Rochester lands $85 million federal grant for rapid bus system

ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant for the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.

The agency, or FTA, formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line.

The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag; the rest of the money will come from Destination Medical Center (DMC), the largest public-private development project in Minnesota history.

Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza.

The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities. Service will run every five minutes during peak hours.

“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”

Planning for the Link system has been years in the making and comes as the downtown prepares to undergo massive transformation as part of Mayo Clinic’s $5 billion expansion.

The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester. It carries more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.

Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.

“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.

To encourage ridership, Mayo has agreed to cover the local share of operating costs — about $3.5 million annually — to make the service fare-free, not only for its employees but also the general public.

An estimated 13,000 people live within a 10-minute walk of one of the line’s seven stops.

“This is a way for people who don’t have a car — for whom transit isn’t something that is nice to have, it is necessary to have — this is a way for them to be able to fully participate and be a part of the opportunity in this city,” said Sen. Tina Smith, a previous chair for the DMC Corp. board.