Metro Transit hopes new Gold Line gleams

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Metro Transit officials hope its new Gold Line is a bit like a gold rush: fast and valuable. If so, it will add to the steady success of bus rapid transit (BRT) lines.

More than 8 million rides were taken on such lines last year, which was a 14% jump from 2023. Comparatively, Metro Transit saw a 6% increase in overall usage last year.

The Gold Line, which begins operation on Saturday, looks to continue the post-pandemic recovery in ridership. Running mostly north of and near Interstate 94, the 10-mile line will eventually serve 16 stations in St. Paul and four eastern suburbs: Maplewood, Landfall, Oakdale and Woodbury. Landmark stops include downtown St. Paul, Metro State University, Metro 94 Business Center, Sun Ray Shopping Center, 3M headquarters, Tamarack Hills and Woodbury Village.

Within a half-mile of these stations there are an estimated 93,500 jobs and 41,000 residents — about 16% of them living in households without cars.

The “rapid” in the BRT line should come from multiple factors, including the fact that 70% of the route traverses bus-only roads, departing every 10 minutes most of the weekday, every 15 minutes on weekends, and every half-hour early mornings and nights.

The buses and the service itself also augment rapid trips. Passengers pay in advance and board through one of three doors. And the 60-foot buses feature wider aisles and self-securing equipment for people in mobility devices, each of which help speed up boarding.

“The Gold Line is an important step as we work to improve transit service in our region,” said Metro Transit General Manager Lesley Kandaras. “Our focus is connecting people, strengthening communities and improving lives. And while those are lofty words, in projects such as the Gold Line that’s going to bring frequent, all-day service to several communities in our metro, that helps us really advance that mission.”

The line “is really an important link in our system,” Alicia Vap, the Gold Line’s project director, said before a tour of the new route. There are plans, she added, to extend the route to downtown Minneapolis by late 2027, replacing the 94 Express bus.

Most notably, she said, “We were able to deliver a project on budget and on schedule.”

The $505.3 million budget came from four main sources, according to Metro Transit: $239.3 million from the Federal Transit Administration; $233.8 million from Ramsey and Washington counties; $20.2 million from federal surface transportation block grants and $6 million from the former Counties Transit Improvement Board.

The uncertainty (upheaval, really) in Washington makes future federal funding a continual question mark. And challenges at local and county governments, let alone political gridlock in St. Paul, may make it harder to alleviate the traffic gridlock through more transit funding. But key decisionmakers at all levels of government should contemplate the virtues of well-executed transit projects.

Voters in many areas — notably including red states — increasingly do, said Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. Hadden Loh, an expert on public transportation, pointed out that Maricopa County (Phoenix), Nashville, Columbus, Ohio and Columbia, S.C., all passed transit initiatives last election, with most envisioning buses as the main mode of transportation.

Hadden Loh, who co-authored a 2023 analysis of “the intertwined post-pandemic recoveries of downtowns and transit systems,” said in an interview that despite disrupted transit patterns due to the changing nature of work schedules, “we still need transit. The question is, can we retool?” Doing so is “pretty straightforward” with buses, she said, at least compared to rail, and overall, bus service recovery has outpaced rail recovery.

BRT “is a great investment in terms of providing that high-quality transit experience to riders that we hear they are really asking for,” said Kandaras. “The Gold Line in particular, with the dedicated guideway comprising such a large portion of that route, is an exciting next step in our bus rapid transit system expansion.” Riders, Kandaras added, express a desire for “reliable, frequent, fast options, and certainly BRT delivers on that.”

That perspective comes in the context of complex challenges for light rail, including cost overruns and delays on the Green Line extension (Southwest Light Rail), uncertainty over the Blue Line extension, and even active consideration of shutting down the Northstar Commuter Rail line — and replacing it with bus service. So it’s likely that there will be continued calls to consider more BRT lines.

Kandaras, who emphasizes that Metro Transit executes the transit decisions made by the Metropolitan Council and other government entities, said that the council “works closely with our partners to determine what mode would work best in which corridor.” Starting Saturday, they’ll have another data point, the gleaming new Gold Line.