Build support for Twin Cities bus improvements

Despite high ridership on both the Blue and Green lines, light rail remains controversial in Minnesota. As this campaign season has highlighted, a sharp partisan divide exists on whether to build the proposed Southwest and Bottineau lines.

Buses, on the other hand, build consensus. This much was abundantly clear in dozens of political endorsement interviews the Star Tribune Editorial Board conducted over the past month. On a bipartisan basis, candidates consistently backed the bus system run by Metro Transit, and many from both parties suggested extending it, both with more bus rapid transit (BRT) lines as well as by bolstering local lines.

Now it's time for citizens to weigh in. Beginning next week, five public meetings and one public hearing will preview and provide an opportunity for feedback on Metro Transit's draft Service Improvement Plan. The plan, designed to guide the expansion of local and express service, is a list of 122 improvements to existing routes as well as plans for 11 arterial BRT lines designed to significantly speed up buses in heavily trafficked corridors.

The plan, which would be implemented in phases through 2030, includes expanded service, quicker travel times and more reverse-commute options to better connect with jobs in burgeoning suburbs.

If implemented, the entire Service Improvement Plan would cost an additional $102.3 million annually ($30.9 million would be paid by fares), add 27.5 million more rides and require an additional 156 buses.

The plan has ranked proposed upgrades on several criteria, including ridership efficiency, ensuring social equity, and providing geographic coverage and connectivity.

The bus system projects would have a widespread metropolitan impact. So commuters should have ample motivation to attend one of the six meetings, the first of which will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Hennepin County Central Library in downtown Minneapolis. Far from an abstract, the plan's specificity should help attendees develop informed opinions on the changes before the Metropolitan Council votes on the plan sometime next year.

Metro Transit announced another welcome change last week. A test of new bus signs will begin this December in portions of north Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park. At some stops, the enhanced signage would go well beyond the "Bus Stop" signs and include routes, maps, frequency and instructions to get real-time arrival information. If adopted systemwide, it would be implemented starting in the middle of next year. The upgrade is long overdue. Most existing signage simply indicates a stop, but not a destination or any other necessary information.

The signage project comes on top of the announcement in September of hundreds of new or improved bus shelters throughout the Twin Cities, made possible in part by a $3.26 million Federal Transit Administration grant. Combined with additional federal, state and local funds, about $5.8 million will be available for bus shelters through 2015, compared with a normal annual budget of about $500,000.