Measuring LRT success and the future it could bring. Josh Kroll Minneapolis
http://www.startribune.com/stories/368/5118846.html Extended LRT route may be ride into future Laurie Blake Star Tribune Published December 5, 2004 Now that the Hiawatha light-rail line has been extended to Bloomington, transit faces a big test in the south metro area. Come Monday morning, Richfield, Bloomington, Edina and south Minneapolis commuters will have light-rail trains, new bus routes and hundreds of new park-and-ride spaces waiting for them. Will they get off the crowded freeways and get on board? The busy area is fertile testing ground. It has the highest transit usage in the metro area, generating more than half of all rides on Metro Transit buses and claiming the single most popular bus commuter route: Interstate Hwy. 35W. It also has some of the most clogged roads in the state. If the new options turn drivers into train or bus riders, that will help justify the $715 million spent on the state's first light-rail line and the $14 million in federal grants for the experimental bus service along Interstate Hwys. 35W and 494. "I think certainly there is pressure for Metro Transit to perform," said Rep. Dan Larson, DFL-Bloomington, who represents much of the area served by the new transit. "We always have to hold our systems accountable. ... Performance in this case means increasing ridership." When traffic congestion tops the list of metro residents' concerns about quality of life and state funding for bus service has been cut three years in a row, many will be watching to see how this big rollout of transit pays off. Success on the south side could help make the case for other projects, including the proposed Northstar commuter line between downtown Minneapolis and Big Lake. "As somebody who has been advocating for transit for close to 30 years in this region, I certainly hope that these services that we are putting out on the street are going to work well," said Natalio Diaz, Metropolitan Council's director of transportation planning. With the new bus service, Metro Transit is shooting for a 10 percent increase in ridership, said Arlene McCarthy, director of service development. On light rail, the weekday ridership goal is 19,300 by late 2005. To date, the line has far exceeded the rider goals set before construction. And commuter numbers on the rail line are climbing. Metro Transit reports that ridership during the morning rush hour rose 31 percent from July through October when service was running only between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling. Now that riders can take rail to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America with bus connections to places of employment along the Bloomington strip, the expectation is that commuting numbers will surge. One measure of commuter eagerness for the service will be the car count in the 600-space park-and-ride lot at the 28th Avenue station in Bloomington. Officials say this lot could attract commuters not only from Bloomington but also Eagan, Apple Valley and other Dakota County suburbs. If the lot fills with cars in the morning -- officials expect that will happen early next year -- it will signal a shift from roads to rail. The new bus service also will have an indicator of demand: the 500 parking spaces Best Buy has opened to commuters at its Penn Av. S. and Interstate Hwy. 494 campus in Richfield. Those spots are available to drivers willing to use the new bus routes. New service The new commuter offerings also include 400 more park-and-ride spots at the Fort Snelling station and, early next year, 350 paid spots at the Humphrey Terminal station at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. South-metro commuters also are getting all-day, high-speed bus service on I-35W to downtown Minneapolis. Between Minneapolis and Richfield the buses will run every 15 minutes, and every 30 minutes to Bloomington. More than 400 other park-and-ride spaces also have been added at various locations off I-494 and I-35W for bus riders. Rush-hour bus service every 20 minutes has been added on routes parallel to I-494 through Bloomington and Richfield to the Mall of America transit station, where there are rail and bus links. Commuter bus service now is offered from downtown Minneapolis and Eden Prairie transit stations to key locations along the strip, including Best Buy and Normandale Lake Office Park. "It's a giant leap in available bus service," said David Van Hattum, executive director of 494 Commuter Services, which encourages employers along I-494 to promote transit among their employees. Before this, "we have never had an opportunity for the bus to be a time-competitive option; now we have a real opportunity to increase bus ridership," he said. David Dabson, general manager of Normandale Lake Office Park at I-494 and Hwy. 100 in Bloomington, said he is excited about using the new service to market a major suburban office park. "We do believe having regularly scheduled transit service is a competitive advantage for the property as it allows our current and prospective tenants to recruit employees from throughout the Twin Cities that may depend on public transportation," Dabson said. The challenge In a metro area where legislators disagree on the value of transit spending and where state money is tight, the performance of the south metro rail and bus service has implications for transit across the Twin Cities. Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell, who initially questioned whether the rail investment was warranted, said he thinks the rail line has already proved that the money was well spent. He expects ridership to increase. "Fair-minded critics of the Hiawatha line have to admit that it has exceeded what their expectations and projections were," Bell said. "I was told this was the train to nowhere and that no one would ride it. Clearly it's not that." Rep. Kathy Tingelstad, R-Andover, said Hiawatha's high ridership will help sell legislators on the proposed Northstar commuter rail line. "I think that's a preview of how well the commuter rail ridership will look once that gets going." Verne Johnson, former executive director of the Citizens League and now leader of the public policy advocacy group Civic Caucus, said the rail line poses one key question: Will it relieve traffic congestion soon? "The test of any new transit is a test of congestion relief" -- the thing people most want, Johnson said. "People are getting very frustrated." Buses should relieve suburb-to-suburb congestion using carefully located park-and-ride lots to entice people out of their cars before congestion points, Johnson said. Transit advocate John DeWitt said traffic relief is not a measure of transit. He said that "the minute you take one person off the road and put them on transit, some other [driver] takes their place. The roads are always going to be congested and nothing is going to relieve that." The test of transit is what percentage of rush-hour trips the buses and trains attract, DeWitt said. Such a measure was used on the Interstate Hwy. 394 bus-carpool lanes, and DeWitt has seen it used on rail lines in other cities. "If 20 to 25 percent of the travel in the corridor were on transit it would be an outstanding success," he said. Laurie Blake is at [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Metropolitan Issues Forum http://www.e-democracy.org/tcmetro Rules: Sign posts with real name. You may not post more than twice a day.
