America's Largest Mass-Transit Systems Are Speeding Toward a Cliff

[progree]

1. Metro Transit (Twin Cities) announced that many routes are coming back in June

that were cut in October and December due to lack of drivers. Including my route in full that I've written about here a time or two or more. And many routes' frequencies have been improved (e.g. every hour to every half hour)

I just learned about that Monday. I thought my route was never coming back -- they removed the bus stop signs completely, even the poles. On most other routes that they suspended, they just stick a big yellow sticker "this stop is not currently being served by any route" or somesuch words onto the signs.

They've been slowly upping the driver pay and making it easier to qualify, and have finally started reducing the driver shortage.

As for money restrictions, I haven't heard of any, it's all been about number of drivers. But I'm worried that's coming down the road. Fortunately, we have a trifecta in Minnesota (a D governor and both houses of the legislature are D) but inevitably that rare circumstance won't always be the case.

As for ridership -- how to summarize.. https://www.metrotransit.org/performance

Its also somewhat seasonal so one should compare a given month to the same month in previous years. Comparing March 2023 to March 2019 (way pre-pandemic) we're about 50% of the March 2019 total ridership.

In that time interval a couple of BRT routes (Bus Rapid Transit) have entered service, boosting ridership. But as mentioned above, many routes were cut or dialed back in frequency. So we're not seeing a clear picture of demand from this.