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Improving our transit service

During its early years, the Council supported the Metropolitan Transit Commission’s move to take over and improve the region’s privately-owned bus system. In 1970, at the time Twin City Lines was acquired, 480 of the company’s 635 buses were 15 years of age or older. Eighty-six of the buses were so old that they were banned from the streets of Minneapolis.

After acquiring the company, the MTC embarked on an ambitious five-year, $20 million transit improvement program that included the purchase of 465 air-conditioned buses, the installation of 135 bus shelters and new bus stop signs, and the establishment of a 24-hour bus information center.

At the same time, however, the Council blocked the MTC’s early efforts to develop a 37-mile heavy rail transit system such as those serving San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Instead, the Council developed its own plan for enhanced bus service. The two agencies battled in the Legislature over the issue through much of the 1970s and neither plan was ever implemented.

John Boland, who served as Council chair during much of that period, says that – in hindsight – the MTC may have had “more vision of what was coming.” At the time, Boland says, studies indicated that too few metro area commuters would use rail transit to justify the enormous cost. “Our planners and our Council members and a lot of legislators said our only realistic option was the bus.”

In the early 1980s – at the direction of the Legislature – the Council studied the possible development of light rail transit in the metropolitan area and concluded that LRT could be feasible in several heavily traveled corridors. However, such proposals stalled until the late 1990s, when the Legislature approved funding to help build the 11-mile Hiawatha line linking downtown Minneapolis, International Airport and the Mall of America.

The Hiawatha line proved to be a stunning success. In its first full year of operation, the line provided 7.9 million rides, exceeding pre-construction estimates by 58 percent. The LRT line also has spurred redevelopment along the corridor, with 7,700 new housing units built since 2000 and another 8,000 on the drawing boards.

In 2006, the Met Council approved plans for a second LRT line in the Central Corridor between downtown St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis. The 11-mile line along University and Washington Avenues would provide improved access to employment, educational and economic opportunities all along the corridor, including the University of Minnesota, the Midway area and the state Capitol complex.

“This new line has the potential to be even more successful than our Hiawatha LRT line,” says Peter Bell, the current Council chair. “We project that the Central Corridor line will attract 38,000 riders per weekday by 2020 and more than 43,000 riders by 2030. It is part of our long-range plan to improve mobility, build transit ridership and slow the growth in traffic congestion.”