A solution to affordable housing lies in creative busing

On March 16, the Star Tribune reported on "fury" at a standing-room-only meeting in the small city of Carver ("Met Council's housing plan draws ill will"). The topic was a proposed 68-unit housing project to conform to the council's affordable-housing plan. But the underlying problem is broader and deeper.

Some argue that the decision taken decades ago to put affordable housing in core cities was a mistake. But we need to be realistic about what we can do now, how long it would take, and — crucially — how affordable housing and transit are related.

To that last point, let me be blunt: If low-income people are "put" (stuck?) in small colonies in the suburbs — and that's what the Metropolitan Council's plan really amounts to — how are they supposed to get around? How will they visit their friends and extended family in the geographic communities they moved from?

To achieve equity and justice, we can and must survey all our options today. But, frankly, we also must diffuse widespread anger about what many see as the Met Council's heavy-handed, half-baked approach.

Fortunately, there is something we can do immediately to achieve a kind of instant transit-to-work equity. This proposed improvement also will establish needed transit links for future low-income residents of suburban affordable housing.

Here are some relevant facts:

About 40 percent of workers in downtown Minneapolis commute using transit. Every weekday morning, 711 buses roll down Marquette or 2nd avenues, bringing in tens of thousands of suburban express commuters. This does not include Minneapolis day-and-evening city routes.

However, only 90 of those 711 incoming buses are on a reverse-commute route. The other 621 buses often deadhead back for another run.

To be conservative, let's start by assuming that half of the disparity between incoming buses and outgoing buses — about 300 bus runs — could and should be used for more reverse commuting.

But let's not think "routes" — let's think in terms of trips to work. Instead of deadheading, each trip should have its own published, online schedule — for one point-to-point bus run at freeway speed — to one of 300 top employment locations throughout the Twin Cities.

Here's where the instant transit-to-work equity part comes in: Minneapolis neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are within a 20-minute morning city street bus run to link up with these proposed trip-to-work buses. All 300 of these job destinations would be accessible.

In the afternoons, we'd just run it all backward.

Many enhancements merit study. Each bus could stop twice (oh, all right, a few times), resulting in two morning and two afternoon runs to the 300 (or more) point-to-point jobs destinations. We could add a third stop on the Interstate 494-694 beltway — and a beltway loop route — so people could short-circuit the hub-and-spoke system.

The difference between commuter buses and reverse-commute runs is a disparity in transit access to jobs. Of course, we don't want to take away transit from suburban commuters. But, as a matter of justice, we can and should provide transit-to-work equity — the same number of commuting and reverse-commuting trips. For efficiency, some trips could be with Metro Mobility buses, vans or even taxis. (Uber? Humm.)

In this century, we can and should make hub-and-spoke commuting — and transit-to-work equity — a two-way street.