You know why this is a good idea? Because you're basically building light rail infrastructure in advance. In a few decades when the economic growth helped by your bus services enables the municipality to afford it, you can just replace those "arterial buses" with trams and light rail without having to fuck about with routing.
Yeah, I was hoping he might bring up that fact. I wonder if the roads and bridges are being built in such a way as to allow easy transition to rail - already having accounted for load bearing, etc?
@@Quidisibridges nowadays are way overly designed so I’m pretty sure they thought about that, they’ll be able to screw the railway sleepers into the concrete and they’d be done, only the parts that have asphalt would need to be removed for track laying.
If you're overbuilding the infrastructure to support later use by rail, you don't realize the cost savings that caused them to go with BRT to begin with. I seriously doubt those overpasses could really support any type of rail.
as long as bus service is properly funded... the city I live in (Ottawa, Ontario) has had a system very similar to what they're building for decades. I was riding light rail & taking transitway bus routes (dedicated bus-only roads like they're building in this video) when I was in university 20 years ago. Today through constant fare increases and an absolute refusal from council to actually use tax dollars to fund the transit system, our bus system has become a national embarrassment that anybody who has the option actively avoids taking. I've got a choice, now, between a 45-minute bus ride to work or a 20-minute drive. parking's only $5 more than taking the bus both ways, and they've got free charging for my EV. I *really* want more people to take the bus, but it's a really hard case to make here
Two seasons: snow removal and road repair. And the guy who visited last May ... that's right between the two seasons, so the roads are at their very worst. We can get frosts and freezes into May, so the road crews don't start until late May or June.
The true "magic" of a BRT is really the option to combine "being fast" and "being everywhere" with the same vehicle: You can circle though the suburb and then take the fastest route into the city.
YES. That combined with the fact it's cheaper and faster to train bus drivers, it's easier to find and hire diesel mechanics, busses are cheaper to buy up front the railway equipment. Busses often share mechanical parts with other commercial vehicles. BRT is very smart. Plus the infrastructure can be used by other city services like garbage, fire/ems, police etc without specialty equipment.
The eye-watering cost per mile figures for rail projects are mostly because of a few extremely expensive segments (eg. through a downtown). BRT can just operate as a normal bus over those segments and have dedicated lanes everywhere else. The dream (which might eventually come true) in a lot of those places is to reduce car traffic lanes, so more folks using the buses actually enables converting to bus lanes and maybe even more space for pedestrian and cycle infrastructure.
@@joeblow5214 As you said: Cheaper to buy up front, a Light rail vehicle is over all cheaper though. And you can also run them on normal streets as a tram. On top of that, you have a much smoother ride with light-rail and trams, which increases the acceptance of it a lot more, and does in fact increase ridership.
@@germanmosca In my experience, running in mixed traffic is a *huge* drawback, and most of the advantages in reliability and frequency of BRT comes from separating out transit from other modes as much as possible.
My city runs what they call "open BRT". That means they have BRT trunks built to the highest standard shown in the video. But all along this trunk BRT line, "arterial BRT" lines branch off the main trunk. The end result is about fifty different BRT lines, each with "arterial BRT" for part of the route and "guide way BRT" for the remainder. And with so many lines sharing the trunk route, it gets a bus every 10-15 seconds in peak. Because all the buses serve a significant amount of the trunk, it means that passengers just travelling along the trunk will catch whatever line comes along first - meaning they have almost no wait. However, because quite a few passengers want to continue on to one of the branch lines, plenty of passengers will wait for a particular line instead of catching the first bus. This really helps alleviate bunching.
Seems very inefficient. Encouraging transfers allows better suburban service and saves operators which is a much needed thing with many agencies operator shortage.
The last comment of "Don't let your tool mold your service needs" should be echoed across not just the region but the nation (United States). In my neck of the woods the city has not been looking at multiple types of busses beyond the express and "local" routes. The Twin cities have learned from their initial outing and worked to improve their infrastructure and that is a breath of fresh air.
@@RoadGuyRob i find myself eagerly awaiting each video, and what should i care about road design? but man your production quality is top tier, and every subject you seem to make interesting. Just saying great job, keep doing what your doing man!
I was a skeptic of BRT before I moved to Minneapolis, but I got on board pretty quick. The Twin Cities are seriously building out an impressive network of BRT and it allows folks to easily live cheaply car-free, all while still putting many suburban destinations within reach.
As a fellow Twin Cities resident, skeptical about living easily car free but good to hear it's working for you! Still think NYC is the only city I would be content to live in car free in North America, we've got a big gap to close vs the rest of the world.
As someone that takes public transit everywhere in the Twin Cities the A Line is by far my favorite way to get anywhere. It’s super easy, reliable, and the stops feel really thoughtful in terms of places I’d want to stop. It also works well in conjunction with the rest of the transit options.
$500M for 10 miles is a bargain compared to the Los Angeles area metro rail system. When I checked a while back, it was $350M PER MILE. And yet the roads were still packed because the metro rail system is impractical for most people. Metro rail system only work out financially in highly dense areas, like Manhattan.
When I was in Seattle, it was fascinating. They have these busses, but they had started to build a subway system so in a few spots it hopped onto some tracks and got power from them; they had a few ex-trolley line setups so it popped a thing up and got power from THAT. It ran electric at those points, and it was propane or LPG or something the rest of the time. It was rather clever, it used all the parts of light rail they had started to build; instead of leaving them abandoned, or having some train line with like 1-2 lines then seperate bus system, it meant it was all nicely integrated together.
My city has the best busses in the UK outside of London. A large part of that is the experience of not having to worry about being late if you miss _one_ specific bus, a ‘once every 5/10/15 minutes’ bus service is invaluable to getting people riding.
Let me take a guess, one with a lot of maroon in its branding? If so, we used to live there and I can concur its bus network is absolutely fantastic, and with the rider numbers especially during peak months and inability to add something like subway stops, utterly invaluable.
I do feel like a lot of the cost concerns also come down to more US specific issues, since even BRT projects in the US are much more expensive than in other countries. I mean here in Denmark, the city of Odense (pop. 181k) opened a brand new 9 mile long light rail line across the city in 2022, for around the same price tag that a BRT line would cost in the US. And for another comparison, both New York City and Copenhagen are working on light rail routes across their respective city's suburbs. And the one on New York is slated to be 5 times more expensive than the one in Copenhagen, despite being nearly 5 miles shorter! Its everything from ability to aqquire land, to the way construction is tendered, to infrastructure design, to the influence of consultancy groups, and many more.
_Anything_ the government pays for in the United States tends to be much more expensive because everyone loves to fleece the taxpayer. This is the single reason why healthcare is so expensive here as well.
@jovetj It's called union labor. No matter what, any project paid for by the government comes down to bids, and said bids encounter union memberships who will squeeze every dollar & time to build it. A blessing & curse 🤷🏾
@@MarloSoBalJr Buddy most of the labour pool over here is unionized and we still get much cheaper bids and construction costs, so you cant blame Unions on this bucko.
@joeblow5214 10% of the US workforce is in a union, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023. Down from 20% in the 1983. 10.7% of Construction Industry employees are unionized. Even though these scandals are true, are Unions really the largest bearers of blame for the high cost of major infrastructure projects in the US, or is there more going on than that?
I'm a Minnesota native who traveled to Boston recently. The silver line that services Logan Int'l has BRTs as well, and they work! It felt cleaner and safer than riding a normal community bus. I'm excited for the prospect of them being built at home.
saying the silver line works is a bit of an overstatement. Often times between busses is 30-45 minutes, and to get from downtown to the airport often takes 45 minutes (it's like 3 miles)
@@InternetKilledTV21 the silver line tends to be about as reliable as the rest of the regular rail subway lines. I don't doubt the rest of the regular bus lines are quite laughable; I don't ever take them, though, since the subway has been enough for me to commute through Boston on.
Yes, I was going to post about that, as well. I believe the Silver Line was put in as part of the Big Dig. It was originally planned to be a regular subway line, but was switched to BRT as the Big Dig costs exploded. It originally had a weird mix of dedicated and shared roadways, and it switches from electric with overhead wires to diesel in the middle of the trip between the airport and South Station, but in the last few years, they've switched to diesel-electric hybrids with enough battery range to run electric-only through the tunnels. As a traveller, it's quite convenient that there's no toll to board at the airport, and then you can go by subway anywhere in the system.
When it comes to North American light-rail systems, a pretty great one is the St. Louis MetroLink! Serves both the Illinois and Missouri sides! Serves places like St. Louis Lambert International Airport, IKEA at Cortex, Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Busch Stadium at Stadium station, Amtrak and the Enterprise Center arena at Civic Center, and of course the Gateway Arch (which you can get an amazing view of from Laclede's Landing station). Much of MetroLink is a reused rail right of way, like the Eads Bridge which is the oldest bridge on the whole Mississippi River! When they were constructing the underground stations downtown, the tunnel was already there, using the St Louis Freight Tunnel. So with a lot of grade-separation, the Blue and Red Lines of MetroLink is basically a light metro, or a light-rail that acts like a subway! On the Red Line, trains use the former Wabash/Norfolk & Western Railroad's Union Depot line that once brought passenger trains from Ferguson to Union Station. When the Red Line makes a stop at the Delmar Loop station, it is located just below the original Wabash Railroad's Delmar Station building! On the Blue Line, it follows a former Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA)/Rock Island railroad right of way. When they were constructing Skinker and University City-Big Bend stations, they faced opposition because that section was gonna be street-running, so they opted to build them underground! So thanks to NIMBYs, they ironically made the Blue Line a better and quicker service through no street-running!
BRT just feels like an excuse to lay the groundwork for an actual rail line without having to convince NIMBYs to pay for it all at once. But I can appreciate it for that.
It is also right sizing the system . Rail is great for higher capacity but empty trains lead to less frequency. If the buses route are overcrowded then those are the routes to upgrade.
As others have stated, the great thing about building the BRT this way is that it's easy to convert to a light-rail line when they're ready! It's not the first time bus infrastructure was future-proofed for light-rail conversion! Seattle did the same thing with the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Before they built the tunnel, there were different proposals for a rapid transit line, with the most significant in the 1960s. For the first attempt in February 1968 when voters were asked to provide 385 million, it narrowly passed by 50.8 percent but fell short of the required 60 percent supermajority. A second attempt in May 1970 when voters were asked for 440 million, it failed with 46 percent, and the federal money was instead given to Atlanta for MARTA. Despite this, they still planned for a bus tunnel in 1974 that could potentially become a light-rail line. When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time. For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had unique operations where buses and the light-rail shared it (Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Tunnel still has shared bus/light-rail operations)! That is until 2019 when Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.
It doesn't actually sound like it's "easy" to convert if the only place that has successfully done it is the crazy progressive (complimentary) capital of the US, and even then it took 30 years to barely happen.
Biggest problem with BRT is they suffer from the success of emulating a train but lack the capacity and ease of adding more capacity trains have. Not easy to drive a 8 cab long bus, and it costs lots of money to hire more bus drivers
For the Guideway BRT they could just slap on the rail tracks since all of the bridges and paths have been already built, the existing bus stations would just need to be upgraded. For the other 2 options maybe a street car system since they know that it's a profitable route. They can just add the rails onto the roads.
@@Notabot1310 are you from the UK? I almost never hear anyone mention this from the urbanist/transportation YT channel. I think the Guided busways are awesome. What I like about them is that they're kind of good in between a light rail and the flexibility of a bus. If anyone talks about guided bus ways, it's usually the autonomous trackless ones.
Unless you have a fully automated metro (not possible on street running trams), the driver cost is kind of moot. To maintain the best frequency you would need to hire as many drivers anyway. Longer trains are for if the city is truly planning to lineify and really build up the density along a key corridor.
@@bend8353 Because it's so short and doesn't have many drop off points. Why take the light rail when a bus can drop you off with in a block of your destination? The light rail is superior Yes but very expensive
Maybe that's the actual problem to be solved. Ditch the impossible CAFE standards, get rid of nanny naggers, backup cameras, CVTs, mandatory insurance, etc., and make cars affordable again.
Cars and gasoline shouldn’t even be cost of living expenses. Americans could get damn near anywhere they wanted to go without a car for most of our country’s history; that needs to become the norm again.
@@floycewhite6991I don’t want a car or a horse, I want a system of mass transit that works. The buses in my city (Nashville) are good, but they need to be converted to Bus Rapid Transit.
@@Anthony-nu5oc I've said it before and I'll say it again. A handful of lawyers and executives benefit from the office buildings being clustered in one place, with all the transportation arteries routed in to serve it. Only they benefit from having everyone else work the same hours as they do, so they can instantly command over the work that others do -- work that they largely don't understand, and are so removed from they have no idea what should be done anyway. More than anything though, massive inner-city ghettos force workers to travel many miles each way every day to get past economically dead zones. The need for longer and longer trips is a function of urban planning biased toward the vanity of a handful of rich and powerful, and paternalism that spawned generation after generation of charity cases. The Powers That Be sell us on the idea of more and faster wagons to haul the charity cases about. Meanwhile they make it harder and harder to afford and to use an automobile, pressing us to support their charity wagons as the only possible solution to this mess.
So people get mad when america doesn’t fund transit, then when we shell out millions, people still make fun of us? Jesus, it’s impossible to win with europeans.
If all they color their buses or make the strips along the buses accordingly to the line color, you realize that buses on the other lines can break down? Let's say two buses on the Green line breaks down, then you'll see two blue colored buses on the Green line.
@@travisminneapolis i understand your point, but that is still tax dollars. I just think its weird no one complains about the tax dollars spent on roads. Just because i buy gas doesnt mean i endorse spending tax money on highway widening. i buy gas because i live in oklahoma and the only way to get around is by car.
Because a highway can handle millions of travelers per day while costing about 1 million per mile, instead of thousands of travelers while costing 20 million per mile, so the price per user is about 0.001% as high. Meaning the cost of road infrastructure is relatively insignificant compared to nearly all other forms.
4:50 When you said running a lot of busses, i thought you were going to say something like every 1-5 minutes, 10 minutes is really not uniquely frequent lol
My thoughts too! 'Very frequent service' -> SOMETIMES as often as TEN minutes I'm not saying they should just run more busses if those lines don't need them, but it's certainly not very frequent.
Ehh, Reliable 10 minute intervals is at the low end of 'frequent enough that you don't have to plan your schedule around the time table if the bus is your main method of transport'. 15-30 minutes is 'quite usable, but the bus timetable is going to be dictating most of your schedule any day you need to travel'. Less frequently... well, up to every couple of hours can be all right if you're headed to the next town over or the like and it's a trip you make maybe once a week and are going to be there for a large chunk of the day. Once or twice a day? ... yeah, that better be at least an all day trip to a completely different city where you're going to be Staying for a few days before you come back... ... ... and should really probably be a train.
Is the high end BRT system only cheaper because of more companies that know how to build roads? Isn't that potentially self-defeating in the long term given they have some light rail?
It's easier to create the service from ground up, but a lot harder to upgrade later on to light rail or subway since BRT is only good for medium capacity & frequency services unless they play some tricks it wouldn't last when it has subway crunch load.
Not only that, but you also can use the buses elsewhere in the system, the mechanical parts for busses are often the same as other commercial vehicles and there are a lot of people trained in maintenance of those compared to rail ROW and rail locomotives. Bus drivers can also be trained faster and are cheaper. (High turnover job) and the infrastructure can easily be used by other city services without specialized equipment.
We are also working on two rail expansion projects right now. Perhaps they were concerned about capacity with the contractors available in the area. Additionally, since much of the route is on exclusive roadway, we might be able to retrofit some light rail in the future. A lack of ability to build more additional rail at the moment, while certainly disappointing, does not seem entirely implausible to me.
If you build a light rail line only to have 20m long vehicles on it, then BRT is a better idea. The added value of rail is leveraging the ability to have vehicles longer than buses : 30, 40, 60m and even multiple units coupled.
That freeway BRT is why having grade separation and space for extra lanes is so important. It becomes super easy, both in terms of construction and politically to deliver high quality regional service.
The brt in Pittsburgh is better than it's train, coming from someone that used both daily. Hopefully though, if they are building new bridges and roads for their gold line, they are also adding a separated bike lane to it
“Don’t let your tool mold your service needs, it’s the other way around. Find the tool that really works for you to meet your exact need.” Words of wisdom here.
Years ago I visited Pittsburgh. It was my first time visiting a city outside of Detroit. When I got there, i accidentally picked up a "certain kind of worker" who had me drop her off when I told her I didn't have any extra money to give her. After dropping her off, I found this road with no cars and to my surprise it got me from point A to points B, C D, and E in only a few minutes! That was when I saw a bus driving toward me and flashing its lights. That was when I learned what BRT is and got paranoid I was about to be talking to the police. I quickly found a way off the BRT line and fortunately, no cops. But man, that BRT route is SWEET! 😂❤🎉
@qwertyfff Yes, but I-35W & Lake Station is NOT accessible to the street (Lake Street) below the expressway, so the busses deploying a W/C patron is redundant cos where are they gonna go?
@@attackofthelumbie9029 In germany, ramps in public spaces are only allowed to be a maxium of 6%, so 6 cm heightgain over 1 meter of length. If the ramp is longer than 6 meters, there needs to be a rest area of 150 cm by 150 cm. Good luck trying to get a ramp going up to that station with that in mind.
Metro Transit didn't want a disabled rider marooned on the upper deck on the station with no way down to the street. So they made the bus exit the freeway and use a street-level station. Which worked out well for me, so I could have video to show you that.
Road Guy Bob doing transit videos! Amazing stuff. I personally think a mistake most American cities do with transitways is only running one line on it. In other countries, they build a transit way and run 10 - 15 routes on it to speed up normal bus journeys with 1 - 2 minute headways. That way you're making the best use out of expensive concrete and really getting those ridership numbers from bus numbers (20 - 50k riders) to rail numbers (100k - 150k)
@@trademark4537 Just look at Brisbane or Ottawa's transitway (well, before they demolished it). It's actually a more efficient use of infrastructure. The same concept applies with rail lines that branch out into the suburbs but converge at the downtown core. Basically you're using the existing right of way to speed up multiple services instead of just one.
@@louiszhang3050 Let's say the rapid transit route is East-West. If you run the service in the way you suggested, You would need to have the route from the North and the South both enter the transitway. If it's 5 miles to downtown, you're running 20 miles of duplicated service (2 routes, 5 miles each way). The time it takes to run a bus 20 miles, could instead be spent on running one route at high frequency north and south of the transitway. Yes, riders would have to transfer, but you can significantly reduce their wait time to get on the first bus by investing in better frequency. Operator hours are always limited.
I grew up in the cities and didnt have license in the late 00's & rode the blue line all the time (thank god they kinda fixed minnehaha, you could get stuck at the intersection light for up to 15 minutes in the beginning) not sure if they still do it but you used to be able to ride the bus for free if you had a bike, that combo got me everywhere. glad to see our transit improving, if only we kept the streetcar's instead of selling them to san fran
"which puts BRT right in front of the houses of people who'd ride BRT"... shot of house with boarded up windows behind the bus stop @5:25 So cheeky haha :)
I guess the lack of experience in the US makes sense. If you were doing the same thing in central Europe where tram systems are a dime a dozen, you'd have no problem finding construction and maintenance companies who could build you a new tram line and maintain your trams. Plus most of the popular tram/LRV manufacturers (Alstom, Stadler, Siemens) are European.
@@jovetj But that's exactly what was said in the video, it's more expensive to build a light rail line in the US because there aren't a plethora of companies who can do it.
Another good thing with bus lanes and bus ways are that other busses (read local busses) can use them too and it's easier to adapt routes if demand changes
I grew up in St. Paul. The BRT was...decent. I took it to the gym every day during the summer as a transfer off my local route (Route 3--a go-between for the two cities and one of the most-used non-BRT services in the Cities, itself soon to be converted to BRT). Just wish they had made it 10-minute intervals before I left for college 😂
What impresses me as an outsider is that the early drawbacks (including cost) of light rail have not stopped the work for an expanded rapid transit, even if by another mode.
Mall of America is managed by the Triple Five Group, which in turn is owned by the Ghermezian family. They also own the West Edmonton Mall and the American Dream Meadowlands mall in New Jersey. The Mall of America is located on the site of the former Metropolitan Stadium where the Vikings and Twins once played. A plaque in Nickelodeon Universe commemorates the former location of home plate, and if you look carefully, there is a chair from the stadium hanging on the theme park's walls to mark the longest home run in the history of Metropolitan Stadium, a revised estimate puts it at 522 feet, by Harmon Killebrew in 1967. The American Dream Mall is notable for having an indoor ski slope which sounds dumb at first, but when you realize they're targeting those in NYC who don't or can't travel far to go skiing, it makes a lot of sense. Not to mention Mall of the Emirates in Dubai has an indoor ski slope too, but they have one because of Dubai's climate!
EXCELLENT VIDEO! I live not far from where they are building the new BRT in Rancho Cucamonga CA, this enlightened me to hopefully what our service could be. Thanks!
10 is ok for a BRT and leaves some room until you need trains. Hamburg, Germany has it's M5 line with more than 60,000 passengers per day, where they are running out of ideas: 21 meter busses with 5 doors (modified Mercedes CapaCity L) every three to five minutes…
@@sammymarrco47 you need to surpass expectations to get people out of their cars, a 10 minute wait is too long for turn-up-and-ride. Every 3 mins during peak times and 5 mins off-peak is normal where buses are successful.
I have always contended that the Twin Cities should first focus on fixing the long transit times from one neighborhood to another since routes are routed through the downtowns before money is spent on transit that benefits only a few. It takes a minimum of three transit routes to get from a neighborhood in either of the Twin Cities to another in the other. If the system was designed properly, many trips would only take one or two routes and be 2-3× as fast! We have a relatively consistent road grid that could be put to much better use accommodating transit on the existing roads.
@@quantum_vortex_ you have to ask? Obviously you are a child so I hope you learn about scarcity and resource allocation decisions at some time in the near future.
I've advocated for Guideway BRT over light rail for years, even before anyone was doing it. I love the flexibility coupled with lower cost that it provides. If a portion of the guideway becomes impassible, it doesn't shut down the system because the buses can move to surface streets. As demand changes, service levels can be rapidly and dynamically adjusted simply by putting more buses on (or off) a route. That's much harder to do with light rail. Yes, dynamic service requires hiring more drivers for buses than for trains. But it's more responsive (easier to add buses than train cars) and the added cost of drivers is offset by not paying for moving empty train cars around or the infrastructure they require.
Living in the twin cities and I didn’t even realize all the construction on the freeway east of St. Paul was for the gold line, that’s awesome! Love everything my city is doing for transit, for from perfect but I’ll take improving
Your such an amazing Chanel on UA-cam! I always look forward to seeing you and your videos. You do amazing work and it's educational I love it and, public transportation and urban engineering so Cool!!!
As a transit bus operator in Sacramento I hear a lot of good ideas and addressing a lot of problems with why a bus runs late, from my experience besides traffic and traffic lights is cash fares. People that pay the bus fare on the bus and are not ready with their fares BEFORE the bus rolls up. Instead they do what I call "The Farebox Macarena" where they're rifling through every pocket ten times over to find a fare they don't have. I like the idea of paying the bus fare at the bus stop.
"...run a lot of buses. Sometimes as often as every 10 minutes!" - I know we Europeans are spoiled brats but... I giggled a bit. In Budapest, Hungary we have a tramway with 2 tram line services on it (Line 4 and Line 6) and on workdays they can come as often as every 4 minutes... each. So with 2 tram lines that's a vehicle every 2 minutes - it's crazy. Of course it's during the rush hour and not sustained all day, but it's still crazy. During the night they "slow down" to a tram every 10 minutes. And also, they are some of the highest capacity trams around. Ah, I love our public transport. I'm glad USA finally started developing these kind of projects, they benefit everybody.
9:48 dallas has a railroad crossing kind of similar to this one in the mall of america, where the DART red and blue line go under the convention center and crosses with botham jean blvd that is also under the building too
I live in Dayton's Bluff (E St Paul) and the construction is coming along for sure. I love the Twin Cities!!! Always a few cranes in the sky...progress baby!
As someone who lives in North Minneapolis and has an arterial BRT stop in my front yard, I would never dream of riding it. It would take three times longer than driving to get to MOA. The 4 times I've gotten on the bus, there is always people getting into fights. Our metro transit is just for people who can't afford a car or can't drive. And those BRT project managers are the problem. You would think it would be simple enough to transfer from one station to another or at least connect to the skyway.
Watching this makes me happy I live in DC with a proper metro system. Having trains independent from the roads makes a huge difference when traffic starts to build up. Not much incentive to sit in traffic on a bus.
But it's expensive to build rail because in America, you guys don't build rail. If it were commonplace, and lots of track miles needed maintenance and refurbishment, it would be far cheaper, and you'd see the benefits in lower operating costs and higher operating flexibility too.
It's expensive because "the government" pays for it, and everyone loves to fleece the taxpayer. Rail requires more-specialized equipment and such, so it costs even more. Then there are all the regulations and impact studies etcetera that drive the costs up even more, especially in some places (e.g. California).
We don't build rail? We have one of the largest, if not the largest, freight rail network. Most of the building is done by private companies for freight.
@@joeblow5214 Lol you need to take a look at the cannibalization thats happening with freight rail, constantly differing maintenance in favor of high stock prices because investors hate companies spending money, downgrading rail corridors to save money and to justify their terrible longer train policies to reduce labor costs, making trains too long to use their own sidings causing all kinds of issues for freight and travel alike while refusing to extend the sidings. The truth is we really dont build rail we BUILT rail, now we're just expanding a bit every now and then at exorbitant costs because we gutted them in favor of cars and trucks and what we do have is being run into the ground by greedy stockholders.
@@CaptainBlueTech Ahhh PSR, yeah, I know. New construction is happening as is expansion of existing routes. It's also heavily subsidized by grants, low interest loans, etc. Some things really haven't changed since Credit Mobilier.
When I moved to the Twin Cities, apart from the bus network, it was just the Blue "Hiawatha" line from MOA to Target Field. Now they have the green line that bridges Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and the existing 54 that completes the loop from Saint Paul to MOA. With the A-Line and the BRT network, the Twin Cities can have a good transit network, … but we more drivers need to find public transit a better option than driving. There is currently a multi year project on the 494 corridor from Eden Prairie to the MSP airport. I work at a restaurant nearby with staff - Delivery Drivers - that see and experience the transformation.
Hey road guy rob, would you consider joining nebula? A lot of you fellow urban planning content creators like not just bikes have joined it and its become a great hub for educational videos about many topics, and would be another way to escape the youtube algorithm besides patreon, and give more people more incentive to sign up because they get multiple content creators with one purchase.
Yeah it’s a project I’ve followed for a while but Oahus is 99% grade separated and is actually considered a light metro. Most at grade light rail is insanely cheaper due to the fact they usually own the right of way already so there are no purchases or lawsuits, less environmental review, and they don’t need to pay for the cost of elevating the rail. So it’s on a nearly completely different level, however it’s unfortunate that it did end up costing a half billion per mile. Seattle has been averaging an even higher cost per mile. Whats even more concerning is whether Oahu will be able to fully expand the metro into the urban environment effectively where the density of people actually is. They’re still under lawsuit with Howard Hughes in Kakaako and they’re spending over half a billion just to relocate the utilities on Dillingham. Building in urban areas is way more difficult than dense urban areas but hopefully they’ll be able to get it done.
As someone that has utilized Metro Transit's BRT I will say it does genuinely work very well. One of the things that you didn't talk as clearly about is that because fares have been purchased in advance 3-4 doors can be opened and so the bus is at the stop for a dramatically shorter period of time. It is the difference between a single stop taking 6-7 minutes because of paying fares and taking 1/2-1 minute total and the bus is moving along. Arterial BRT works ALOT better than it seems like it should. The A-Line in St. Paul is very efficient and did not take that much to add in the stations I think they said the budget for construction was around $27 million. This an important line because it also connects the Green Line and Blue Line light rail in a different way than having to go to downtown Minneapolis.
I hope they future-proofed the design of their BRT guideways to be able to easily (relatively speaking) convert to light-rail -- which, is likely to happen in 20-30 years. Just look at Ottawa, Canada. They had BRT guideways (called Transitways); and now most have been or are in the process of being converted to light-rail.
All I've ever wanted in my home town is for transit to make progress. I've lived here for almost 45 years now and have yet to see that simple dream be realized.
Great video! I ride the aBRT A Line every day for work and I love it. One minor correction though: the Green Line opened in 2014. Construction started in 2010.
When they announced the green line light rail extension and a new stop next to my apartment, my landlord increased my rent $150 a month for what was essentially a rat trap and I moved out of the twin cities.
Your 0 degrees Celsius/Fahrenheit/Kelvin joke was highly appreciated.
Yeah and school will only delay once we reach 0K
The best thing about heated bus stops is that it gives the homeless somewhere to flock when it's cold.
of course the true Minnesota joke is that -40 does not need to specify C of F.
I legitimately laughed at that.
The degree symbol before the kelvin was a miss, but beside that is was indeed nice.
You know why this is a good idea?
Because you're basically building light rail infrastructure in advance. In a few decades when the economic growth helped by your bus services enables the municipality to afford it, you can just replace those "arterial buses" with trams and light rail without having to fuck about with routing.
Yeah, I was hoping he might bring up that fact.
I wonder if the roads and bridges are being built in such a way as to allow easy transition to rail - already having accounted for load bearing, etc?
@@Quidisibridges nowadays are way overly designed so I’m pretty sure they thought about that, they’ll be able to screw the railway sleepers into the concrete and they’d be done, only the parts that have asphalt would need to be removed for track laying.
If you're overbuilding the infrastructure to support later use by rail, you don't realize the cost savings that caused them to go with BRT to begin with. I seriously doubt those overpasses could really support any type of rail.
as long as bus service is properly funded... the city I live in (Ottawa, Ontario) has had a system very similar to what they're building for decades. I was riding light rail & taking transitway bus routes (dedicated bus-only roads like they're building in this video) when I was in university 20 years ago. Today through constant fare increases and an absolute refusal from council to actually use tax dollars to fund the transit system, our bus system has become a national embarrassment that anybody who has the option actively avoids taking. I've got a choice, now, between a 45-minute bus ride to work or a 20-minute drive. parking's only $5 more than taking the bus both ways, and they've got free charging for my EV. I *really* want more people to take the bus, but it's a really hard case to make here
@@major__kongLIght rail is likely not much more weight per square foot than buses. Most BRTs are there to be the first step for a LRT
Here in Minnesota we have 3 seasons: winter, skeeter, and construction
You forgot mud.
Two seasons: snow removal and road repair.
And the guy who visited last May ... that's right between the two seasons, so the roads are at their very worst. We can get frosts and freezes into May, so the road crews don't start until late May or June.
@@ShelterDogs take a trip down I-494 near Bloomington or I-94 North of the cities
It was darn near perfect when I was filming last September. Sounds like I lucked out!
Meanwhile Chicago only has winter and construction.
The true "magic" of a BRT is really the option to combine "being fast" and "being everywhere" with the same vehicle: You can circle though the suburb and then take the fastest route into the city.
YES. That combined with the fact it's cheaper and faster to train bus drivers, it's easier to find and hire diesel mechanics, busses are cheaper to buy up front the railway equipment. Busses often share mechanical parts with other commercial vehicles. BRT is very smart. Plus the infrastructure can be used by other city services like garbage, fire/ems, police etc without specialty equipment.
The eye-watering cost per mile figures for rail projects are mostly because of a few extremely expensive segments (eg. through a downtown). BRT can just operate as a normal bus over those segments and have dedicated lanes everywhere else.
The dream (which might eventually come true) in a lot of those places is to reduce car traffic lanes, so more folks using the buses actually enables converting to bus lanes and maybe even more space for pedestrian and cycle infrastructure.
Bruh. "We only have hammers, let's turn transit into nails". Sigh. (Pulls out an Engineering 101 manual). Let's take it from the top.
@@joeblow5214 As you said: Cheaper to buy up front, a Light rail vehicle is over all cheaper though. And you can also run them on normal streets as a tram.
On top of that, you have a much smoother ride with light-rail and trams, which increases the acceptance of it a lot more, and does in fact increase ridership.
@@germanmosca In my experience, running in mixed traffic is a *huge* drawback, and most of the advantages in reliability and frequency of BRT comes from separating out transit from other modes as much as possible.
My city runs what they call "open BRT". That means they have BRT trunks built to the highest standard shown in the video. But all along this trunk BRT line, "arterial BRT" lines branch off the main trunk. The end result is about fifty different BRT lines, each with "arterial BRT" for part of the route and "guide way BRT" for the remainder. And with so many lines sharing the trunk route, it gets a bus every 10-15 seconds in peak.
Because all the buses serve a significant amount of the trunk, it means that passengers just travelling along the trunk will catch whatever line comes along first - meaning they have almost no wait. However, because quite a few passengers want to continue on to one of the branch lines, plenty of passengers will wait for a particular line instead of catching the first bus. This really helps alleviate bunching.
Wow, what city is this?
@@meowtherainbowx4163 sounds like São Paulo or Jakarta, two of the more successful BRT systems worldwide
@@PrograErrorBogota as well
Where I'm from it's known as "Bus at high level of service" .
Seems very inefficient. Encouraging transfers allows better suburban service and saves operators which is a much needed thing with many agencies operator shortage.
The last comment of "Don't let your tool mold your service needs" should be echoed across not just the region but the nation (United States). In my neck of the woods the city has not been looking at multiple types of busses beyond the express and "local" routes. The Twin cities have learned from their initial outing and worked to improve their infrastructure and that is a breath of fresh air.
Bro, they let you film that drone footage in downtown Minneapolis?!
You must be very good - the wind tunnel effect is intense.
He did say it was the scariest drone flight he'd ever done.
It's such a great shot, he did an awesome job!
under 400ft?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again,
Road guy rob could make drying paint entertaining and engaging. Thanks for what you do!!
You're kind, Jared. Thank you!
@@RoadGuyRob i find myself eagerly awaiting each video, and what should i care about road design? but man your production quality is top tier, and every subject you seem to make interesting. Just saying great job, keep doing what your doing man!
I was a skeptic of BRT before I moved to Minneapolis, but I got on board pretty quick. The Twin Cities are seriously building out an impressive network of BRT and it allows folks to easily live cheaply car-free, all while still putting many suburban destinations within reach.
Soon you will be broke and happy 🙃
@@carlmorgan8452we already are in minnesota
As a fellow Twin Cities resident, skeptical about living easily car free but good to hear it's working for you! Still think NYC is the only city I would be content to live in car free in North America, we've got a big gap to close vs the rest of the world.
@@carlmorgan8452 you can actually save loads by not owning a car, no insurance, payment, or gas cost, just transit passes and maybe a bike.
@@carlmorgan8452 Freedom is when the closest Walmart is a 20 minute drive away
As someone that takes public transit everywhere in the Twin Cities the A Line is by far my favorite way to get anywhere. It’s super easy, reliable, and the stops feel really thoughtful in terms of places I’d want to stop. It also works well in conjunction with the rest of the transit options.
$500M for 10 miles is a bargain compared to the Los Angeles area metro rail system. When I checked a while back, it was $350M PER MILE. And yet the roads were still packed because the metro rail system is impractical for most people. Metro rail system only work out financially in highly dense areas, like Manhattan.
When I was in Seattle, it was fascinating. They have these busses, but they had started to build a subway system so in a few spots it hopped onto some tracks and got power from them; they had a few ex-trolley line setups so it popped a thing up and got power from THAT. It ran electric at those points, and it was propane or LPG or something the rest of the time. It was rather clever, it used all the parts of light rail they had started to build; instead of leaving them abandoned, or having some train line with like 1-2 lines then seperate bus system, it meant it was all nicely integrated together.
My city has the best busses in the UK outside of London. A large part of that is the experience of not having to worry about being late if you miss _one_ specific bus, a ‘once every 5/10/15 minutes’ bus service is invaluable to getting people riding.
Let me take a guess, one with a lot of maroon in its branding? If so, we used to live there and I can concur its bus network is absolutely fantastic, and with the rider numbers especially during peak months and inability to add something like subway stops, utterly invaluable.
@@Shelleloch nope, Nottingham City Transport
Fun fact (pedantic note): You don't use º with Kelvin.
That was fun😊
It's okay. It doesn't _quite_ get to 0 K or 0°R in Minneapolis, either.
@@jovetj well… 0 K is −273.15 °C / −459.67 °F.
We'd be in an ice age, like in Snowpiecer… freezing our butts off even on the Equator.
@@PrograError That... was the joke.
@@jovetjyeah, you have to get outside the Cities for that
I do feel like a lot of the cost concerns also come down to more US specific issues, since even BRT projects in the US are much more expensive than in other countries. I mean here in Denmark, the city of Odense (pop. 181k) opened a brand new 9 mile long light rail line across the city in 2022, for around the same price tag that a BRT line would cost in the US. And for another comparison, both New York City and Copenhagen are working on light rail routes across their respective city's suburbs. And the one on New York is slated to be 5 times more expensive than the one in Copenhagen, despite being nearly 5 miles shorter! Its everything from ability to aqquire land, to the way construction is tendered, to infrastructure design, to the influence of consultancy groups, and many more.
_Anything_ the government pays for in the United States tends to be much more expensive because everyone loves to fleece the taxpayer. This is the single reason why healthcare is so expensive here as well.
@jovetj It's called union labor. No matter what, any project paid for by the government comes down to bids, and said bids encounter union memberships who will squeeze every dollar & time to build it.
A blessing & curse 🤷🏾
@@MarloSoBalJr Buddy most of the labour pool over here is unionized and we still get much cheaper bids and construction costs, so you cant blame Unions on this bucko.
@@drdewott9154 In the U.S. you can. Plenty of political relationships with city leadership and lots of scandals to bare this out.
@joeblow5214 10% of the US workforce is in a union, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023. Down from 20% in the 1983. 10.7% of Construction Industry employees are unionized.
Even though these scandals are true, are Unions really the largest bearers of blame for the high cost of major infrastructure projects in the US, or is there more going on than that?
I'm a Minnesota native who traveled to Boston recently. The silver line that services Logan Int'l has BRTs as well, and they work! It felt cleaner and safer than riding a normal community bus. I'm excited for the prospect of them being built at home.
saying the silver line works is a bit of an overstatement. Often times between busses is 30-45 minutes, and to get from downtown to the airport often takes 45 minutes (it's like 3 miles)
HA a bus in Boston working. Thank you I needed the laugh.
@@InternetKilledTV21 the silver line tends to be about as reliable as the rest of the regular rail subway lines.
I don't doubt the rest of the regular bus lines are quite laughable; I don't ever take them, though, since the subway has been enough for me to commute through Boston on.
Yes, I was going to post about that, as well. I believe the Silver Line was put in as part of the Big Dig. It was originally planned to be a regular subway line, but was switched to BRT as the Big Dig costs exploded. It originally had a weird mix of dedicated and shared roadways, and it switches from electric with overhead wires to diesel in the middle of the trip between the airport and South Station, but in the last few years, they've switched to diesel-electric hybrids with enough battery range to run electric-only through the tunnels.
As a traveller, it's quite convenient that there's no toll to board at the airport, and then you can go by subway anywhere in the system.
4:00 - Poor Mary is about to get a bunch of phone calls LOL
I guess you also say poor cops/fire fighters/paramedics is about to get a bunch of phone calls when you see 911 on police cars/fire trucks/ambulances.
@@automation7295 Little bit of a different situation, but thanks for your insight there.
I live in MPLS and I honestly had no idea about how all this worked!!
Thanx Rob!!
When it comes to North American light-rail systems, a pretty great one is the St. Louis MetroLink! Serves both the Illinois and Missouri sides! Serves places like St. Louis Lambert International Airport, IKEA at Cortex, Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Busch Stadium at Stadium station, Amtrak and the Enterprise Center arena at Civic Center, and of course the Gateway Arch (which you can get an amazing view of from Laclede's Landing station). Much of MetroLink is a reused rail right of way, like the Eads Bridge which is the oldest bridge on the whole Mississippi River! When they were constructing the underground stations downtown, the tunnel was already there, using the St Louis Freight Tunnel. So with a lot of grade-separation, the Blue and Red Lines of MetroLink is basically a light metro, or a light-rail that acts like a subway!
On the Red Line, trains use the former Wabash/Norfolk & Western Railroad's Union Depot line that once brought passenger trains from Ferguson to Union Station. When the Red Line makes a stop at the Delmar Loop station, it is located just below the original Wabash Railroad's Delmar Station building! On the Blue Line, it follows a former Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA)/Rock Island railroad right of way. When they were constructing Skinker and University City-Big Bend stations, they faced opposition because that section was gonna be street-running, so they opted to build them underground! So thanks to NIMBYs, they ironically made the Blue Line a better and quicker service through no street-running!
This drone view is beautiful. 6:50
Well done.
Great to see a city built public transit and build proper stations
And thinking about how to make busses not get stuck in the same traffic you'd be in if you drove anyway
True, but maintenance is essential as well. Mechanical failure and vandalism are persistent problems.
@@jgood005 that is bound to happen to light rail and busses to none is truly safe from vandalism
The stations should be where people live, though. Now they're inside a car sewer.
I completely understand why you were scared during that drone flight. You are the real one for risking it. Underrated af.
BRT just feels like an excuse to lay the groundwork for an actual rail line without having to convince NIMBYs to pay for it all at once. But I can appreciate it for that.
I think they want to upgrade them to proper LRT in the future and are using this to get the foundation there
Yup, once they have the dedicated lanes and the bridges and stuff all there it's a lot easier to get support for light rail
It is also right sizing the system . Rail is great for higher capacity but empty trains lead to less frequency. If the buses route are overcrowded then those are the routes to upgrade.
The really sad part is, the Twin Cities used to have an amazing network of street cars. They got torn out because of lobbyists well before the 1970s.
Seems to be the story in most cities. Imagine if we just never tore out all the street car infrastructure.
As others have stated, the great thing about building the BRT this way is that it's easy to convert to a light-rail line when they're ready! It's not the first time bus infrastructure was future-proofed for light-rail conversion! Seattle did the same thing with the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Before they built the tunnel, there were different proposals for a rapid transit line, with the most significant in the 1960s. For the first attempt in February 1968 when voters were asked to provide 385 million, it narrowly passed by 50.8 percent but fell short of the required 60 percent supermajority. A second attempt in May 1970 when voters were asked for 440 million, it failed with 46 percent, and the federal money was instead given to Atlanta for MARTA. Despite this, they still planned for a bus tunnel in 1974 that could potentially become a light-rail line.
When the bus tunnel was opened in 1990, they already installed light rail tracks in anticipation, however they had to be replaced when the tracks were later found to be poorly insulated and unusable. And there was a scandal during the tunnel's construction when it was discovered in 1989 that the granite was quarried in South Africa despite a boycott of South African goods by the King County Metro Council at the time. For several years, service in the tunnel was provided exclusively by dual-mode buses, which ran as trolleybuses in the tunnel and diesel buses on city streets. Putting buses in the tunnel meant less traffic on city streets! The dual-mode trolleybuses were replaced by hybrid electric buses to prepare for the light-rail. And when the light-rail opened in 2009, the tunnel had unique operations where buses and the light-rail shared it (Pittsburgh's Mount Washington Tunnel still has shared bus/light-rail operations)! That is until 2019 when Convention Place station was sold to the Washington State Convention Center for redevelopment, closing the tunnel to buses two years earlier than the scheduled closure of 2021 (which was meant to coincide with the Northgate Link expansion). Making the tunnel light-rail only.
It doesn't actually sound like it's "easy" to convert if the only place that has successfully done it is the crazy progressive (complimentary) capital of the US, and even then it took 30 years to barely happen.
Biggest problem with BRT is they suffer from the success of emulating a train but lack the capacity and ease of adding more capacity trains have. Not easy to drive a 8 cab long bus, and it costs lots of money to hire more bus drivers
For the Guideway BRT they could just slap on the rail tracks since all of the bridges and paths have been already built, the existing bus stations would just need to be upgraded. For the other 2 options maybe a street car system since they know that it's a profitable route. They can just add the rails onto the roads.
Minneapolis will never have that kind of ridership. Even the light rail runs mostly empty
@@Notabot1310 are you from the UK? I almost never hear anyone mention this from the urbanist/transportation YT channel.
I think the Guided busways are awesome. What I like about them is that they're kind of good in between a light rail and the flexibility of a bus.
If anyone talks about guided bus ways, it's usually the autonomous trackless ones.
Unless you have a fully automated metro (not possible on street running trams), the driver cost is kind of moot. To maintain the best frequency you would need to hire as many drivers anyway. Longer trains are for if the city is truly planning to lineify and really build up the density along a key corridor.
@@bend8353 Because it's so short and doesn't have many drop off points. Why take the light rail when a bus can drop you off with in a block of your destination? The light rail is superior Yes but very expensive
Welcome to the Twin Cities! I'd always hoped you'd come here and do a video on the Gold Line.
"I'd just jump in my car." That's great if you can afford a car. Not all of us can.
Maybe that's the actual problem to be solved. Ditch the impossible CAFE standards, get rid of nanny naggers, backup cameras, CVTs, mandatory insurance, etc., and make cars affordable again.
Cars and gasoline shouldn’t even be cost of living expenses. Americans could get damn near anywhere they wanted to go without a car for most of our country’s history; that needs to become the norm again.
@@Anthony-nu5oc In Europe a man had to be as rich as a king to afford a horse. In America every other man had a horse. Cars are modern horses.
@@floycewhite6991I don’t want a car or a horse, I want a system of mass transit that works. The buses in my city (Nashville) are good, but they need to be converted to Bus Rapid Transit.
@@Anthony-nu5oc I've said it before and I'll say it again. A handful of lawyers and executives benefit from the office buildings being clustered in one place, with all the transportation arteries routed in to serve it. Only they benefit from having everyone else work the same hours as they do, so they can instantly command over the work that others do -- work that they largely don't understand, and are so removed from they have no idea what should be done anyway.
More than anything though, massive inner-city ghettos force workers to travel many miles each way every day to get past economically dead zones. The need for longer and longer trips is a function of urban planning biased toward the vanity of a handful of rich and powerful, and paternalism that spawned generation after generation of charity cases.
The Powers That Be sell us on the idea of more and faster wagons to haul the charity cases about. Meanwhile they make it harder and harder to afford and to use an automobile, pressing us to support their charity wagons as the only possible solution to this mess.
Not gonna lie. This is impressive. I see a lot of potential in this. Well done Minneapolis. Well done.
I'm glad to hear of a major metropolis catching up to my provincial city of around 200.000 people
Transit in Minneapolis when I lived there was significantly worse than transit in Trollhättan when I lived there, which has 60k people ;_;
So people get mad when america doesn’t fund transit, then when we shell out millions, people still make fun of us? Jesus, it’s impossible to win with europeans.
The railway station / bus hub inside a parking is a W
They should color their busses accordingly to the line color. If not, then make the strips along the busses colored accordingly.l
That is discriminatory towards colorblind people. 😏
@@jovetj the design and policy people can always make adjustments
If all they color their buses or make the strips along the buses accordingly to the line color, you realize that buses on the other lines can break down?
Let's say two buses on the Green line breaks down, then you'll see two blue colored buses on the Green line.
Do Americans forget that buses can break down?
Color changing leds exist people
no one ever talks about highways costing money. why is this criticism only reserved for mass transit projects?
Maybe because highways are paid for by the fuel cars consume? Instead of tolls, the gas tax funds the roads.
@@travisminneapolis i understand your point, but that is still tax dollars. I just think its weird no one complains about the tax dollars spent on roads. Just because i buy gas doesnt mean i endorse spending tax money on highway widening. i buy gas because i live in oklahoma and the only way to get around is by car.
@@travisminneapolisyou are aware that oil is heavily subsidized in the US, correct?
Because a highway can handle millions of travelers per day while costing about 1 million per mile, instead of thousands of travelers while costing 20 million per mile, so the price per user is about 0.001% as high.
Meaning the cost of road infrastructure is relatively insignificant compared to nearly all other forms.
@@operator8014 made up numbers
4:50 When you said running a lot of busses, i thought you were going to say something like every 1-5 minutes, 10 minutes is really not uniquely frequent lol
My thoughts too! 'Very frequent service' -> SOMETIMES as often as TEN minutes
I'm not saying they should just run more busses if those lines don't need them, but it's certainly not very frequent.
Ehh, Reliable 10 minute intervals is at the low end of 'frequent enough that you don't have to plan your schedule around the time table if the bus is your main method of transport'.
15-30 minutes is 'quite usable, but the bus timetable is going to be dictating most of your schedule any day you need to travel'.
Less frequently... well, up to every couple of hours can be all right if you're headed to the next town over or the like and it's a trip you make maybe once a week and are going to be there for a large chunk of the day.
Once or twice a day? ... yeah, that better be at least an all day trip to a completely different city where you're going to be Staying for a few days before you come back... ... ... and should really probably be a train.
A bus showing up every 10 minutes seems pretty fast
@@lukasg4807 10 minutes is just an average baseline functional bus frequency, its certainly nothing impressive or special
@@MonEyRuLess yeah, its ok frequency, just not anything special or something to advertise, its just the baseline normal frequency
Ottawa was a big user of BRT with dedicated transit ways many years ago. now they have the funds and are able to upgrade everything to LRT
they close a entire station because the elevators don't work? wtf clearly there are stairs people can use too
You make me love public transport so much. I don't know why but man I need this content in my life.
Is the high end BRT system only cheaper because of more companies that know how to build roads? Isn't that potentially self-defeating in the long term given they have some light rail?
It's easier to create the service from ground up, but a lot harder to upgrade later on to light rail or subway since BRT is only good for medium capacity & frequency services unless they play some tricks it wouldn't last when it has subway crunch load.
Not only that, but you also can use the buses elsewhere in the system, the mechanical parts for busses are often the same as other commercial vehicles and there are a lot of people trained in maintenance of those compared to rail ROW and rail locomotives. Bus drivers can also be trained faster and are cheaper. (High turnover job) and the infrastructure can easily be used by other city services without specialized equipment.
We are also working on two rail expansion projects right now. Perhaps they were concerned about capacity with the contractors available in the area. Additionally, since much of the route is on exclusive roadway, we might be able to retrofit some light rail in the future. A lack of ability to build more additional rail at the moment, while certainly disappointing, does not seem entirely implausible to me.
If you build a light rail line only to have 20m long vehicles on it, then BRT is a better idea.
The added value of rail is leveraging the ability to have vehicles longer than buses : 30, 40, 60m and even multiple units coupled.
@@veryrealpersonwhoisrealSt paul is also considering a pretty big street car line connecting Union Depot to MSP, and MOA along 7th street
That freeway BRT is why having grade separation and space for extra lanes is so important. It becomes super easy, both in terms of construction and politically to deliver high quality regional service.
Wow, a bus every ten minutes you say! Surely this is an unheard of frequency!
Yours from the UK.
Im baffled you’re only at 150k subs. Your content is so informative and fun! 🎉
The brt in Pittsburgh is better than it's train, coming from someone that used both daily. Hopefully though, if they are building new bridges and roads for their gold line, they are also adding a separated bike lane to it
The number of car insurance and personal injury law firm ads on benches, buses, etc. in this video is hilariously ironic.
“Don’t let your tool mold your service needs, it’s the other way around. Find the tool that really works for you to meet your exact need.”
Words of wisdom here.
Years ago I visited Pittsburgh. It was my first time visiting a city outside of Detroit.
When I got there, i accidentally picked up a "certain kind of worker" who had me drop her off when I told her I didn't have any extra money to give her.
After dropping her off, I found this road with no cars and to my surprise it got me from point A to points B, C D, and E in only a few minutes!
That was when I saw a bus driving toward me and flashing its lights. That was when I learned what BRT is and got paranoid I was about to be talking to the police.
I quickly found a way off the BRT line and fortunately, no cops. But man, that BRT route is SWEET! 😂❤🎉
Why does a broken elevator close the station? Aren't there stairs??
I'd assume it has to be accessible for everyone which would bring forth the question, why is there no ramp?
@@attackofthelumbie9029 Ramps require a lot of space, a large footprint. They probably didn't have the space.
@qwertyfff Yes, but I-35W & Lake Station is NOT accessible to the street (Lake Street) below the expressway, so the busses deploying a W/C patron is redundant cos where are they gonna go?
@@attackofthelumbie9029 In germany, ramps in public spaces are only allowed to be a maxium of 6%, so 6 cm heightgain over 1 meter of length. If the ramp is longer than 6 meters, there needs to be a rest area of 150 cm by 150 cm. Good luck trying to get a ramp going up to that station with that in mind.
Metro Transit didn't want a disabled rider marooned on the upper deck on the station with no way down to the street. So they made the bus exit the freeway and use a street-level station.
Which worked out well for me, so I could have video to show you that.
The editing is incredible
Rochester, MN will be installing a BRT in the next few years. Come visit!
As always, the production value in your videos rivals that of people who have been doing it for many more years. Proud to be a Patron.
Road Guy Bob doing transit videos! Amazing stuff. I personally think a mistake most American cities do with transitways is only running one line on it. In other countries, they build a transit way and run 10 - 15 routes on it to speed up normal bus journeys with 1 - 2 minute headways. That way you're making the best use out of expensive concrete and really getting those ridership numbers from bus numbers (20 - 50k riders) to rail numbers (100k - 150k)
Very inefficient to have so many routes duplicating each other, especially with the operator shortages that most agencies are experiencing. No thanks
@@trademark4537 Just look at Brisbane or Ottawa's transitway (well, before they demolished it). It's actually a more efficient use of infrastructure. The same concept applies with rail lines that branch out into the suburbs but converge at the downtown core. Basically you're using the existing right of way to speed up multiple services instead of just one.
@@louiszhang3050 Let's say the rapid transit route is East-West. If you run the service in the way you suggested, You would need to have the route from the North and the South both enter the transitway. If it's 5 miles to downtown, you're running 20 miles of duplicated service (2 routes, 5 miles each way). The time it takes to run a bus 20 miles, could instead be spent on running one route at high frequency north and south of the transitway.
Yes, riders would have to transfer, but you can significantly reduce their wait time to get on the first bus by investing in better frequency. Operator hours are always limited.
I grew up in the cities and didnt have license in the late 00's & rode the blue line all the time (thank god they kinda fixed minnehaha, you could get stuck at the intersection light for up to 15 minutes in the beginning) not sure if they still do it but you used to be able to ride the bus for free if you had a bike, that combo got me everywhere. glad to see our transit improving, if only we kept the streetcar's instead of selling them to san fran
Bro I absolutely hated that intersection, haven't been up there to see if it still does that.
"which puts BRT right in front of the houses of people who'd ride BRT"... shot of house with boarded up windows behind the bus stop @5:25 So cheeky haha :)
Well designed transit services easily drive up desiribilty. Someone will flip that house for a pretty penny in the future.
@@rylove001 Forget the house, somehow turn it into a medium sized apartment block, with the convenience of transit right outside, it's perfect
@@mundylunes7755 And they can, because we took out the restrictive single family zoning laws!
I believe it was Adam savage that proposed we were in the "Glass era". I would propose we currently entering the transportation era.
I guess the lack of experience in the US makes sense. If you were doing the same thing in central Europe where tram systems are a dime a dozen, you'd have no problem finding construction and maintenance companies who could build you a new tram line and maintain your trams. Plus most of the popular tram/LRV manufacturers (Alstom, Stadler, Siemens) are European.
It is not about a lack of experience. It's that experience costs a lot of money, and all the overhead is much higher.
@@jovetj But that's exactly what was said in the video, it's more expensive to build a light rail line in the US because there aren't a plethora of companies who can do it.
@@Croz89 TBH reading this far down I'm confident he's a troll of sorts...
@@Croz89 _Relative_ to roadways/highways, yes. But the trade experience itself exists here. It's not as if it's completely absent.
@PrograError He's commenting frequently in disagreement. He's a Troll! Is such a disingenuous argument born of the internet.
Consistency great videos road guy Rob
My favorite account in UA-cam
You’re grown my interest in transit and interstates 🛣️
THE ALGORYTHM! Another great video and excellent BRT primer. Thank you.
Sick drone shot!
Another good thing with bus lanes and bus ways are that other busses (read local busses) can use them too and it's easier to adapt routes if demand changes
AND you fly/get your own drone shots.. theres no reason not to love this channel
absolutely amazing video, as a Twin cities metro resident I didn't even know about this project. I'm so glad you covered it.
I grew up in St. Paul. The BRT was...decent. I took it to the gym every day during the summer as a transfer off my local route (Route 3--a go-between for the two cities and one of the most-used non-BRT services in the Cities, itself soon to be converted to BRT). Just wish they had made it 10-minute intervals before I left for college 😂
tree grates, ticket machines, schedule monitors etc. don't make the bus "rapid". "BRT" is cheaper because corners get cut.
What impresses me as an outsider is that the early drawbacks (including cost) of light rail have not stopped the work for an expanded rapid transit, even if by another mode.
Mall of America is managed by the Triple Five Group, which in turn is owned by the Ghermezian family. They also own the West Edmonton Mall and the American Dream Meadowlands mall in New Jersey. The Mall of America is located on the site of the former Metropolitan Stadium where the Vikings and Twins once played. A plaque in Nickelodeon Universe commemorates the former location of home plate, and if you look carefully, there is a chair from the stadium hanging on the theme park's walls to mark the longest home run in the history of Metropolitan Stadium, a revised estimate puts it at 522 feet, by Harmon Killebrew in 1967. The American Dream Mall is notable for having an indoor ski slope which sounds dumb at first, but when you realize they're targeting those in NYC who don't or can't travel far to go skiing, it makes a lot of sense. Not to mention Mall of the Emirates in Dubai has an indoor ski slope too, but they have one because of Dubai's climate!
EXCELLENT VIDEO! I live not far from where they are building the new BRT in Rancho Cucamonga CA, this enlightened me to hopefully what our service could be. Thanks!
A 10 minute frequency is nothing to get excited about in a city.
It’s pretty good for the US
10 is ok for a BRT and leaves some room until you need trains. Hamburg, Germany has it's M5 line with more than 60,000 passengers per day, where they are running out of ideas: 21 meter busses with 5 doors (modified Mercedes CapaCity L) every three to five minutes…
More frequency than the light rail in Phoenix
@@sammymarrco47 you need to surpass expectations to get people out of their cars, a 10 minute wait is too long for turn-up-and-ride. Every 3 mins during peak times and 5 mins off-peak is normal where buses are successful.
We used to have the most developed rail network in the world. Hell, trains were invented here in the US.
Why did we let things go so wrong?
I have always contended that the Twin Cities should first focus on fixing the long transit times from one neighborhood to another since routes are routed through the downtowns before money is spent on transit that benefits only a few.
It takes a minimum of three transit routes to get from a neighborhood in either of the Twin Cities to another in the other. If the system was designed properly, many trips would only take one or two routes and be 2-3× as fast! We have a relatively consistent road grid that could be put to much better use accommodating transit on the existing roads.
Excellent video and topic. Minneapolis-Saint Paul is way ahead of the curve.
The curve of stupidity. Yes. Way ahead.
@@jameswhipp3221 In what way is this stupid?
@@quantum_vortex_ you have to ask? Obviously you are a child so I hope you learn about scarcity and resource allocation decisions at some time in the near future.
@@jameswhipp3221 Hopefully you learn that public transport is more beneficial than any car infrastructure and more sustainable.
Nice to see more info on these projects than I could dig up for a while
That's great, progress ,
I hope they are building the roads with enough weight capacity to allow train tracks to be added later.
Next time go to Minnesota in the winter. Get footage of that guy on every block who goes jogging in shorts during a blizzard.
I've advocated for Guideway BRT over light rail for years, even before anyone was doing it. I love the flexibility coupled with lower cost that it provides. If a portion of the guideway becomes impassible, it doesn't shut down the system because the buses can move to surface streets. As demand changes, service levels can be rapidly and dynamically adjusted simply by putting more buses on (or off) a route. That's much harder to do with light rail.
Yes, dynamic service requires hiring more drivers for buses than for trains. But it's more responsive (easier to add buses than train cars) and the added cost of drivers is offset by not paying for moving empty train cars around or the infrastructure they require.
Living in the twin cities and I didn’t even realize all the construction on the freeway east of St. Paul was for the gold line, that’s awesome! Love everything my city is doing for transit, for from perfect but I’ll take improving
I think what we learned today is that Minneapolis can make any form of transit extremely expensive.
Any metropolitan area can. When "government pays for it" it's always expensive.
Your such an amazing Chanel on UA-cam! I always look forward to seeing you and your videos. You do amazing work and it's educational I love it and, public transportation and urban engineering so Cool!!!
Thank you so much!
As a transit bus operator in Sacramento I hear a lot of good ideas and addressing a lot of problems with why a bus runs late, from my experience besides traffic and traffic lights is cash fares.
People that pay the bus fare on the bus and are not ready with their fares BEFORE the bus rolls up.
Instead they do what I call "The Farebox Macarena" where they're rifling through every pocket ten times over to find a fare they don't have.
I like the idea of paying the bus fare at the bus stop.
"...run a lot of buses. Sometimes as often as every 10 minutes!" - I know we Europeans are spoiled brats but... I giggled a bit.
In Budapest, Hungary we have a tramway with 2 tram line services on it (Line 4 and Line 6) and on workdays they can come as often as every 4 minutes... each. So with 2 tram lines that's a vehicle every 2 minutes - it's crazy. Of course it's during the rush hour and not sustained all day, but it's still crazy.
During the night they "slow down" to a tram every 10 minutes. And also, they are some of the highest capacity trams around.
Ah, I love our public transport. I'm glad USA finally started developing these kind of projects, they benefit everybody.
I am definitely subscribing! This was great, wish we had more of this type of transit up here in NH.
9:48 dallas has a railroad crossing kind of similar to this one in the mall of america, where the DART red and blue line go under the convention center and crosses with botham jean blvd that is also under the building too
I live in Dayton's Bluff (E St Paul) and the construction is coming along for sure. I love the Twin Cities!!! Always a few cranes in the sky...progress baby!
At first I thought you were completely trolling. It's hard to tell if this video is a sarcastic expose or a legit report. I like it.
As someone who lives in North Minneapolis and has an arterial BRT stop in my front yard, I would never dream of riding it. It would take three times longer than driving to get to MOA. The 4 times I've gotten on the bus, there is always people getting into fights. Our metro transit is just for people who can't afford a car or can't drive. And those BRT project managers are the problem. You would think it would be simple enough to transfer from one station to another or at least connect to the skyway.
I want this guy to go to Europe so badly and talk about the public transportation in some of the countries here
Watching this makes me happy I live in DC with a proper metro system. Having trains independent from the roads makes a huge difference when traffic starts to build up. Not much incentive to sit in traffic on a bus.
Metro transit is really improving, and while they spend a lot they are actually using the money wisely
They're totally right: building *something* even if it's not perfect, is better than building *nothing*
Minnesota is doing a lot of good construction rn. They’re even building a major Amtrak expansion to Duluth called Northern Lights Express
But it's expensive to build rail because in America, you guys don't build rail. If it were commonplace, and lots of track miles needed maintenance and refurbishment, it would be far cheaper, and you'd see the benefits in lower operating costs and higher operating flexibility too.
It's expensive because "the government" pays for it, and everyone loves to fleece the taxpayer. Rail requires more-specialized equipment and such, so it costs even more. Then there are all the regulations and impact studies etcetera that drive the costs up even more, especially in some places (e.g. California).
We don't build rail? We have one of the largest, if not the largest, freight rail network. Most of the building is done by private companies for freight.
@@joeblow5214 Lol you need to take a look at the cannibalization thats happening with freight rail, constantly differing maintenance in favor of high stock prices because investors hate companies spending money, downgrading rail corridors to save money and to justify their terrible longer train policies to reduce labor costs, making trains too long to use their own sidings causing all kinds of issues for freight and travel alike while refusing to extend the sidings.
The truth is we really dont build rail we BUILT rail, now we're just expanding a bit every now and then at exorbitant costs because we gutted them in favor of cars and trucks and what we do have is being run into the ground by greedy stockholders.
@@CaptainBlueTech Ahhh PSR, yeah, I know. New construction is happening as is expansion of existing routes. It's also heavily subsidized by grants, low interest loans, etc. Some things really haven't changed since Credit Mobilier.
When I moved to the Twin Cities, apart from the bus network, it was just the Blue "Hiawatha" line from MOA to Target Field. Now they have the green line that bridges Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and the existing 54 that completes the loop from Saint Paul to MOA. With the A-Line and the BRT network, the Twin Cities can have a good transit network, … but we more drivers need to find public transit a better option than driving.
There is currently a multi year project on the 494 corridor from Eden Prairie to the MSP airport.
I work at a restaurant nearby with staff - Delivery Drivers - that see and experience the transformation.
Hey road guy rob, would you consider joining nebula? A lot of you fellow urban planning content creators like not just bikes have joined it and its become a great hub for educational videos about many topics, and would be another way to escape the youtube algorithm besides patreon, and give more people more incentive to sign up because they get multiple content creators with one purchase.
Only 150 mil/mile for light rail? Here on Oahu our rail project is 526 MILLION / mile. We’re never gonna be able to pay for this shit
Yeah it’s a project I’ve followed for a while but Oahus is 99% grade separated and is actually considered a light metro. Most at grade light rail is insanely cheaper due to the fact they usually own the right of way already so there are no purchases or lawsuits, less environmental review, and they don’t need to pay for the cost of elevating the rail. So it’s on a nearly completely different level, however it’s unfortunate that it did end up costing a half billion per mile. Seattle has been averaging an even higher cost per mile. Whats even more concerning is whether Oahu will be able to fully expand the metro into the urban environment effectively where the density of people actually is. They’re still under lawsuit with Howard Hughes in Kakaako and they’re spending over half a billion just to relocate the utilities on Dillingham. Building in urban areas is way more difficult than dense urban areas but hopefully they’ll be able to get it done.
As someone that has utilized Metro Transit's BRT I will say it does genuinely work very well. One of the things that you didn't talk as clearly about is that because fares have been purchased in advance 3-4 doors can be opened and so the bus is at the stop for a dramatically shorter period of time. It is the difference between a single stop taking 6-7 minutes because of paying fares and taking 1/2-1 minute total and the bus is moving along. Arterial BRT works ALOT better than it seems like it should. The A-Line in St. Paul is very efficient and did not take that much to add in the stations I think they said the budget for construction was around $27 million. This an important line because it also connects the Green Line and Blue Line light rail in a different way than having to go to downtown Minneapolis.
It would be interesting to see how much they have spent on widening freeways and stroads the last 20 years.... Also counting federal money.
I hope they future-proofed the design of their BRT guideways to be able to easily (relatively speaking) convert to light-rail -- which, is likely to happen in 20-30 years. Just look at Ottawa, Canada. They had BRT guideways (called Transitways); and now most have been or are in the process of being converted to light-rail.
All I've ever wanted in my home town is for transit to make progress. I've lived here for almost 45 years now and have yet to see that simple dream be realized.
Great video! I ride the aBRT A Line every day for work and I love it. One minor correction though: the Green Line opened in 2014. Construction started in 2010.
This works for people who live and work in the same city.
Yeah those stations are nice at lake Street. Nice enough for homeless people to live in. 😂
When they announced the green line light rail extension and a new stop next to my apartment, my landlord increased my rent $150 a month for what was essentially a rat trap and I moved out of the twin cities.