Secrets of the City

I bet if they asked the bus drivers they may get some good cost saving ideas.

I bet if they asked the passengers they would get some good cost savings ideas.

Is the light rail is still running at a 8-10 million deficit each year? Anyone have good numbers on this?

For many years, the vehicle sales tax worked just fine as a funding source.

The collapse in auto sales came quickly, and nationwide — even Toyota will loose money this year, a first in the company history.

Not only are people not buying new vehicles, they are selling off their second or third “junkers” they used to drive. Take this comment, from my recent Minneapolis Metblogs post on a related subject:

“After selling my trusty old ‘91 Saturn in lieu of a Metropass, I am on track to save about $2200 a year (well, back when gas was $4.00).

It adds about 20-30 minutes to my total daily commute (given walking+waiting), but on mornings when it’s -12F, I’m glad I don’t have to start a vehicle and drive on the icy roads.”

More people than ever ride the bus and LRT — now we need to find a “resession-proof” funding source, if possible.

And a way to actually collect fares for the light rail. a turnstyle device, perhaps?

Baker- what are you talking about? Ever ride the train when they are checking that people paid? I’ve only seen a couple people ever cited for not paying out of hundreds. Much better precentage than the bus for people paying their fare.

I had the same thought, baker. It works in DC, but that system/station was designed from the start that way.

Still…

On a related note, the Met Council just got a new member to help solve this mess.

KC, I have ridden the LRt several times, probably 10-15 times, and never been checked for a fare. And quite a few of those are on game day, when they should be checking fares for sure.
Regardless, if you expect public tranist to pay for itself, there needs to be a concrete method for getting $ from riders.

The sins of our fathers are to blame. The Twincities had an efficient, reliable mass transit. But with a pack of notorious mobsters, GM helped purchase and scrap the street railways serving Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Now we are paying the price. The reason the price hike on buses is not working is not because people are not willing or cannot afford to pay. It it is because the buses SUCK! Next time you get on the bus, grab all of the time tables hanging from the bar near the driver and throw them away! They mean nothing. The buses do not even remotely run on time.

And the metro transit website is running on 10 year old technology. I should be able to find out if a bus has passed my stop or not by using my mobile. I should be able to receive a text message when a bus is x number of blocks away. These buses have GPS in them, let’s use them!

Most bus routes are way to long and slow. Do we really need to stop at every block? I think every other block would be just fine. I think we should let the buses fail and invest money in above ground and below ground trains. The soil below the cities is sand stone! You could tunnel between the two through the UofM with a garden hose! Let’s build this city into a real metropolitan! I wish I could walk down a story or two down town and arrive in Uptown, or dinky town or St. Paul!

Our twincities are compact enough that we could have a car-less culture if we really wanted it!

“The buses do not even remotely run on time.”

I ride the bus a lot and my buses are usually on time. I rode four buses today and all were on time.

“Most bus routes are way to long and slow.”
What do you mean too long? Slow, yes. Too long I don’t get.

“I should be able to find out if a bus has passed my stop or not by using my mobile.”

You can. It is called Nextrip. It has been up and running for at least 6 months.

baker I’m sure they don’t check on game days because it would be near impossible with all those people on the train.

and why do you think people don’t pay? They do. Like I said, they pay more often on the train than on the bus. And the bus has “a concrete method for getting $ from riders.”

The only thing I agree with in anon’s screed is the every block thing. Especially when I take the 17…grr…

Anonymous, even Mr. Lungs doesn’t want to go completely carless.

A less polluting ride would be a great next step, along with a better an more robust mass transit system.

Yes, I know the history, but that’s all behind us now. Learn from the past, act in the present, plan for the future.

I agree too alie. Most places every other block would be fine.

The first snow storm a few weeks ago I checked Nextrip. It said my next bus was going to be there in 9 minutes and was starting at the Lemington Ramp. I waited about 5 min walked out and then proceeded to wait for 45 minutes. My friend caught the bus at the ramp and said the driver was screwing around with the ramp and it got stuck for like 25 minutes.

They do need to get rid of a bunch of stops. The bus does not need to stop at every intersection. It takes me a minimum of 35 minutes to go the 5 miles to my house.

The last snow storm it was closer to 1:40 minutes, of which over an hour was getting from 10th and Nicollet across the bridge into NE.

“Most bus routes are way to long”

Long routes are generally a good thing. It can be pretty convenient to get from one end of town to the other without having to make multiple transfers.

If you don’t have enough buses to run multiple trips along the route at reasonable intervals, that’s a different story, and you may need to shorten routes.

Hey, if you asked riders, we’d just like to stop standing every rush hour and have someplace to park our car. Those don’t always happen, especially when the U is in session.

All I’m saying KC, is that you’d think that since the LRT is running in the red, that extra measures to insure full revenue from each and every rider would be a priority.

JPODS!!!

Pro-tip: on the LRT, if you have a Go-To card sometimes the transit cop won’t even bother to scan it and check to see if you paid when they are checking everyone for fares.

and why do you think people don’t pay? They do.

@baker
So basically you want to spend a few million bucks to outfit every station with “turnstyles” to generate a extra few hundred thousand bucks in revenues every year. And guess what – unless you place a person at every “turnstyle” people will still jump them (interestingly I was in DC last week – observed this twice on the metro). You put in the most cost effective strategy to maximize revenues.

Also – LRT is ALWAYS going to run in the red. Its a subsidize service. Same as your average road.

@anonymous

Having ridden buses almost on a daily basis in the Twin Cities for the last five years – its extremely rare when they don’t show up on time. Always within a few minutes of the schedule. So I don’t understand the hate generated at the system for late buses. All I am taking from your comments is that you can’t tell time or read a schedule.

KC, I have ridden the LRt several times, probably 10-15 times,

OHMYGOD 15 TIMES!?!  That’s so many!

And the bus service is in danger of collapsing because it operates at a loss and serves a tiny fraction of the public.

Ummm…I think that’s fare increase.

I split my time between the Twin Cities and another city and use public transit as primary transport in both locations. Met Transit does a very good job given the sprawl and decentralised nature of the Twin Cities. If we were all communting to an urban core they could design a system suitable a greater percentage of the population. But too many people live in one suburb and work in another suburb. It’s just too much area and too many commuting permutations to effectvely cover.

As for funding, it’s a sad fact there is no way to keep prices low enough to both fully fund the system and keep ridership at sufficient levels for said funding. But mass transit is a public good like roads or police. No one says “I don’t drive down 99% of the roads in the US so I shouldn’t pay for them” or “I don’t break laws so I shouldn’t pay for cops”. Mass transit relieves strains on said roads by decreasing wear and tear and increasing travel times for all travellers. It provides low income people access to work – making them good good citizens and good consumers (difference?).

Coincidentally, my local newspaper just had a report on the reasons people do not use readily available mass transit. The number one barrier cited by non-users: services were not frequent enough. You can read it here at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/tram-study-rides-on-a-simpler-truth-20081220-72pm.html

and because all the transportation money is pissed away on roads, which bring in even less of the cost of maintaining and expanding them.

oops that was to kevin’s last comment.

@baker So basically you want to spend a few million bucks to outfit every station with “turnstyles” to generate a extra few hundred thousand bucks in revenues every year.

I’d love to see your figures.

@kwatt
I own a car, live in South Mpls and work in a suburb. So I don’t hop the train that often.

Also – LRT is ALWAYS going to run in the red. Its a subsidize service. Same as your average road.

I think it’s something like 10 million in the red per year. For 11 miles of service. A million dollar mile. per year. Different than your average road.

The cost of the 35W bridge was $234 million and it’s 4/10ths of a mile long, so ~$675m per mile.

The LRT cost around $740m to build and is 12 miles long, so ~$60m per mile.

I don’t know of a road that doesn’t run in the red in MN. They don’t plow, inspect, light, resurface, clean, police, etc. themselves.

More than 7,000 new housing units have opened along the 11 mile route of the Hiawatha Line since it opened.

This Nov. article in MinnPost offers some more rationale for light (and comuter) rail.

So what’s the deal with the Saturday service today? I had the choice of either walking a half mile to catch another bus or waiting until after 10:30 am to catch my normal bus downtown. So not only did I pay to ride the bus today (Metro Pass) I get to pay to park downtown.

Isn’t anyone working today? Isn’t this a separation of church and state issue? This is not a national holiday as far as I can tell. Meters are still enforced.

Isn’t anyone working today? Isn’t this a separation of church and state issue? This is not a national holiday as far as I can tell. Meters are still enforced.

Suck it up, Grinch.

I think I ran over an elf on the way in too. Damn I should have stopped I heard the meat on those little guys is super tender.

There’s the Dougie_D we know and love!

Dougie, I filed a complaint yesterday with MetroTransit about using a Saturday schedule today and Friday. My big issue was that there are only two express buses running today (94 and 134) and no limited stops in the city, but all the suburban express buses are running today.

File a complaint, please, so this doesn’t happen next year. I’m just working from home today because of it.

I already put a complaint in on line. I always put them in if the buses run late or have other issues. I realize that these aren’t the drivers fault but usually screwed up scheduling so the complaints help make the system better. One of my good friends from Morris is an engineer for the Metro Transit and that was his advice.

Cougars are everywhere watchout!

Having ridden buses almost on a daily basis in the Twin Cities for the last five years – its extremely rare when they don’t show up on time.

Having ridden the bus since October on almost a daily basis – it’s rare when my bus into downtown isn’t on time. 

On the way out of downtown is another story, %50 percent of the time the bus is either late or early.  I can’t wait untill it warms up so I can just walk home.

Nextrip is a cool idea, but I find it to be somewhat inaccurate much of the time and it’s worthless to me in the morning since my stop is many blocks in between the the bus schedule’s officially listed stops.

It would be cool to have a real-time view of where the buses are currently located using google maps on my iPhone. Then maybe I would know if I should continue to wait downtown for a bus that may have already passed.

I agree with the other comments about stopping every block. This is a huge waste of time downtown and in the grid neighborhoods of Minneapolis.

Well there will be some relief for the buses on Nicollet. Once Marquette and 2nd are done they will be moving all non-local buses off Nicollet. They will also only use the Hybrid buses on Nic.

When is that disaster of a two way Hennepin supposed to happen?

I heard two way 2nd ave, 1st ave and Hennepin all without dedicated bus lanes and pedestrians only on Nicollet! This will all create an even more bus congestion downtown.

No the local buses will remain on Nicollet. So the 10, 11, 17, 18, 25 will remain on Nicollet Mall.

Here is the DT Action plan.

A big misconception is that buses are early. Buses are very, very rarely early. They are required to stop at their time points (places listed on the schedule) and wait until it is the right time to go. They may be ahead of schedule getting to that point, but they have to wait. All points in between do not have a specific time they are to be there. That’s why MetroTransit says to get to your stop at least 5 minutes early.

If your bus is “early” it is probably just the one before it very late.

That reminds me of a trip to New York City several years ago. It seems that the 8:30 bus to the airport leaves between 8:10 and 8:15. Arriving at 8:20 was too late. Thankfully, the 9:10 bus left at 8:40 so I didn’t miss my flight…

This  article in the DT Journal explains the Hennepin/1st Ave changes nicely.  Looks like it has been moved up to 2009, and that 1st Ave will be the preferred route for bikers.

What really burns me up is when the bus is so full by the time it gets to your stop that it passes you by, leaving you stranded. This happens frequently with the express routes from the U of M, where I work, during a snow storm. You’d think they’d be able to predict it by now and send out larger buses.

@Dougie_D, consider me a fellow grinch. I’m at work today, but had to get a ride here to avoid spending inordinate amounts of time commuting the 4 miles from my house in Uptown to the U.

Well I’m glad I drove because now I can leave anytime I want and I think that will be soon. It’s as quiet as a titmouse here.

I am SO glad to see the new design the street ditches the center bike lanes idea.

This is perfect. It’s so great that they’re going to do something right for a change. Bus lanes in BOTH directions (finally!) and bike lanes at the edges (I like the shared extra-wide lane idea, since that’s how the southbound bike lane and bus lane basically function now anyway).

This is exciting! I’m not thrilled that it will be torn up when the weather is just turning nice (they ARE going to properly resurface it, right?), but that’s A-OK with me if this is the result.

And that diagram is just for Hennepin; the article says the bike lanes on 1st Ave. will be between the curb and the parked cars. That sounds even better.