporate headquarters, which employs around 5,000 people (at least theoretically, in pre-pandemic times). If and when these office jobs return, the lanyard crowd will have a slick new option for skipping slogs down 35W.
At first glance, the other stop in Bloomington, at Knox and American Boulevard, is strange: a pair of BRT platforms surrounded by mostly-abandoned car dealerships, where the closest walkable destination is the Lucky 13 Pub. But the site is certainly ripe for redevelopment, and it’s easy to imagine mixed-use apartment projects popping up in the acres of asphalt surrounding the new station. If that happens, the Knox Avenue detour could provide two well-used stops along the Orange Line, boosting ridership and bringing walkable, reliable transit into the heart of the 494 corridor.
Lake Street Station
Finally, the 2021 Award for Most Improved Freeway Underpass goes to the Lake Street Orange Line station. Until recently, this was one of the least pleasant sidewalks in all of Hennepin County. Today, after a $20 million investment, it’s a revelation. I would venture to say that the underside of the interstate is as walkable and welcoming as a massive concrete underpass can possibly be.
The transit station will surely boast the most riders along the Orange Line route, and represents the linchpin of the project. It’s also a long overdue public space improvement for a neglected part of Minneapolis. Running interstate freeways through the hearts of walkable cities was never a good idea, but investments like this are one way to redress historical blight caused by 1960s interstate planners.
Today, the improved sidewalks and station environment connect the diverse Lake Street communities, long been divided by the massive interstate. At the corner of Lake and 2nd Avenue, the cornice of the former Roundup Beer Hall building still boasts its Ilhan Omar campaign sign: “Send her back… to Congress!” It makes for a stark contrast to the home-made Trump sign erected on a snowy freeway margin back in Burnsville.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]The underside of the interstate is as walkable and welcoming as a massive concrete underpass can possibly be.[/image_caption]
A new standard for suburban transit
Thanks to their land use fundamentals, the bar for suburban transit projects is quite low. But with design details that combine speed and walkable density, the Orange Line sets a new standard for similar local projects. It has enough transit-oriented development potential to easily triple the ridership of other metro BRTs like the Cedar Avenue Red Line or the planned Gold Line. With its reasonable price tag — $150 million — and much needed improvements to long-neglected spots like Lake Street, the project has already improved people’s lives.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke[/image_credit][image_caption]Running interstate freeways through the hearts of walkable cities was never a good idea, but investments like this one way to redress the historical blight caused by 1960s interstate planners.[/image_caption]
Metro Transit’s ridership projections, carefully scrutinized during the funding process, predict 10,000 daily riders by 2040. If not for the COVID pandemic, which has upended transportation patterns, I’d say that this project should easily meet that goal. Of course, how COVID plays out remains a big question mark. But for a service running down a freeway median into Dakota County, this line looks great. When the pandemic permits, it’ll be a key amenity and transportation choice for thousands of folks throughout the south Metro.
It’s always a pleasure to read Bill Lindeke’s contributions. I don’t say that just because I often agree with him. It’s that he uses solid facts, research and thinking. Interesting and refreshing. Thank you, Bill!
As a frequent critic of the planning of metropolitan transit projects, I’m pleased to say that this one looks pretty good so far. And it didn’t cost taxpayers an arm and a leg.
Please note, it appears that this one is an outlier; kowtowing to real estate interests and developers does not appear to have played a decisive role in planning. In other words, it might actually satisfy some transit needs of the public.
Burnsville’s Heart of the City is a great template for suburbs trying to retrofit a downtown into their cities that developed under much different circumstances. One of the “hot” features Burnsville was organized around was ensuring residents had access to strip malls. Yes, at one point, strip malls were considered awesome.
I rode the 535 bus from Knox Park & Ride for over six years. The Orange Line is not one bit better for folks leaving from Bloomington than the original. In fact, it is worse for those who rode the 597 express and never stopped at Knox, 76th, or Lake Street but now must do that. As long as buses have to share the HOV lanes with those willing to pay for the privilege, they will never travel at freeway speeds when the weather is poor or whenever traffic is heavy. Buses will be forced to creep along at the going speed which approaches 15-25 mph in worst cases. All that and now riders stop at Lake Street, something that they did not do on any bus before 9:00 a.m.
This is great for folks traveling to Lake Street before 9:00 a.m. and for others who don’t care how long it actually takes to get downtown. Not to mention, if you have never waited for a late bus in the winter in an open-sided ‘shelter’ facing into the east wind, snow, and rain, you can’t call yourself a real Minnesotan. That experience is still available since all of the building project made the lean-tos prettier but not more weatherproof.
One way it’s far superior to the 535 is its frequency and all-day / weekend service. That kind of change will be all the more important with the move to more flexible work schedules.