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News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Thursday March 28th 2024

‘Transit’ Archives

Metro Transit: Lake Street and I-35W Station Opens

By JOHN CHARLES WILSON It’s finally happening! The new bus station in the middle of I-35W at Lake Street is opening Monday, 18 October 2021. (This means it’s already open by the time this issue is published. Such is the lag time inherent in a monthly newspaper.) As I’m sure everyone who’s read my column knows, it’s for the new Orange Line to Burnsville, which begins 4 December. In the meantime, Metro Transit Routes 535, 553, 578, 597, and Southwest Transit Routes 600 and 695 will be using it, joined by various MVTA express routes as of 20 November. Local Metro Transit Routes 21 and 27 will provide connections on Lake Street, just below the station. Speaking of Lake Street, planning for the B Line, a Bus Rapid Transit line to open on Lake Street in 2024, is chugging right along. Presently, Route 21 is the slowest and second busiest route in the whole Metro Transit bus system. Anyone who’s had to ride a 21 during a rush-hour traffic jam knows it’s not a good [...]

Comparing Metro Transit to Des Moines DART

METRO TRANSIT By JOHN CHARLES WILSON Unfortunately, this is a slow month for local transit news. However, since a friend of mine just moved to Des Moines. Iowa, I thought this would be a good time to compare our Metro Transit with Des Moines DART. Des Moines is a fairly small city; their metro area is comparable to Saint Paul without Minneapolis and with a lot less suburbs. Like Saint Paul, it is the state capital and home to their state fair. Their downtown is slightly more lively than Saint Paul”™s. However, it is a conservative city in a conservative state, and that affects both funding for and public attitudes about transit. Their local transit system is called DART, short for Des Moines Area Regional Transit. They have only regular buses, no light rail or bus rapid transit. There just isn”™t enough traffic at this time to justify either. There are 19 local routes, all except four converging on the downtown Central Station. (Having an enclosed [...]

Transit News: Going Too Slow

by John Charles Wilson (Note: Some concepts in this month”™s column are borrowed from a streets.mn article titled “Metro Transit Service: Chicken or Egg”, posted 6 August 2021 by Andy Lewis, even though the opinions I will state are my own.) Metro Transit is going too slow. By that, I don”™t mean the buses and trains are literally going too slow, or running too infrequently. (In some parts of the country, “fast” and “slow” are used colloquially to refer to frequency of transit service.) What I mean is, Metro Transit is going too slow at responding to changing conditions regarding changing transit needs as pandemic conditions keep changing. We had light at the end of the tunnel, then it got extinguished by the Delta variant. With the even more threatening Lambda variant on the international scene, we may be in for another round of Stay-At-Home Orders. Or we may not, we just don”™t know. Metro Transit [...]

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