Quite often, in recent years, as policymakers at state and local levels have pushed some wacky rail scheme, we at Center of the American Experiment have suggested buses as an alternative. Back in 2018, when the Ramsey County board was proposing to spend up to $2 billion on a (now abandoned) streetcar service between St. Paul and the airport — a route already covered faster and with more stops by the 54 bus — I suggested simply expanding the bus service. Not only would it be cheaper and less hassle in the construction phase, but:
…if demand changes at some point in the future, bus capacity can be added or subtracted as needed. With buses, the route can also be modified as needed. Once you’ve built tracks, you’re stuck with them.
But if any entity can take a better option and make it as bad, it is government.
One of the attractions of buses over light rails or streetcars is their relative affordability. But when Metro Transit began planning its Gold Line, a “rapid, frequent, all-day service between Woodbury, Oakdale, Landfall, Maplewood, and downtown St. Paul” a decade ago, it was projected to cost $500 million. This was because, rather than running on existing roads, the Gold Line would also run on a dedicated “guideway,” bus-only lanes, painted red, including those running adjacent to I-94, which were costly to build.
Perhaps the cost would be worth it if the riders turned up? In 2017, Metro Transit projected 8,000 daily riders by 2040. Later, this was cut to 6,500. By the time of the Gold Line’s launch in March, this had fallen again, to 5,900.
In fact, Metro Transit’s most recent data from July shows average weekday rides just above 1,400.
…made 10 trips on the Gold Line – mornings, midday and afternoons – throughout the month of August.
Those rides included several stops between Woodbury and St. Paul with no more than three boardings at a time and often, no one getting on the bus at all.
…
In all of 5 INVESTIGATES’ rides in August, no one got on or off the bus at the station that serves 3M. Sometimes the buses did not stop there at all.
More seats were filled on the rides from St. Paul back to Woodbury in the afternoons, but the east-to-west morning rides in August often saw very few boardings at stations along the line or sometimes none at all.
The Gold Line bus has “Golden Turkey” written all over it.
This will come as no surprise to East Metro residents who are accustomed to seeing these expensive buses running on expensively constructed lanes to carry air from Woodbury to downtown St. Paul and back. The transit boondoggles of recent years have been justified on the basis of “If you build it, they will come,” but they never do.
