Move over light rail. A different public transit mode is in the spotlight at the state Capitol: bus rapid transit.
In coming days, state lawmakers and Gov. Tim Walz could decide the future of several proposed bus rapid transit lines in the Twin Cities metro. Better known as BRT, the service attempts to provide a light-rail-like rider experience with enhanced stations, expedited ticket purchasing and boarding, increased frequency and limited stops to provide faster trips.
Several BRT projects are currently on regional leaders’ funding wishlist, but much of what happens with those priorities will depend on what happens at the Legislature. The DFL-controlled House and the GOP-controlled Senate have proposed two vastly different spending plans for transportation in the next two years. The Senate’s transportation funding proposal sets aside no new money for public transit, for instance, while the House and Walz have proposed a plan that would help fund 10 new bus rapid transit lines over the next decade.
Members of the Senate and House are currently meeting in conference committees to work out compromises before the end of the legislative session on May 20.
Most immediately, regional leaders want new funding streams for three new arterial BRT routes: the D line, which would run along the transit agency’s busiest bus corridor, Route 5, between Brooklyn Center and Bloomington; the E line, which would run along Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis; and the B line, which would go along the transit agency’s second busiest line, Route 21, which runs from Minneapolis to St. Paul along Lake Street and Marshall Avenue.
“We don’t have remaining funding to move into construction,” on the D, E and B lines, “and all other BRT lines we’ve discussed with local leaders and are part of the governor’s vision,” said Kate Brickman, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Council, which oversees transportation projects. “We will not be able to build out that system without new funding.”
Vastly different plans
The new BRT lines would join two existing BRT lines in the Twin Cities metro: the three-year-old A Line, which runs between south Minneapolis and the Rosedale Center and the yet-to-open C Line, which is set to begin service between the Brooklyn Center Transit Center and downtown Minneapolis in June.
Supporters say the lines are the first phase in plans for an improved bus network that could ease parking and traffic congestion. But some critics point to declining ridership numbers — figures have show slight decreases in passengers for most transit each year since 2015 — for existing bus service, saying the risk is too high to spend tens of millions of dollars on routes that may end up serving fewer passengers than the current lines.
[image_caption]State Sen. Scott Newman[/image_caption]
Citing the state’s projected $1 billion budget surplus, Republicans at the Capitol don’t think the state should raise gas taxes or add higher fees in order to fund the state’s transportation needs, however. The GOP’s proposal would spend about $6.6 billion over the two-year budget window — $450 million of which would be dedicated to roads and bridge projects. The bill would continue using money from the state’s general fund for transportation needs, and provide no new money for metro transit.
“Our disagreement lies as to the source of the money,” Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, said in a news release about the different transportation omnibus bills. Newman and Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, led a conference committee on the proposals this week, including on Wednesday, when they compared line-by-line differences in their bills and listened to testimonies from the public.
‘Tremendous pressure’ due to increased cost of Metro Mobility
At that meeting, Met Council Chair Nora Slawik advocated for a final bill that would create a new stream of revenue so public transit in the metro can grow, a position echoed by other transit advocates.
“In the region, we’re seeing businesses move around so they can be on transit … that’s not healthy for the region,” said Will Schroeer, executive director of East Metro Strong, a group of businesses and city and county governments from the Twin Cities eastern suburbs that advocates for more transit options. “We’re also losing talent to regions outside of the region that have much better transit than we do.”
The motor-vehicle sales tax — a 6.5 percent tax for all new and used vehicles in Minnesota — is currently the main source of revenue for the state’s contribution to metro bus service. But the Met Council says that system is “volatile” and unsustainable; forecasts show that, long-term, the tax will “not provide enough to even preserve and maintain current service levels,” according to Slawik.
Based on February projections for the motor-vehicle sales tax, metro-area bus service is facing a 10-year, $200 million deficit. That’s why the Met Council wants the new metro-specific, sales tax that’s currently part of both the governor’s and House’s transportation proposals.
[image_credit]Met Council[/image_credit][image_caption]Met Council Chair Nora Slawik[/image_caption]
Another factor affecting bus funding: Minnesota law requires the state to pay 50 percent of light rail costs through the Met Council. That means under Minnesota’s current funding structure, every budget cycle the council sets aside money for Metro Mobility first and then light rail. Whatever dollars are left go to to the bus system, according to the Met Council and Metro Transit.
“With current Metro Mobility demand on a path to consume nearly our entire base appropriation by (fiscal year) 2021, no general fund dollars will be left for these other transit services,” Slawik explained in a letter to Hornstein and Newman. “Expanding Metro Mobility without an appropriation (in its own budget line) only accelerates the consumption of our general fund appropriation. When this inevitably happens, light rail and commuter rail operations will be forced onto motor vehicles sales tax (MVST). Since light rail operations are a statutory requirement, those operations will be given priority and metropolitan area bus … will suffer and exacerbate the structural deficit.”
Before the transportation bill conference committee on Wednesday, she put it a little more succinctly: “Metro Mobility puts tremendous pressure on our bus system,” she said in expressing support for the House and governor’s plans, which would set aside more than $150 million for the service in 2020-21.
Dreams of a St. Paul extension
With a separate budget line for Metro Mobility and a new sales tax, the House’s and governor’s plans would spend about $180 million on bus and train transit in the metro over the next two years.
That money would help cover the construction of stations and equipment for the proposed B line, for example, which Metro Transit planners and local officials tout as being a critical piece in their vision for a more-connected public transportation network.
Running east-west between Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood and St. Paul, the route would intersect with the future West Lake Station for Southwest LRT. Construction could start as soon as 2022 if the legislative funding is approved, according to Adam Smith, Metro Transit’s senior planner working on the B Line.
Inside EcoLab headquarters in downtown St. Paul this week, a crowd of business leaders and local elected officials — including members of the City Council and Mayor Melvin Carter — gathered to explain the economic benefits of the proposed line. It would help the city retain and attract new talent, they said, and help ease traffic congestion and parking conditions.
“Transit is sort of like having the first fax machine,” Carter joked. “If you have one of them, it’s cool to show your visitors. But it gets a whole lot more useful as you build out the network.”
After the gathering, members of the crowd packed into a minibus for a tour of an area officials want to eventually be served by the B line, a St. Paul extension that would include stops in Union Park, Summit-University and downtown. (The current alignment under Metro Transit’s plan stays along the current Route 21, but only goes as far east as Snelling Avenue in Merriam Park.)
Metro Transit is weighing the pros and cons of a longer route now, Smith said: “Not just from our capital construction cost perspective, but also sort of our long-term operating costs, a longer project … would add to the project costs. …That’s one of the reasons I think this is being raised — certainly when it comes to some of the discussions that are going on in the Legislature right now.”
On the tour, city planners pointed out the many new multi-family housing developments, commercial centers, and schools — including Central High School, the University of St. Thomas and Concordia University — near the possible extension.
Currently, the Met Council has set aside a pool of local and federal money to cover less than half of the project’s $54 million price tag, not including the possible downtown link.
Planning and preliminary analysis of the line are complete, and Metro Transit is gearing up to write a formal draft plan. But without a new funding mechanism from the state and other proposed changes, Metro Transit “will not be able to maintain the regular-route bus system we have today, and we will not be able to expand BRT service,” Met Council spokesperson Brickman said in an email: “We won’t be able to advance those projects at all without new funding.”
It would have been helpful for the Met Council and others to have focused first on areas where riders have few alternatives for transit and where there is density such as going from north Minneapolis to Brooklyn Park or to Maple Grove line and to downtown and along the old 21A instead of the LRT around Isles to Eden Prairie. Again it seems that using tax money wisely and for the most was thrown out the window or took a back seat. Why do they leave out the very people who rely heavily on mass transit.
LRT/BRT and inner city bus lines have different functions. We HAVE bus lines running through densely populated urban/suburban areas, this is a fact that SWLRT critics consistently ignore.
Uptown residents HAVE transit, they don’t need LRT. We can improve THAT transit if we want, for instance the Nicollet street car will be an improvement.
The function of SWLRT is to move people in and out of the city, not move them around within the city. We built the inner city sections of the Green and Blue lines first for a variety of reasons, but don’t assume that those lines were supposed to just be inner city bus lines on rails… they’re part of a larger LRT system.
As for ridership, you’ll see it increase again now that gas prices are rising, and people went out and bought gas hog SUVs again after the Great Recession.
That’s a very 1980s-1990s transit mentality, to serve drive-up transit from far-flung transit-hostile suburbs at the expense of walk-up transit in existing transit-friendly neighborhoods. It’s chasing after transit-oriented development at the expense of development-oriented transit. It’s planning for transit to compete with car commutes from car-scale land uses rather than planning transit to complete a car-unnecessary land use.
Let me be clear: SWLRT has broken ground, and people who live in the Kenilworth corridor, a former rail yard, are likely using SWLRT routing alternatives as the basis for a bad-faith argument. We need to adapt to SWLRT plans, such as significantly upzoning the 21st St station for hundreds or thousands of new residential dwelling units.
But we also need to make sure future transit investments go where people already are and where transit is already well beyond capacity. That’s exactly what Arterial BRT does, and it provides extremely high return at low cost.
“That’s a very 1980s-1990s transit mentality, to serve drive-up transit from far-flung transit-hostile suburbs at the expense of walk-up transit in existing transit-friendly neighborhoods.”
Again with the urban chauvinism. The majority of the metro population and many of it’s employers are actually located in “far flung” suburbs. Of the 3.6 million people living in the Metro area only 700,000 (less than a 3rd) live in MPLS and St. Paul. We’re not chasing a hostile population with LR, we delivering much demanded service to it.
And it’s not the suburbs who are “hostile” to transit and LR, MPLS is the ONLY city that is not contributing a single dime to the LR projects serving it. Although I’m not sure off hand how much money St. Paul chipped in. Furthermore, the existing city transit systems are heavily subsidized by the surrounding suburbs, fare recovery doesn’t come close to covering those costs. I afraid I’m not the one with the antiquated mentality here.
What does the B line do that the current 21 route doesn’t? Any increase in speed is just the result of reducing the number of stops, which could easily be done with existing buses that run on an Express, limited stop schedule. That doesn’t take a lot of money.
That’s what the fundamental issue is. Are we trying to solve real problems economically, or are we just throwing money out the window on fancy new projects that a bunch of planners, who don’t actually ride on buses, dream up?
Limiting the number of stops is not the only reason why BRT is faster than the current bus service. Fares are paid before boarding. There are also designated doors for boarding and exiting.
I ride the 21 sometimes, I would ride the bus more often if the trip was quicker and it wasn’t standing room only not matter what the time of day.
You can also insist that everyone exits from the back on a regular bus. So exactly how much time is saved by people paying before they get on the bus? Is that worth spending $xxxM? What’s the subsidy per rider?
I ride the 21 regularly. Stopping at every other block would make a big difference. So would a limited stop bus. Check out the 54 line. That works great, yet they want to add a BRT line there, which won’t make any difference and cost millions.
Anyone who claims Arterial BRT “doesn’t make any difference” needs to take a ride on the A Line and compare it to the old 84.
No writer at Minnpost should ever mention the Republican reference to the “surplus” without pointing out that this “surplus” does not in fact exist, it’s a artifact of calculating inflation for revenue but not for expenses. It’s one of Pawlenty’s gimmicks designed to obscure deficits.
We could forego State funding and make improvements with metro money, like we did the SWLRT. But if we keep going down that road we need to start subtracting that expense dollar for dollar from any rural infrastructure we also paying for. This Republican plan to cram Somalia down everyone’s throats should only apply to those who vote for them. Presumably rural Minnesotans are perfectly content with their current situation so this shouldn’t be a problem for them right?