Metro Transit brings back scuttled routes and increases frequency on others as driver shortage eases

After a four-year hiatus, Metro Transit Route 223 was back in service Monday.

The line providing rides between Maplewood Mall and Rosedale Center was cut during the pandemic and as the agency faced a bus driver shortage. The route, which operates on weekdays only, is one Metro Transit has restored as part of recent service changes enacted.

Orange Line buses will now run every 10 minutes during rush hours instead of every 15 minutes. Service on the rapid bus line connecting Burnsville with downtown Minneapolis will start earlier in the day, at 4:30 a.m., and run later into the night, until midnight.

“That is an exciting change,” said Adam Harrington, Metro Transit’s director of service development. “We have been seeing steady growth with 2,000 rides every weekday.”

Express Route 94 is also running more frequently on weekdays, with trips between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul offered every 20 minutes instead of every half-hour.

Route 54, which serves downtown St. Paul, the Mall of America and Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, starting Monday will run every 10 minutes between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m., something Harrington called a “major improvement.”

New schedules that went into effect Saturday also show Route 46 from south Minneapolis to Edina resuming weekend service, and additional rush hour service added on several weekday express routes.

“A lot of employers have forgotten what it is like to get into downtown,” Harrington said. “As employees are asked to come into the office, this responds well to that.”

The extra and expanded service comes as Metro Transit has, at least for now, turned the corner on its struggle to find enough bus operators. After “struggling mightily” for the past three years, the agency now has nearly 1,300 drivers, a number Metro Transit has not seen since before the pandemic, said Brian Funk, deputy general manager and chief operating officer.

Funk attributed the uptick in hiring to better wages, up from $21 per hour a few years ago to almost $30 an hour now. New drivers also are getting two weeks of additional training time to get them ready to hit the streets, he said.

The agency has 60 drivers in training now, but the need is still there. In March, the agency will open the Gold Line, a rapid bus line running from Woodbury to Union Depot in downtown St. Paul, and will need 30 operators to deliver that service. The agency also plans to open the B Line running from Uptown to downtown St. Paul on Lake Street and Selby Avenue next summer. And the E Line, a rapid bus route from Southdale in Edina to the University of Minnesota is supposed to open about a year from now.

“We will continue to hire,” Funk said.

The new and expanded service is part of Metro Transit’s Network Now strategy to expand service by 35% in the next three years by looking where current and future service should go to meet travel needs and grow ridership.