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Not surprised. The routes tend to be to centers that feature shopping and entertainment. But to go from one location to another not popular for the masses of travelers, you just have to drive. But the upside is that there'll be less traffic.
I think many of those drive times are suspect, at least if you're looking at driving time during rush hour. Of course buses sit in traffic, too (and most public transportation here is still bus-based), but at least for some bus routes you can take special express lanes. During my morning commute we sail past all the slow-moving cars on 35W!
Unfortunately to make more suburb-to-suburb routes to work you need to have the ridership (or at least the expectation of ridership) to make it work. As it is many of the suburban routes are heavily subsidized. I do think there's room for improvement, but at some point there's only so much money you can throw at certain routes. MVTA bus rides are already costing $6.86 per ride, for example. Now maybe if there were more routes and more frequency more people would ride it and the cost per ride would go down (or it would at serve enough people to make those costs justified), but at some point you need a physical layout and a minimum density to make it anywhere near effective. People who choose to live in those locations may just have to realize that that's the trade-off of choosing to live where they do. With time and as new redevelopment comes along perhaps that can change, as development patterns perhaps alter and it becomes easier to provide more effective expanded suburb-to-suburb routes.
As far as Minnetonka to Apple Valley, I wouldn't do that, either. I haven't checked that route recently, but it used to only come once an hour and not at all on Sunday. Better than nothing, but very limiting.
I think many of those drive times are suspect, at least if you're looking at driving time during rush hour. Of course buses sit in traffic, too (and most public transportation here is still bus-based), but at least for some bus routes you can take special express lanes. During my morning commute we sail past all the slow-moving cars on 35W!
Unfortunately to make more suburb-to-suburb routes to work you need to have the ridership (or at least the expectation of ridership) to make it work. As it is many of the suburban routes are heavily subsidized. I do think there's room for improvement, but at some point there's only so much money you can throw at certain routes. MVTA bus rides are already costing $6.86 per ride, for example. Now maybe if there were more routes and more frequency more people would ride it and the cost per ride would go down (or it would at serve enough people to make those costs justified), but at some point you need a physical layout and a minimum density to make it anywhere near effective. People who choose to live in those locations may just have to realize that that's the trade-off of choosing to live where they do. With time and as new redevelopment comes along perhaps that can change, as development patterns perhaps alter and it becomes easier to provide more effective expanded suburb-to-suburb routes.
As far as Minnetonka to Apple Valley, I wouldn't do that, either. I haven't checked that route recently, but it used to only come once an hour and not at all on Sunday. Better than nothing, but very limiting.
The express lanes only go so far though and then you are stuck in traffic on a bus too and there are no express lanes once you get off the highway and getting through downtown traffic and lights takes just as long as getting to downtown.
When I checked the route for the bus to the Zoo on a Monday, it said it was a 12 hour commute . All the times I posted were at 7:00 am on Monday, except for the zoo one. That was at 10:00 AM.
Everyone I've talked to would love to take the bus to work if it made sense, it just doesn't when it adds 4 hours to your work day.
Makes the most sense to drive yourself to the end of urban lines where the fare is lower. Unless saving the miles on your car is important enough to pay the higher fares. Even if buses get further out, the service would be better with as few stops as possible. Those should be at park n rides. The transit portion is faster, and the drive home is shorter. Maybe private bus companies would see fit to collect people and drop at the park n rides. Metro Transit probably won't.
The express lanes only go so far though and then you are stuck in traffic on a bus too and there are no express lanes once you get off the highway and getting through downtown traffic and lights takes just as long as getting to downtown.
When I checked the route for the bus to the Zoo on a Monday, it said it was a 12 hour commute . All the times I posted were at 7:00 am on Monday, except for the zoo one. That was at 10:00 AM.
Everyone I've talked to would love to take the bus to work if it made sense, it just doesn't when it adds 4 hours to your work day.
I take it you haven't been on the express buses downtown lately? A couple of years ago they redid Marquette and 2nd to make two bus-only lanes (i.e. express lanes). My stop is on the opposite side of downtown, and we zip through there in no time. There are just a few blocks where it's slow getting to/from the freeway, but other than that it's smooth sailing.
In any case, I would think that for most people in Rosemount and other suburbs who work in downtown Minneapolis it DOES make sense to take the bus. For those who work in other suburbs, well, they knew going into it that they're living somewhere with lousy public transportation, so I can't feel too sorry for them, and unless the physical landscape is so totally transformed to make it feasible (and so that it does make sense to run more buses/routes) I think that -- and any congestion caused from others making those same decisions -- is just one of those compromises one makes if one chooses to live and to work in locations that are car-dependent. Unfortunately the reality is that it just doesn't make sense now to run the public transportation lines that would make those kinds of commutes possible. Employers in many locations are just too dispersed to make it practical. And to justify running shuttle buses from transit stations, etc., you really have to have enough volume to make it worth the expense.
I take it you haven't been on the express buses downtown lately? A couple of years ago they redid Marquette and 2nd to make two bus-only lanes (i.e. express lanes). My stop is on the opposite side of downtown, and we zip through there in no time. There are just a few blocks where it's slow getting to/from the freeway, but other than that it's smooth sailing.
In any case, I would think that for most people in Rosemount and other suburbs who work in downtown Minneapolis it DOES make sense to take the bus. For those who work in other suburbs, well, they knew going into it that they're living somewhere with lousy public transportation, so I can't feel too sorry for them, and unless the physical landscape is so totally transformed to make it feasible (and so that it does make sense to run more buses/routes) I think that -- and any congestion caused from others making those same decisions -- is just one of those compromises one makes if one chooses to live and to work in locations that are car-dependent. Unfortunately the reality is that it just doesn't make sense now to run the public transportation lines that would make those kinds of commutes possible. Employers in many locations are just too dispersed to make it practical. And to justify running shuttle buses from transit stations, etc., you really have to have enough volume to make it worth the expense.
Then maybe the city people need to stop whining about cars.....and again, most people do NOT work in Minneapolis so why is everything focused on getting people to Minneapolis?
Then maybe the city people need to stop whining about cars.....and again, most people do NOT work in Minneapolis so why is everything focused on getting people to Minneapolis?
More people work in Minneapolis than any individual city in the TC. 100,000 more than St. Paul, 200,000 more than the largest suburb (Bloomington). I do agree that it would be a wise decision to invest in mass transit infrastructure that is more than just a spoke pattern.
I lived in Minneapolis for three years and rode my bicycle to just about anywhere in the city proper. I also rode to Coon Rapids, St. Paul, St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Richfield, and Fridley quite easily. Saving around $8000 a year from car ownership plus gym membership fees has its perks.
Then maybe the city people need to stop whining about cars.....and again, most people do NOT work in Minneapolis so why is everything focused on getting people to Minneapolis?
For the obvious reason that more people work in Minneapolis than in any one other place. And once you're IN Minneapolis, most of those jobs are in a relatively compact area in downtown Minneapolis. In other words, it is easy to provide efficient public transportation to downtown -- you have the numbers and the physical layout to support it.
Perhaps with time there will be enough efficient, dense development along corridors in the suburbs to make it easier to run more frequent or better public transportation routes. There are already some options (like the high-frequency bus route that runs from MOA through Bloomington and Richfield into Edina), and presumably as suburbs like Eden Prairie get their LRT stops development will cluster around the stations, making it easier to provide better/expanded public transportation to the people who live or work in those areas.
I "whine" about cars because I think it's bad for society to be so extremely auto-dependent. I don't think sprawl is an efficient or economically or environmentally sustainable form of development. I don't "whine" about traffic, though; I don't care about congestion.
For the obvious reason that more people work in Minneapolis than in any one other place. And once you're IN Minneapolis, most of those jobs are in a relatively compact area in downtown Minneapolis. In other words, it is easy to provide efficient public transportation to downtown -- you have the numbers and the physical layout to support it.
Perhaps with time there will be enough efficient, dense development along corridors in the suburbs to make it easier to run more frequent or better public transportation routes. There are already some options (like the high-frequency bus route that runs from MOA through Bloomington and Richfield into Edina), and presumably as suburbs like Eden Prairie get their LRT stops development will cluster around the stations, making it easier to provide better/expanded public transportation to the people who live or work in those areas.
I "whine" about cars because I think it's bad for society to be so extremely auto-dependent. I don't think sprawl is an efficient or economically or environmentally sustainable form of development. I don't "whine" about traffic, though; I don't care about congestion.
Ok, so having a bus from the MOA to Bloomington is ok but not having a light rail Again, MOST people in the metro work along 494/694, like 90% of the metro. It makes more sense to develop public transportation where the traffic is--why is this so hard for you to understand???
You know, if it were really so "obvious" then don't you think some of our metro area's many experts would have suggested it? Now maybe if we had unlimited funds we could build some rail lines and see what happens, but generally speaking, the research out there does suggest that you need a minimum density around stations to make it feasible. You could go with a "build it and they will come" approach, but at least the current approach -- building LRT connecting suburbs with downtown (and with other suburbs along the way) -- at least builds in a sure-thing ridership of people riding to their downtown jobs.
If the demand is there in the future perhaps there could be room to build LRT. If the ridership were there I'd be all for it. But you're forgetting that along the loop (as we've discussed many times before) the DENSITY of jobs just isn't there; you have an enormous number of jobs, but they are dispersed over an incredibly large area. It's that physical layout that makes it so challenging. But maybe down the road if there's enough clustering at the ends of spokes like in Eden Prairie and at the MOA (and at clusters in-between) then there could be the ability to run a LRT line connecting the two.
I know your solution is just to run endless shuttle buses between stations and workplaces, but unless our region's congestion gets really horrific it seems unlikely that many people would want to drive to a LRT station in suburb X, ride the LRT to suburb Y, and then wait around for a shuttle to their work. That becomes more complicated, and the more steps or transfers involved the more likely people will just drive.
I think it would be wonderful if more of the local suburbs were set up to make it easier to provide better public transportation, and I do think that improvements are being made, but there are SO many factors at play. Especially what happens when you get off the bus or the train and need to get to your final destination? So many areas around here are so inhospitable to the pedestrian, and that's all part of the transportation network, too. It's going to take a lot of time, money, and effort if we want our suburbs to really transform from auto-dependent to being places where people can safely and efficiently get around using other forms of transportation. I think that's an admirable goal and would love to see it happen, but think it's going to take more than just a train to make it happen.
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. All the times I posted were at 7:00 am on Monday, except for the zoo one. That was at 10:00 AM.
