Northern suburbs get bus route to downtown

Anticipation is building for a groundbreaking bus service that starts Monday and will link Forest Lake with downtown Minneapolis.

Route 288 will have four weekday morning runs and four afternoon runs. The 55-passenger buses will start in the morning from the new Forest Lake Transit Center.

There also will be a shuttle bus in the morning and one in the afternoon to take passengers from the transit center to the popular 95th Avenue Park-and-Ride in Blaine to catch buses that run earlier in the morning and return later at night.

The new line is the first commuter bus service operating in the Forest Lake area in a decade. Washington County officials say it's an area that needs mass-transit service.

"Right now, there's no bus service, really, north of White Bear Lake," said Mike Rogers, a county transportation planner.

Until now, there hasn't been any funding for the project. But last fall, the U.S. Department of Transportation provided $5 million to help relieve congestion on Interstate 35W caused by the bridge collapse.

Operating Route 288 will cost about $700,000 this year. Riders will pay $2.75 each way during peak hours and $2 during non-peak hours.

"With any service, there's the potential for snags," Rogers said, "but I think it will go pretty smoothly."

In the weeks leading up to the launch, he said, there have been dry runs with the contractor and county officials making sure that all of the temporary barricades have been removed from the transit center.

Next week, Metro Transit staff members will be on board the buses to answer questions from commuters and troubleshoot.

Recent studies by the Rush Line Corridor Task Force, along with a recent survey of license plates at the 95th Avenue Park-and-Ride in Blaine, show that many of the commuters are from Forest Lake and areas north and east of Minneapolis.

Gina Axelsen is one of them. A legal secretary, she lives in Forest Lake and works in the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Minneapolis. Currently, she drives about 15 miles one way to get to the 95th Avenue Park-and-Ride in Blaine so that she can catch an express bus.

She said that since the bridge collapsed on Aug. 1, she's noticed more people using the Blaine park-and-ride lot. There were so many cars that people were parking where there were yellow stripes, she observed.

Starting Monday, Axelsen won't have to drive as far to catch the bus.

"I think it's going to make things easier for a lot of people," she said.

Janet Bresnahan, a commuter from North Branch, said she used to work for the Forest Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, and one of the first questions people would ask the chamber about the area was, "Where can we get a bus?"

Now she works in downtown Minneapolis, also as a legal secretary. She said she's looking forward to not having to drive as far to catch the bus, and also to avoiding having to maneuver through "the split." That's where I-35W and I-35E diverge on the north end of the metro, near Columbus and Forest Lake. "There's a lot of jockeying for position" at the split, she said, adding that "the flow of traffic is like 80 [miles per hour], so you have to know where you're going."