You might need to rethink that Northstar bus plan (T)

Minnesota's Metro Transit has released the bus plan for connecting with the Nov. 16 start-up of the Northstar Commuter train service between Downtown Minneapolis and Big Lake. After reading the plan (and the schedules of the trains themselves, all now available online at http://metrotransit.org/), one has to ask this somewhat simple question:

Who in the hell dreamed this half-baked effort up??

Really. There is no provision for any of the following:

* Going to work at anytime other than 6 AM to 8:30 AM, and only in Downtown Minneapolis
* Anything other than auto travel to stations beyond Anoka (except for St. Cloud)
* Staying late (after 7:00 PM) in Downtown Minneapolis on weeknights (for maybe, dinner and a post-work cocktail?)
* Off-shift travel (or, going home early) especially at mid-day on weekdays
* Weekend work travel or events that start in Minneapolis prior to 2 PM on Saturdays, Noon on Sundays
* Any weekend event in any of the Northstar suburbs

This bus plan is horrid at best. Here are some of the community pairs that should be served by connecting service to Northstar:

To Big Lake from: Becker, Clear Lake, Clearwater, Monticello
To Elk River from: Rogers, Otsego, Princeton, Zimmerman, also to/from Downtown Elk River itself (the Elk River stop is east of US 169, at the existing Route 888 park-and-ride)
To Anoka from: Ramsey, Champlin, Oak Grove
To Coon Rapids (Riverdale) from: Andover, Eastern Coon Rapids (east of US 10)

There will be a new bus route (Route 889) which will only run ONE TRIP A DAY on weekdays at 7:00 PM from Downtown Minneapolis; unfortunately, the bus will only serve Coon Rapids and Anoka, and will NOT GO to Elk River, nor to Big Lake. Why no bus service to these communities? (The existing bus Route 888, which runs between Elk River, Coon Rapids and Downtown Minneapolis, goes away when Northstar begins operation November 16th.)

Why there is not 4-5 bus trips at off-peak hours weekdays, (there are contractual issues needing to be resolved with BNSF Railway, in order to run more trains) and 3-4 trips on weekends, in order to make those trains that DO operate more useful? And, why are there not Route 889 trips in the inbound direction?

Granted, there are trips currently (Route 877) from Ramsey directly to Downtown Minneapolis. These trips should be changed in order to feed into Northstar at Anoka station, at least until Ramsey gets its' own platform (scheduled for Phase II of the Northstar project, depending on funding, as is a platform at the existing 950-space Foley Park-and-Ride in eastern Coon Rapids).

Make the service as useful to as wide a population as possible. Yes, we understand, Minnesota is not made of money (as if we don't know that already?), but this would be a very wise investment, so as to make the train as useful to as wide a population as possible.

The plan also admits that the existing local transit in Elk River ('RiverRider') will not meet any Northstar train, which makes the train option useless for those who work in Elk River and don't want to drive. Now, forgive me for asking, but wasn't part of all this planning an exercise to see how many autos we could get off the roads in the affected areas? In Big Lake, the problem is worse: the local dial-a-ride service doesn't even operate after 5 PM, making that service totally useless to Northstar riders.

The Northstar Link express bus service to St. Cloud (http://www.catchthelink.com/) is also of limited use, as there will be no connection to the rest of the St. Cloud MTC system at their hub in Downtown St. Cloud, as the Link service will not even go beyond the city-owned park-and-ride on St. Cloud's southeast side. With limited options for even service to the most populated city on the potential second phase of Northstar, what good is it for people living in the Twin Cities and working in St. Cloud?

The Northstar Link will pass thru, but will not stop at, Becker and Clear Lake en route to St. Cloud. Another egregious mistake by the Northstar Corridor Development Agency, the public body to which this was assigned.

People will actually go out of their way to use the service, if it is even somewhat conveinent for them to use it. The basic premise that everyone will just magically change their lives to fit an inconveinent schedule which someone says, 'That's the best we can do', is a woeful commentary in a 'Me, me, me' society. The phrase so often echoed as the private railroads were cutting back passenger schedules in the 1960's and '70's -- 'You can't get there from here' -- still rings true some 40-50 years later.

And that is a very sad commentary of the modern state of public transportation in Minnesota.