Metro Transit seeks input on final plans for B Line

It's last call for transit riders and others who want to have a say as Metro Transit finalizes plans for its next bus rapid transit line.

The B Line would connect the Uptown area of Minneapolis with downtown St. Paul, traveling on Lake Street in Minneapolis and Selby and Marshall avenues in St. Paul. It would largely replace Route 21, which has the second-highest ridership in the metro area behind Route 5, but is also one of the slowest in the system.

For the next two weeks — through Aug. 13 — Metro Transit will accept feedback on its Recommended Corridor Plan by phone, e-mail and on the project website, metrotransit.org/b-line-project, before going to the Metropolitan Council this fall to get approval to move ahead with the $65 million project.

"It's a really important step," said Katie Roth, Metro Transit's assistant director of bus rapid transit projects. "It's the last time for public comment."

Naysayers might think their input won't matter, but it will, Roth said. More than 600 people weighed in when original designs were released earlier this year and "we heard support for the project and ways to make service faster," Roth said.

Some of those ideas appear in the updated plans now up for public comment, including station placement at Lyndale, Bloomington and Cedar avenues. This time around, as Metro Transit looks to nail down the rest of the intersections for the remaining 30 stations, the agency is seeking feedback that will be used to decide where stations will be placed and how they fit with the neighborhood.

"We want to hear those concerns," Roth said.

Staff members will sort through the comments and use them to shape the final document confirming intersections for stations and platform locations and even on which side of intersections they will be placed. Other characteristics will be finalized through detailed engineering.

B Line service between just west of Bde Maka Ska and Union Depot is planned to operate every 10 minutes, seven days a week during the day and most of the evening. Metro Transit has secured all the funding necessary to build the line. Construction is set to begin in 2023.

Metro Transit last week updated its online schedules, allowing riders to find arrival and departure times for any stop on any route.

Previously, riders were only able to access schedules resembling paper versions available on buses. Those schedules showed arrival and departure times only at major intersections and key stops called time points. With lots of columns and rows to read across, the schedules were kind of unwieldy, said Laura Matson, program manager of real-time customer information.

"The new feature makes it more accessible," she said. "People want to know when the bus is going to be at my stop, which might not be the time point."

Riders can go to Metro Transit's Schedules and Maps page, choose their route, then click on the "View Schedule by Stop" tab. After picking a direction of travel, riders can select their stops and see when a bus will arrive.

"It's been a very common request from riders," Matson said, noting riders have accessed online schedules 1.4 million times this year.

Those accustomed to reading the paper schedule will still have that view available, Matson said.

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