1. MPO Transit Planning Coordination in the Twin Cities
AMPO Training Symposium – May 8, 2019

2. Transit Planning Collaboration
System
Planning
Investment
Planning
Corridor
Planning
Station-Area
Planning
Implementation
Cities and
Counties along
Transitway
Corridors
This slide is meant to illustrate the context for how transit planning progresses in this region and the various agencies involved in leading each step.
The Met Council, as the MPO for the region, has done a substantial amount of system planning but a lot of the system planning for the region’s light rail lines were actually conducted by Counties, sometimes despite the opposition from the Met Council.
System planning leads to investment category planning for a specific subsystem. The details of this level of planning require substantially more transit expertise and thus transit provider staff are involved and, in some cases, lead these efforts.
Corridor planning has generally been a local efforts, led by counties or in some cases cities. But Metro Transit has also taken on a role in corridor planning in a few cases.
Then of course there is station-area planning and implementation, another layer of different agencies doing different things. What this means is that there are a lot of different agencies involved from conception to implementation and this creates challenges in keeping project momentum, finding stable funding, and maintaining a consistent vision for transit among stakeholders and policymakers.
City of Minneapolis
City of Saint Paul
Counties
Counties
Counties

3. A lot of the early light rail system planning was conducted by counties, starting in the 60s and 70s when light rail was becoming all the rage around North America. This is a map that looks like a microfiche spy map of major military battle movements, but it’s actually an early light rail system plan from Hennepin County.
[point out Hiawatha, Southwest, Bottineau, I-35W south…]

4. Here is a map of the system plan that the Metropolitan Council produced in the early 2000s, focused primarily on busway investments and not light rail.
2000
2001

5. It’s interesting how different the map looks just 2 years later and then a fairly substantial overhaul a few more years later. But as you can see, most of the major lines in the region kept momentum but took decades to develop. Part of the reason for changing support for a corridor relates to Metro Transit, who was often not a staunch supporter of major transit investments with a focus on operating and improving the bus system.
2002
2004

6. Transit Master Study (2008)
But in 2008, we needed to refresh our list of future transitways that would warrant additional study. We had many corridors well on their way and the opening of our first light rail line sparked much more interest in light rail across the region. So our staff at the Met Council went out to counties and cities and asked what corridors might warrant major transit investment. We came up with this list of corridors and what allowed this study to get so much support in the end was the fact that our local partners got to participate in determining which corridor to look at.
We got a project request to build a 40-plus mile loop route on the beltway, which is what you get when you ask non-transit operators what they want to look at.
At Metro Transit, we leaned on their staff for technical support and, once again, to look at local but improvements that might support the build-out of a larger transit system. This was a combined effort to build an investment plan that would take advantage of the “growing revenues” projected for the transit system.

7. Transit Master
Study (2008)

8. Transit Master Study (2008)
Our framework was fairly system for this high level analysis. We wanted to know which projects would have the most potential transit riders for the lowest cost.

9. Transit Master Study (2008)
And we tried to scale the projects to a mode that would seem to make sense for the market, so we had a mix of light rail, busways, and commuter rail.

10. Transit Master Study (2008) So a few things on this chart:
The green circled routes were some of the routes already in the system plan.
The red circled routes were considered for the plan update as potential new corridors.

11. Transit Master Study (2008)
So you can see what that ended up looking like from the study and into the plan that was adopted as a result of it. A lot of new corridors added in the north and east metro.
But I also want to point out the candy cane striped lines on the left map that led to the blue lines on the right map. These projects were identified for potential bus rapid transit along local streets that could be substantial improvements to existing local bus routes. This was a concept that Metro Transit was able to throw their full support behind. An improvement to existing high-use lines at a reasonable cost and with substantial benefits. In some ways, these are low-cost, high-benefit type projects. So happened?

12. Arterial Transitway Corridor Study (2012)
Resulting from the Met Council led study, Metro Transit initiated an investment study of the arterial bus rapid system. They looked at 10 and eventually 12 corridors from a common investment type perspective and they prioritized them for investment based on these concepts.

13. Arterial Transitway Corridor Study (2012)
The corridors all received a technical score based on a number of factors like ridership, efficiency, cost effectiveness, etc. But an important criteria was also readiness with three main criteria:
Will the corridor be studied in the near future as part of a separate study process
Does the corridor’s success depend on connecting to another major transit line that has not yet identified a viable funding plan
Does more corridor planning need to occur for the arterial bus rapid transit implementation

14. Total Category Applications
Arterial Bus Rapid Transit
in the Regional Solicitation
Snelling Avenue application for limited stop service expansion in 2011
Penn Avenue applications for limited stop and customer improvements in 2014 and 2016
12 out 16 applications ranked at the top
Regional Solicitation Year and Program
Total Category Applications
Arterial Bus Rapid Transit Rank
2011 CMAQ 10 #1 #2 #3 #5
2014 Transit Expansion 12
2016 Transit Expansion
2016 Transit Modernization 13 #4 #7
2018 Transit Modernization

15. A Line (2016) BRT on a state highway
Ridership up over 33% in the corridor
Customer satisfaction on par with light rail

16. C Line (2019) BRT on a county road undergoing reconstruction
Eight fully electric articulated buses, first in service in the country

19. Other Corridor Planning
Green Line Extension (Hennepin County/Metro Transit)
Blue Line Extension (Hennepin County/Metro Transit)
Gold Line (Washington County/Metro Transit)
Orange Line (Metro Transit/MnDOT)
Rush Line (Ramsey County)
Riverview (Ramsey County)
Nicollet Streetcar (City of Minneapolis)
Future arterial bus rapid transit lines