Here's a story about a city celebrating the success of a full time lane for bus rapid transit, just a month after it opened.
https://youtu.be/blglo-PmBXk
Closer to home: Here's a story about Minneapolis celebrating the success of partial and part-time bus lanes on Hennepin by installing full time lanes on 7th.
https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/1527807043670790145?t=Q2O7rBo3VWzzjFCb8khP-g&s=19
How is it a question whether we will implement full time lanes on day one following a full reconstruction of Hennepin Avenue which will include a $60 million bus rapid transit upgrade? This is an easy one. You have to marvel at the commitment of some to fuck this up.
More 7th St vs. Hennepin comparison.
7th: C Line BRT
Hennepin: E Line BRT coming soon
7th: bus riders 33-39% of people in vehicles during peak
Hennepin: bus riders 47% of people in vehicles during peak.
We know BRT leads to increased ridership.
If anyone out there has a personal connection to our new Public Works director Margaret Anderson Kelliher, please get this information to her. She doesn't seem to realize the 7th Street full time lanes ALREADY exist.
Video from Thursday's committee meeting: "There is actually no place — and I know that we will probably still be the first — even if we get there in 2 years or 3 years, we will be the first place to have full-time dedicated bus lanes in the Metro Transit system."
And tell her to update the website. Otherwise it looks like she came into this job with the intention of burying years of staff work under her political agenda.
https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/1527613517548896257?t=kxHAbjDodAuDDCQjFD9fOw&s=19
If you didn't watch last Thursday's meeting, there was a great moment in "oops I thought we'd arranged for you to retract your enthusiasm for full-time bus lanes." Metro Transit rep does not say what Council Member Koski expected her to say.
Koski: last year you sent a letter in support of full-time lanes, & last week you sent a new letter in support of part-time lanes "as a mechanism to transition." Can you speak to that?
Metro Transit: we want to work with you to support both peak and off-peak transit operations.
At the end it gets weird and Koski asks if it's "still Metro Transit's intention to transition to those 24/7 bus lanes?"
Metro Transit rep is confused by that question because the city is the decider on how the lanes are used.
Council Member Chughtai: "Using the word 'support' feels like a little bit of an exaggeration... It doesn't say we think you should do that, it says if that's what you choose to do, here are some things we need from you in order to make this work."
Rhetorical gymnastics aside, this August 4, 2021 letter from Metro Transit to the city's pre-Kelliher public works dept still stands: “all-day bus lanes are critical to the success of both the Hennepin Avenue reconstruction project and the METRO E Line.”
https://wedgelive.com/key-dates-on-the-road-to-generational-change-in-minneapolis-transportation-infrastructure/
MAK brings in city attorneys to tell council they legally can't enact a bus lane.
Council Member Wonsley Worlobah: What about Nicollet Mall?
Attorney: That's a unique case, there's a state statute...
RWW: Can you explain Marquette & 2nd?
Attorney: Don't have that information.
If you can read lips you'll see this is the moment that Jason Garcia and I turn to each other and say "Is the public works director trying to lawyer this bus lane to death right now?"
When someone fights hard for something with all their heart and soul to overcome conventional wisdom about what the right thing to do is, it sends a message about what they really believe. We've got some people at city hall that really believe in kneecapping this bus lane.
Chughtai: bus service is "the single largest tool for equity that we have" when it comes to the Hennepin reconstruction. Majority of local riders are people of color. 64% of riders make less than 35k/yr. 83% of trips outside peak times. 1 in 3 Black households don't own a car.
Chughtai: improving bus service "is critical for building for the future that we need now. We're talking about a street that's not going to open for another four years from now..." When it's suggested we wait another 4 years, "We're talking about 2030. That's unacceptable."
In conclusion and in summary, if you don't implement the full-time bus lane on day one following the Hennepin reconstruction (still four years away), I will go on and on about it forever. I will not get over it. It will be the grudge that fuels me until I die.
All 15 Minneapolis members of the MN House and Senate: “We support inclusion of an all-day dedicated lane... Schedule interruptions & delays will suppress ridership, & is tantamount to forcing the route to fail, the effort & resource it took to create it will have been wasted.”