New color, new alignment for planned east-metro rapid bus line

Plans for a rapid bus route connecting downtown St. Paul and Maplewood have been rebranded as the Bronze Line, and engineering is to start next year.

Formerly called the Purple Line, the route is “more than a color change,” said Ramsey County Commissioner Mai Xiong at a kickoff news conference Tuesday at Union Depot. It’s part of the County Board’s mission “for a well-connected county.”

The re-envisioned line will have buses running in dedicated lanes on portions of the 10-mile route and sharing lanes with traffic on others. There will be 22 stations along the line that will run on White Bear Avenue north of Maryland Avenue and along Phalen Boulevard and Jackson Street south of Maryland Avenue.

A new multi-use trail bridge will carry buses over Johnson Parkway at Maryland not far from Lake Phalen. Other amenities include transit signal priority to speed buses along, dedicated left-turn lanes in St. Paul and new pedestrian ramps and traffic signals. Micro on-demand transit would feed into the line.

“It’s a transit line about tenacity and grit,” said Robin Hutcheson, the new chair of the Metropolitan Council, the regional planning body. “It’s a gateway to the entire regional transit network.”

The Purple Line was originally going to be co-located with the Bruce Vento Trail between Maryland and Beam avenues, and buses would have had their own lane.

With the shift over to White Bear Avenue, Bronze Line buses will mingle with traffic on the Maplewood portion of the route and have their own lane on the south end. And a shorter route (10 miles rather than 15 miles) means less land will need to be acquired for stations and other infrastructure, making the project’s expected cost about $375 million, a savings of about $100 million, officials said.

“Good things come to those who wait, and the Bronze Line is a perfect example of that old adage,” said Maplewood Mayor Marylee Abrams. “The new Bronze Line checks all the boxes: better service, less disruption, reduced cost and better connectivity. What we came up with is going to be remarkable.”

Just before the turn of the 21st century, urban planners conceived a plan for a commuter rail line to run from downtown St. Paul to Rush City and continuing north to Hinckley, Minn.

The Rush Line, as it was called, never got much traction, and after years of discussion the focus shifted to putting in a light-rail or rapid-bus line terminating in White Bear Lake. Ultimately, decisionmakers opted for rapid bus and switched the name to the Purple Line.

Now renamed as the Bronze Line, it is not the only new rapid bus line planned for St. Paul and Ramsey County. Work on the new G Line that’s coming to Rice and Robert streets and planning for the H Line that will run from the Sun Ray Shopping Center to downtown Minneapolis is also in progress.

The Bronze Line will enter the design phase next year and could take up to three years, said project manager Craig Lamothe. Construction could start in 2029 or 2030 with service beginning as soon as 2032.