This article was first published by Project Optimist.

A group of southeastern Minnesotans may start an organization to address transportation barriers. 

The organization, called a transportation management organization (TMO) or transportation management association (TMA), can comprise public and private partners who provide and promote “efficient, reliable, and affordable transportation options within a particular region or jurisdiction,” according to a statement from SE MN Together. The organization aims to address transportation, housing, and economic development issues. 

SE MN Together is seeking a TMO after a 2018-2019 study found the region needed a “holistic” and comprehensive approach to address transportation issues impacting workforce mobility, access to services and post-secondary education, and quality of life in southeastern Minnesota.

Organizers don’t specify what initiatives they plan to offer, because they want to learn about the region’s transportation needs, said Joel Young, project manager, in an email to Project Optimist. The fact-finding phase, which includes a survey, focus groups, and an online form to solicit ideas, is underway and funded by a $350,000 appropriation from the 2023 legislative session. Organizers plan to present their findings before a steering committee later this winter. 

If organizers decide to move forward with a TMO, planners will prepare a report on the organization’s structure, budget, and funding sources by June.

What are TMOs?

Association for Commuter Transportation Executive Director David Straus says TMOs vary by location, but they all strive to encourage people to get around by modes other than driving, either through education, ride matching, incentives, or advocacy. They are often funded by public and private entities. 

“The programs and services that they put out there are based on the needs of the community that it’s located in,” Straus said in a phone interview. He said TMOs can foster carpools, administer subsidy programs to encourage people not to drive, or advocate for bicycling, pedestrian, or public transit improvements. He likened it to a chamber of commerce that fosters economic development activity.

Though TMOs exist in rural areas, Straus added they might not necessarily be a good fit. “It can be difficult in a true rural setting where there may not be any large employment basis to support the organization, but at the same time in those cases, the real question would be, what are the transportation challenges that you’re trying to address in those communities?” Straus said. 

“TMAs stretch to more rural, suburban areas all the time,” he said. “That may focus more heavily on carpooling and vanpooling. Depending on the situation and what’s around, they may look at trying to build support for a more flexible mobility-on-demand service, kind of an on-call public transit service that can be put in place. It’s just a matter of being able to have the resources to support it.”

A TMO/TMA in action

One such TMA serving rural communities in Vermont and New Hampshire is the Upper Valley Transportation Management Association, convened in 2001 between Dartmouth College and local nonprofit Vital Communities.

Funded by dues from local communities and employers based on size, the organization, which transit agencies and planning organizations also participate in, educates people on what they can do without a car. For example, the Upper Valley TMA partnered with a local senior center to teach the elderly how they can get around if they can no longer drive, and offered biking workshops.

Vital Communities also administers the “Emergency Ride Home” program for commuters who live on the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley. Such programs exist across the nation to help commuters who don’t drive to work get home in an emergency by reimbursing their vehicle rental, or taxicab, Uber, or Lyft ride.

However, the program hasn’t gotten any use, because the region doesn’t have many ridehail options. “Some of our towns, there’s no cabs. There’s really no Lyft or Uber. Hanover (N.H.) maybe has one driver sometimes, so there’s just not a lot of other options to get home,” Vital Communities program manager Ellen Hender said.

Even though the program doesn’t get much use, they keep the program because it doesn’t cost them anything to run and want to provide an option for residents living on the New Hampshire side of the Upper Valley. 

Vital Communities gauges success of their TMA by measuring engagement and participation satisfaction. “Effectively, do their individual organizations feel supported by the TMA and is it worth their effort to participate,” Hender said in an e-mail. Membership continues to grow and engagement is “consistent,” Hender said.

TMA opens doors to new partnerships

Vital Communities also leads their own transportation programming outside the scope of the TMA and involves TMA members as partners. 

In one such program, they helped local residents and employers discover e-bikes. Vital Communities provides an e-bike subsidy program, which is funded by a $31,500 Vermont Agency of Transportation mobility grant.

Initially a first come, first served program to persuade middle-income people to purchase an e-bike, Vital Communities changed the program to help those who need a form of transportation based on “social determinants of health or socioeconomic touch points,” said program manager Anna Guenther. The program has helped jobseekers, students who are the first in their family to go to college, people who live without a car or not near a public transit stop, as well as neurospicy individuals who get overstimulated by riding public transit. 

“Owning this valuable and useful item is a real, great stepping stone for them, a bit of security and independence and freedom,” said Guenther. 

How can a TMO succeed in southeast Minnesota?

Straus, Association For Commuter Transportation’s executive director, said a TMO needs collaboration and support from private and public entities to work. 

The effort in Southeastern Minnesota has the ingredients.

The Minnesota Legislature has funded the study. Eight of the region’s employers, who have deployed employee shuttles, vanpools, and carpools, believe help in crafting commuter plans and programs would be a “significant benefit,” according to interviews conducted by SE Minnesota Together. And, dial-a-ride transit agencies said serving rural parts of the region is expensive and time-consuming, though some are already working with local businesses to transport the elderly to medical appointments, as well as children to school. 

“Successful TMAs require that collaboration between public entities and the private sector to make it successful,” Straus said.  “The state, the (metropolitan planning organization), they need to be supportive of the formation of the TMAs and helping them succeed, and the private sector needs to be able to see that support and contribute and buy into the organization, and ultimately the organization needs to be empowered to be able to work with and represent those stakeholders that are there.” 

This story was edited and fact-checked by Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten.

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Late December, Nicollet Mall was replete with people, along with clusters of portable toilets scattered throughout. 

Those portapotties were there to support those attending Holidazzle, the annual holiday celebration organized by the Minneapolis Downtown Council. 

Outside of Holidazzle, however, facilities for people to relieve themselves are few and far between. The Minneapolis Downtown Council hopes to change that by increasing the amount of available bathrooms by 20% in the next two years. They don’t know exactly how they will do so, but plan to convene a series of meetings this year to strategize. 

The Downtown Minneapolis approach

There are a few places you can go downtown when nature calls, mostly in publicly-owned buildings such as the Minneapolis Central Library and City Hall. Privately owned restrooms available to the public include those at the Downtown Improvement District offices at Sixth Street and Nicollet Mall, as well as the Target. 

Many more restrooms in privately owned buildings are a hassle for people like Seany Thephachane to use. Thephachane is a courier who sometimes makes deliveries downtown. “Most of the time, I gotta go inside a building to look for one. Sometimes, it’s like, ‘you gotta use a key card to get in.’ I have not tried asking, I just kind of skip it because I don’t have time to ask,” Thephachane said as he hung out at Holidazzle with friends. 

Other businesses have restricted access to their restrooms in recent years. One business told KARE 11 that it did not want to open their restrooms to the public because some people ended up camping in them or doing drugs. And Target in recent years closed its gender-specific, multi-stall restrooms; people needing to use a restroom must line up for a single-stall by the registers and wait for a staff member to enter a code. 

Meanwhile, none of the publicly available restrooms are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District (DID), a subsidiary of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, tried to deploy overnight bathrooms twice in the past several years. During the fair weather months, DID hosts Warehouse District Live on N. First Avenue between N. Fifth and N. Sixth streets. From early evening on Friday and Saturday to 3 a.m. the following mornings, they have portable toilets available, as well as karaoke, inflatable ball toss and food trucks. 

Before Warehouse District Live, in 2019, DID deployed 24/7 restrooms in the form of portable toilets throughout downtown as part of their 100 Restrooms Project. The program was suspended when the pandemic began. 

Ben Shardlow, chief of staff for DID and the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said the 100 Restrooms Project had challenges with people abusing the portable toilets. “There were people who barricaded themselves inside the restrooms, so no one else could use the facility, for days at a time. Shardlow said in a phone interview, adding that people also were “aggressively unclean” in them. 

For Jay Matthews, who is unhoused, access to a restroom is important to be able to maintain his hygiene. “If we’re trying to prevent disease and we’re trying to prevent being sick, you want people to be able to use the bathroom in places they can dispose of this stuff without making everybody sick. No one is gonna hire you if you smell like s***. Just cause you (sic) homeless, you shouldn’t have to look like it all the time,” Matthews said as he participated in a panel convened by Central Lutheran Church on a recent Thursday morning. Matthews added that he knows people who have been cited for sex-related offenses for urinating in public. 

At the same panel, Michelle P, who declined to provide the spelling of her last name, wants to ensure restrooms for women are only used by women. She cites one experience where she complained to security at a public building  that men were present in the women’s restroom. 

DID’s Shardlow said the Downtown Council is talking with partners and convening implementation committees to address the lack of restrooms downtown in an effort to hit the 20% goal in the next two years. “There isn’t a lot of detail behind it. There’s a whole lot more work that needs to follow to actually move the needle and get better public restroom access downtown,” Shardlow said. 

How have other cities made restrooms available in their downtowns? 

Minneapolis is far from the only city with a public restroom challenge. Winnipeg took a shot at addressing it, first by deploying temporary toilets, then building a permanent restroom facility, called Amoowigamig, in 2022 using shipping containers. The cost to deploy both was funded by just around 900,000 Canadian dollars in grants from Canadian organizations. 

Like public toilets in other cities, Winnipeg’s temporary restrooms were vandalized. “Folks have taken away the toilet seat or the toilet paper dispenser, the urinal, anything that was removable was removed, and in some cases, the washrooms were completely lost to fire,” said Chris Brens, manager for community development at the city of Winnipeg. 

To combat vandalism, the city considered staffing Amoowigamig, which means “public washroom” in Ojibwe, with security guards. After gathering community feedback, Brens said they ultimately decided to staff the restroom with peer support workers, who have lived experiences being unhoused and are retained through Indigenous-led social service organization Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata. 

The peer support workers connect unhoused users to harm reduction supplies, including clean needles and pipes, condoms, Narcan, feminine products, as well as permanent housing. Peer support workers are at Amoowigamig 16 hours a day, costing the city of Winnipeg 270,000 Canadian dollars in 2024. 

Meanwhile, California cities San Francisco, Palo Alto and San Jose all have public self-cleaning toilets furnished by French advertising firm JCDecaux, all of which are free to use and some of which are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

San Francisco began experimenting with the self-cleaning restrooms, which were reported to be the first of their kind in the world, in the early 1990s to combat street feces. In 1998, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended an agreement with JCDecaux to erect 25 restrooms on sidewalks and at parks. Users can use the restrooms for up to 20 minutes before the door automatically opens on them. The restrooms are also equipped with a button that dials 911 when pressed twice, as well as an emergency lever to open the door to exit. 

The self-cleaning facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose are rented from JCDecaux. San Francisco’s toilets are paid for through advertising, with the city receiving a small cut. 

The toilets aren’t perfect, and some break down. One unit near the city’s Ferry Building remains out of order after first responders used the “jaws of life” to rescue someone from it in November. 

In the past, the facilities have had a reputation for fostering drug use, sex work and shelter. In 2014, the city’s public works department hired attendants to supervise some self-cleaning toilets up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some toilet users say people use the restrooms less often for drugs, sex and shelter with the presence of attendants. 

Not everyone appreciates them, though. Junior Rodriguez, who draws cartoons and is unhoused, said he sometimes needs to use a restroom for longer than 20 minutes. “Sometimes you feel like taking a little longer because you ate something,” Rodriguez said after emerging from an unattended self-cleaning restroom near the city’s Ferry Building. 

In 2020 the Board of Supervisors tried to kill the restroom contract, which had been renewed the year prior, in the wake of a corruption scandal that rocked the city’s public works department and landed its former director in federal prison. A representative from a rival advertising company testified at a Board of Supervisors meeting that they offered the city’s public works department more restrooms and money, only for the department to cancel the request for proposals and rewrite how proposals were evaluated. 

How should Minneapolis proceed?

Ward 3 City Council member Michael Rainville believes DID should work with businesses to open their restrooms to the general public. “They’re already there. When these retail-type buildings were built, they included public restrooms, but over time they just haven’t made them accessible to the public,” Rainville said. 

Matthews wants those retail restrooms open and attended to by unhoused people like himself. “I’ll take that job. I’ll take some money. I’ll sit there and make sure, hey, man (makes a knocking gesture), wellness check. Um, you OK in there? No drug use up in here. They’re making all this money raising the prices on food and everything, you pay another person minimum wage or something to go in there,” Matthews said. 

Street Voices For Change offered to monitor Target’s downtown Minneapolis store restrooms to keep them open but could never work out a deal. 

“Every time we as Street Voices organized to meet with somebody to have this conversation, they change the decision maker. And they just kept moving around the decision maker so that we could never then organize and strategize and get our questions answered,” said the Reverend Melissa Pohlman, pastor for Community Ministries at Central Lutheran Church. Target did not respond to requests to discuss the single-stall restroom or attempts to partner with Street Voices For Change on monitoring the downtown store’s restroom. 

Outside of retail spaces, Rainville adds he is open to studying building restrooms on city streets so long as the city can address costs and security issues, which he defines as people misbehaving and infringing “upon the rights of people who are behaving themselves.”

Council member Katie Cashman, who represents much of downtown and Loring Park, believes DID should work with the city to establish more public restrooms, citing the Peavey Plaza restroom trailer as an example. “The Peavey Plaza seasonal restroom trailer is a great example of a successful public restroom amenity that serves tourists walking from the Convention Center to Nicollet Mall, as well as downtown residents who are just out and about running errands,” Cashman said. 

Jairus Sullivan recounted how convenient it was when Holidazzle was happening, because its presence came with portable toilets. “That was awesome. Just roll down Nicollet and pop into a port-a-potty,” Sullivan said at the same panel Matthews participated in. Sullivan believes more portable toilets downtown would effectively address the lack of restrooms. 

Meanwhile, Jay4 Vang said while attending Holidazzle that downtown restrooms should not be portable. “Who wants to sit on a cold porta potty? Having indoor bathrooms would be ideal. Me personally, I wouldn’t want to go into a cold porta potty,” Vang said while hanging out with friends at Holidazzle. 

Hopkins resident Jenna Benson would feel safe using a public restroom with glass that changes opacity depending on whether or not it is occupied. “They’re clear when there’s no one in there, and then I go in, they turn a color so no one can see it,” Benson said at Holidazzle. “I feel like one of those bathrooms would really be inviting; I want to see what I’m going into and not get trapped into, like a gross situation.” Such restrooms exist in Japan.

Maple Grove resident Austin Doan, who was visiting Holidazzle with two siblings, suggests the restrooms should only be accessible with codes or an app. “Because if it’s just unlocked, then people will probably ruin it. It’s not safe for people to use it,” Doan said. 

Meanwhile, Bryan Doan, who uses they/them pronouns and is one of Austin’s siblings, suggested people share bathroom codes with one another on social media. “I live in New York, and they have these grassroots efforts where people just go on Twitter and they give bathroom codes,” Bryan said.

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Imagine a place where you can offer your unwanted materials to others and, at the same time and location, take items discarded by others. 

Sure, there’s Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing groups. But not everyone wants to spend time online — particularly on a Meta platform, where Facebook Marketplace and Buy Nothing groups are commonly housed, as Meta eliminates fact checkers and changes their speech policies. And though thrift and antique stores may be options, they might not have everything you need, they might not take everything you have and you might not necessarily have the time to hop from store to store for one reason or another. 

To combat waste, activists — including those involved with advocating for the closure of the downtown Minneapolis incinerator — are calling for locations where people can dispose, reuse, recycle and compost their collective waste. They are calling those places “resource recovery parks.” 

What’s a resource recovery park?

According to a 2000 report to the California Integrated Waste Management Board written by Gary Liss, a California-based zero waste consultant, resource recovery parks could locate “reuse, recycling, compost processing, manufacturing, and retail” operations in one facility. Similar to thrift stores, they allow people who wish to discard an item to do so, as well as for others to buy discarded items. In an email, Liss added that there are no minimum requirements a resource recovery park has to meet to be considered a resource recovery park. 

One example in California is Urban Ore. The park operates on a 3.5-acre-lot with a 35,000 square-foot warehouse in southwestern Berkeley accessible by public transit and a bikeway. Since 1980, the park has accepted items for resale, including medical devices, doors, bathtubs, sound equipment, books, bike parts, clothing and laptop cables. 

Urban Ore has gathered goods in different ways, first starting operations in the city of Berkeley’s landfills, eventually moving to the city’s transfer station and ultimately settling in the southwestern Berkeley warehouse in the early 2000s. The organization continues to station a truck at the city of Berkeley’s transfer station, where it transports items to the warehouse. 

Urban Ore also has a team that does item pickups and dropoffs by appointment. Pickups are free, and sometimes the organization pays for items. Those wanting deliveries pay on a sliding scale. 

Urban Ore doesn’t take everything — mattresses, styrofoam, dirty clothing, window blinds and explosives aren’t accepted, either they think the items won’t sell, aren’t salvageable or could be hazardous to human health. Appliances are accepted for a fee. 

Jered Higgins, who is moving into a new apartment with his wife, decided to drop off some electronics to Urban Ore one Sunday afternoon, instead of listing the items on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or taking them to Goodwill. “I’m not on anything Meta and my other option was to do Craigslist or potentially donate it to Goodwill or another place that will take it. I usually come here first, especially when I have something else I’m looking for too,” Higgins said, adding he was looking for power cords for older electronics that Urban Ore stocks.  

Urban Ore’s sales, particularly their home improvement items, have increased since the pandemic began, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The increase in sales allowed them to replace their roof and install a solar panel array that reduced their power bill by a factor of 100. 

Urban Ore does not have composting facilities on-site. Liss, the zero waste consultant, says resource recovery parks do not necessarily have to include on-site composting. 

Other challenges remain. For the past year and a half, Urban Ore’s workers have been negotiating a contract with the owners, after a majority of their non-managerial workers voted to organize a union with the Industrial Workers of the World. 

More needed to achieve zero waste, says Hennepin

Meanwhile, Hennepin County’s Zero Waste plan calls for exploring the creation of resource recovery parks. The county already operates something similar — the Transfer Station and Recycling Center on Jefferson Highway in Brooklyn Park. 

The Brooklyn Park facility accepts drop offs of recyclables, organics and household hazardous waste and provides a “free product center” where people 18 and older can take up to 10 items such as paint that were dropped off by others, so long as they do not resell them. Usage is restricted to those living in the seven counties that comprise the Twin Cities area. 

Officials also are considering adding technology at their Brooklyn Park facility to pull recyclables from the trash, before they are buried in landfills or incinerated. They are also looking for a way to expand drop-off and collection options for hard-to-recycle items.

The county is not looking to add reuse retailers or repair space at the Brooklyn Park facility. “I think we have a lot of great options across the county already. There are a lot of places to donate, there are a lot of places to buy used items, and they don’t necessarily need to be all in the same place. It’s just weighing what’s convenient for people and what should be the purpose of this site,” said Ben Knudson, Hennepin County’s Waste Reduction and Recycling manager. 

Liss, the California-based zero waste consultant, said many resource recovery parks do not sell things they collect directly to the public, “Often because they weren’t designed for that function.” He added that in his view new resource recovery parks should sell items collected directly to the public if the parks can display the products and handle customer traffic.

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Eden Prairie resident Jasper Hanke hoped to ride the Southwest light rail extension, now dubbed the Green Line extension, to get to classes at the University of Minnesota. 

But Hanke, a senior environmental sciences student who expects to graduate this summer, likely won’t have the chance, at least for school. “With the delay, I’m probably not gonna use it too much,” Hanke said as he waited for a ride home inside Southwest Station in Eden Prairie, the final stop of the light rail line and a hub for SouthWest Transit buses.

When the Metropolitan Council first broke ground on the Hennepin County-planned project in 2018, the agency planned to open the line in 2023. Amid problems with building a tunnel in the Kenilworth corridor, the project’s opening day was delayed to 2027, with a final cost of $2.86 billion to be settled at a Dec. 11 Met Council meeting. 

The agency also faces scrutiny from the state Legislature regarding its finances and ability to rein in contractors, with a report expected to be finished this winter. And, the agency faces a federal lawsuit brought by one of their engineers. A trial is anticipated to begin next September. 

Despite the challenges, much of the line from Belt Line Boulevard in St. Louis Park west to SouthWest Station is mostly complete. The overhead wires are up, the fencing is in, and the signals are waiting to be tested. Most of the trains purchased for the extension are running today on the Blue Line. And Metro Transit Route 17 buses began serving the Blake Road light rail station on Dec. 7, primarily so their drivers can use a new restroom while on breaks. All that appears to remain are the installation of Go-To card readers and ticket vending machines, which were ordered in August. 

So why won’t Metro Transit, the agency that runs the region’s transit system under the Met Council, at least open the St. Louis Park to Eden Prairie segment to the riding public? It’s because there is no place along the line to maintain the trains.

“Light rail vehicles require access to the existing maintenance facilities in Minneapolis or St. Paul, as there is no maintenance facility being constructed as part of the Green Line Extension project,” spokesperson Drew Kerr said in an email. 

The agency initially reduced the size of the operations and maintenance facility to be built in Hopkins adjacent Shady Oak Road station as part of a 2015 cost-cutting move. In 2018, officials instead decided to expand the existing Blue Line maintenance facility in Minneapolis to handle the vehicles needed for the Green Line extension. The expansion was built in 2020. Part of the Hopkins site will now be home to a $14 million facility housing equipment to maintain the extension’s infrastructure. 

Metro Transit also can’t start testing on the line until it is completely built. “The entire alignment must complete – detailed testing, system integration and safety verifications – before revenue operations can commence,” Kerr added. 

If Metro Transit opened the completed Green Line extension segment in and west of St. Louis Park, Ben Bradford would ride it to work at a restaurant in St. Louis Park. “I feel like the train would be a lot faster than the bus,” Bradford said as he rode the 612, a bus route paralleling the Green Line extension on Excelsior Boulevard. 

Other transit agencies in the nation building light rail projects have been able to open parts of their lines in spite of construction affecting a crucial segment. In Washington state, for example, Sound Transit is building a $4 billion, 18-mile light rail line called the East Link to connect downtown Seattle with the region’s eastern suburbs, home to Microsoft. 

Sound Transit delayed the opening of the entire East Link line from mid-2023 to 2025 after it directed its construction contractor to rebuild faulty track-supporting concrete plinths on a viaduct leading to the floating bridge crossing Puget Sound.

However, after pressure from local elected officials and tech executives, as well as studies by its staff, the Sound Transit board decided to open the completed segment in the eastern suburbs, dubbed the East Link Starter Line, earlier this year. What sets the East Link Starter Line apart from the completed Green Line extension segment is the East Link Starter Line is directly connected to an operations and maintenance facility along the line, which was built to support the extension. 

In Los Angeles, construction of a light-rail subway under downtown necessitated a two-plus-year split of the Metro L Line, which connected east Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley suburbs into two. One segment, running within East L.A., does not have a maintenance facility. The agency parked the trains running on that segment in a tunnel or at Atlantic station, the eastern end of the segment. Every month, trains needing maintenance were trucked to a facility on the segment serving the San Gabriel Valley. 

In the Twin Cities, Kerr said Metro Transit has more work to do to prepare for the line’s opening in 2027. Construction of the long-delayed Kenilworth tunnel is 95% complete, Kerr said, and workers have begun erecting overhead wires and installing communications systems. That work is expected to be finished in 2026. 

Crews are also wrapping up construction of the five Minneapolis stations, as well as the track between Target Field and Bryn Mawr station. They hope to begin installing signals, communications infrastructure and overhead wires on that segment starting at the end of the year.  

Vera Sachs is looking forward to the Green Line extension’s opening. She expects it to offer more frequent service between downtown Minneapolis and Eden Prairie than Southwest Transit’s express buses do today. “They’re just too infrequent and outdated,,” Sachs said, as she sat waiting, with another hour to go, for the next express bus to take her back to Minneapolis.

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Faced with growing community concerns about crime and fare evasion, last fall Metro Transit began a study on installing turnstiles at four of its light-rail stations.

This past July, they learned how much that would cost: $14 million, according to a report prepared by a consultant and obtained through a data practices request. 

The agency contracted with infrastructure design firm HNTB to evaluate installing turnstiles at four stations: Franklin Avenue, 46th Street, Snelling Avenue, and Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue. The report does not evaluate installing turnstiles at Lake Street/Midtown Station, which the agency plans to rebuild as part of its efforts to renew and expand the Blue Line. 

If Metro Transit does erect turnstiles at the four stations on its Blue and Green lines, both of which use light-rail vehicles that board at platforms 14 inches above the ground, it would be the first system of its kind in the United States to have them. The agency does not have any concrete plans to implement turnstiles at this time.

Metro Transit leaders and HNTB are worried that, because of the low floor height, people could simply walk on the tracks and step onto the platform, bypassing the turnstiles. This is less of a concern in cities such as Los Angeles, which have light-rail vehicles that board at platforms 39 inches above ground.  

“If you put in gates, you can just walk around, walk on the tracks. It would be worse, even more dangerous,” Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle said during an August bike tour of the Southwest Light Rail project.

Installing turnstiles also would require the agency to move its ticket vending machines so that they are off of the boarding area, where they are today. To accommodate the vending machines, the agency also would have to relocate poles that support the overhead wires, rebuild the ramps leading onto the platforms, and lengthen the raised platforms to close to 300 feet. This could be a challenge, particularly at the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station, which at 260 feet is the shortest platform in the system. 

The agency does not have current fare evasion rate figures for its light-rail system. In the past, Metro Transit has relied on spot checks to estimate the fare evasion rate. Based on those checks, the rate was estimated at between 8% and 10% in 2016. 

The agency also did not say how much money is lost due to fare evasion. However, the per-passenger subsidies for both light-rail routes have increased since the pandemic began, as ridership cratered before slowly recovering. Though 2023 ridership was 58% of 2019 levels, the system subsidy per passenger was close to three times higher, at $5.49 versus $1.96 in 2019. 

The report also suggests that the agency may need to consolidate its existing fare media products, which include paper transfers, magnetic transfers, as well as its mobile phone app, to be compatible with the Go-To card. Authors of the report believe no turnstiles available on the market today can handle barcodes, paper transfers, or magnetic transfers, though photos of Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s new turnstiles deployed this year appear to show readers that accept barcodes and magnetic transfers. 

Nonetheless, retrofitting the existing ticket vending machines to “add” fare media capability — the report does not say which of their three different types of ticket vending machines they would need to retrofit, and the light-rail ticket vending machines can already reload Go-To cards — would cost $75,000 per machine. 

The agency pledges to study their fare collection systems in the next five years. Until then, the Met Council is studying and implementing changes to its transfer policy, fares, and passes, as well as undertaking a $37.7 million upgrade to the Go-To card system to accept credit and debit cards in the next two years. This includes upgrading existing ticket vending machines at light-rail stations. 

“Any future effort that may be undertaken to add barriers to light-rail stations would require us to consider how the fare products available to riders would interact with that equipment,” Metro Transit spokesperson Drew Kerr said. 

Minneapolis resident Renee Pitman believes turnstiles would be a massive waste of money used to enable harassment of riders who can’t pay. “I’m worried that it would be a waste of money, that they would end up spending more money than they would make in fares,” Pitman said, adding that the train should be free. “I’m just opposed to any barriers to using transit because that’s an important part of getting people out of private vehicles and fighting climate change. The more people we can get not driving, the more chance we have in slowing down climate collapse.”

Even if the agency were to install turnstiles, Chair Zelle, speaking at the August bike tour, said the agency will need to increase its human presence. “Law enforcement, security, guides, community service officers, we just need people, including customers, to kind of maintain a standard of behavior and reduce crime,” Zelle said. 

As the agency continues to face challenges in hiring police — they remain short over 60 police officers, a number reported as early as 2022 — it’s continuing to contract with private security and social service organizations to maintain order on the system, hire transit ambassadors to inspect fares, and work with unhoused youth to clean up St. Paul light-rail stations.

The agency hasn’t encountered trouble in hiring Transit Rider Investment Program (TRIP) agents. “Our current internal-only opening, we had 30 applicants in three days,” TRIP manager Leah Palmer said at a November Met Council meeting. The agency now has 50 ambassadors, who have conducted close to 60,000 fare inspections in September alone. Pending the outcome of the Met Council’s unified budget, which is now in the public comment stage, the agency hopes to double the number of ambassadors next year, while also expanding private security presence and social service partnerships. 

Officials believe the presence of ambassadors, private security and social service organizations have been effective. Metro Transit interim police chief Joe Dotseth reported at a November Met Council meeting that crime, not including smoking, decreased 2.4% in the third quarter of this year, compared to the same time period in 2023. Overall, crime in the third quarter of this year is 30% less than what it was in the first quarter of 2023. 

“When you see those crime numbers going down, it’s not just because of the work that the police are doing. It’s the work that TRIP agents are doing, supplemental security agents are doing, the work that we’re all doing as a team is the reason that that stuff is going down because we’re taking that community approach,” Dotseth said during the presentation. 

Still, the agency continues to have setbacks: Two trans women were harassed near the Warehouse District/Hennepin Avenue station last month, and on Nov. 29 Sharif Darryl Walker-El Jr. was shot and killed by a fellow passenger as a Green Line train neared the Hamline Avenue station. Police have not announced any arrests in either incident.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct interim police chief Joe Dotseth’s name and to clarify that ticket vending machines are being upgraded, not replaced.

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This winter, Metro Transit is promising to make D Line buses more predictable and less crowded. 

From Dec. 9 until March 21, Metro Transit will try what is called “headway-based scheduling” on the state’s busiest route serving Brooklyn Center, north and south Minneapolis, Richfield, Bloomington, and the Mall of America. 

“The goal of headway-based scheduling is to have buses arriving at bus stops at evenly spaced intervals, improving service reliability, reducing wait times and overcrowding, and ensuring operators have consistent time to use the restroom, eat, stretch, etc., between trips,” wrote Metro Transit spokesperson Drew Kerr in a statement.   

Headway-based scheduling, which will happen only on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., involves drivers relying on the buses’ onboard computers to determine when to leave a terminal and to ensure they are spaced between 10 and 15 minutes apart from one another. “Those indications will help operators adjust as needed, such as holding at a stop if they are too close, for example,” wrote Kerr. That’s in contrast to a driver trying to stay on a stringent schedule for each stop. Buses will also be able to manipulate traffic signals to keep moving.

The agency plans to have extra buses available on standby to make trips, just in case of delays. The agency currently uses at most 21 buses on the route, according to schedules obtained from the Pantograph app, an app that tracks the real-time location of buses. 

The D Line isn’t Metro Transit’s most reliable route. D Line buses going in the same direction sometimes operate closely with one another, with one running on time, and another running several minutes late, in a phenomenon known as bus bunching. The late bus could be slowed down by icy or snowy roads, a driver or a malfunctioning machine trying to secure a passenger in a wheelchair, a large crowd boarding a very late bus, or transit personnel trying to remove an unruly passenger. Agency staff say its length — 18 miles — as well as its ridership of just under 14,000 average weekday riders as of September, are contributing factors.

Metro Transit says the bus has had a 75% on-time performance rating so far this year, with on-time performance meaning the bus arrives within one minute early or five minutes late to a stop. In the past month, the Transit app — which provides estimated arrival times and trip planning information — reported that among 129 users, D Line buses arrived on time 63% of the time. 

Elliot Park resident Wanda Edwards is looking forward to the change as the weather turns. “I think that’s wonderful, especially knowing the weather is going to change. It’ll be convenient. I can walk out my door and catch the bus,” Edwards said on the D Line on her way to a store. 

Headway-based scheduling isn’t new to the agency. Metro Transit has used this on the A Line on Snelling Avenue over the past two Minnesota State Fairs to ensure buses arrive at stops every 10 minutes despite traffic congestion. 

Headway-based scheduling is also used on high-frequency bus routes on the West Coast, with mixed results. The Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, serving cities immediately to the east of San Francisco, found implementing headway-based scheduling on one of their busiest trunk lines in the early 2000s reduced travel times by 17%, an effect noticed by riders. On the other hand, Los Angeles Metro plans to discontinue headway-based scheduling on one of its local bus routes connecting West Hollywood with downtown Los Angeles next month because the project did not improve reliability. 

Metro Transit says it still plans to use a printed schedule to support trip planning and real-time information tools, as well as to divide up work to their drivers. They are also directing riders who need to make transfers to less frequent routes to use their trip planner, which provides a five-minute time buffer for transfers.

Dwayne Smith, who recently started working at the Mall of America and takes the D Line there, was confused upon hearing about Metro Transit’s headway-based frequency plans. “You wanna know, when you walk out, is this bus gonna be there a particular time,” said Smith while riding the bus to work. 

Despite the changes, Smith adds the D Line overall is an improvement over the route it mostly replaced almost two years ago, the Route 5. “It’s a fast route and it’s accurate. It’s on time, never really late,” Smith said.

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Metro Transit is eyeing a restructure of its local and express bus network as early as next year, as it accounts for pandemic-induced changes to regional travel patterns. 

The changes, outlined in a process called Network Now, call for concentrating bus service on some of its heavily-used local and express routes, creating new routes to significantly reduce travel time between suburban locales, as well as support the development of the region’s bus rapid transit and light rail lines. 

In the years before the pandemic began, Metro Transit was hemorrhaging ridership and cutting service as riders began driving more to work to take advantage of cheapening gas and parking. Meanwhile, the agency also struggled to recruit and retain drivers. 

When the pandemic began in March 2020, ridership plummeted almost overnight, as the agency’s remaining commuters began to work from home. Census data shows the amount of workers who live in the seven-county metro area who worked from home more than tripled in 2023 compared to 2019.

Since the pandemic began, Metro Transit’s bus route ridership has rebounded, slowly but surely. Bus ridership through June was at 16.6 million, an 11% increase compared to ridership at the same time in 2023. It’s a far cry, though, from what ridership was at the same time in 2019, which was at 26.3 million.

Data from Metro Transit shows ridership, which is concentrated on 16 routes serving Minneapolis and St. Paul, tends to peak more strongly in the early afternoon, where riders are more likely to be shopping and running errands than they are commuting to work. Meanwhile, transfers between buses in the two downtowns are also declining, while transfers at suburban transit centers are up. Services in the suburbs that mimic ridehail services such as Uber and Lyft, called microtransit, were some of the first services in the region to recover over 100% of their pre-pandemic ridership.

As a result, Metro Transit is calling for service increases to its busiest routes, while also deploying a network of all-day regional express routes operating from downtown Minneapolis to connect park-and-rides in Minnetonka, Brooklyn Park, Blaine, Maplewood and Woodbury. Local buses or microtransit services would radiate out from those hubs. 

The proposal also calls for creating new crosstown connections, reducing travel times between the outlying suburbs. One such connection is a so-called crosstown route connecting the communities of Blaine, Brooklyn Park, and Osseo on Highway 252, 85th Avenue, Brooklyn Boulevard, and Jefferson Highway. The proposal would change what is an over two-hour bus ride today down to about 30 minutes. 

East-west routes are what Brooklyn Park officials have sought for years, and the city of Brooklyn Park submitted comments as part of the Blue Line Extension light rail project’s environmental review process requesting planning for such routes happen before construction begins. 

Brooklyn Park city councilmember Boyd Morson expressed at a July 29 meeting the importance of east-west bus service serving his community. 

“I think this is something that we can implement right now to get our residents east and west side and the central district as well as in and out of our city with opportunities, and whatever the reason may be,” Morson said. 

Another such connection includes increasing Route 94 service to run seven days a week for the first time since the Green Line opened, when Route 94 service was cut back. On weekends, service would run anywhere from every 30 to 60 minutes. 

Downtown Minneapolis resident Ben Doxtator welcomes the potential changes. 

“Plenty of times I wanted to catch (Route 94) on a Sunday or a weekend. Even if it just ran on a Saturday it would be great,” Doxtator said while handling his bike on the Green Line on a recent Saturday evening.

The service improvements come with elimination of other routes, some of which have been suspended since the pandemic began. By Metro Transit’s count, they plan to eliminate 53 routes, which include freeway routes serving south Minneapolis, Richfield, Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Blaine, White Bear Lake and the communities to the north of Lake Minnetonka. They also plan to eliminate suspended local routes that are or will soon be served by faster, more frequent options, such as the 12, 16, 19, 27, and 84. 

Metro Transit staff were supposed to present the proposed changes at the Met Council’s Transportation Committee on Aug. 26, but did not because the committee lacked a quorum. Staff will instead present the proposals at the Transportation Committee on Sep. 9. Transportation Committee chair Deb Barber posted on X.com, the site formerly known as Twitter, that the delay will not result in a delay of implementation. 

The transportation committee, as well as the full Met Council, will consider setting a hearing date and releasing the plan for public comment that week. Once approved, the agency plans to solicit comments from riders about the proposed changes until Nov. 15. The agency will then present an updated plan before Met Council for approval in early 2025.  

Metro Transit is required by state law and Met Council policy to get feedback from riders about the proposed changes, because some of the changes will result in riders having no alternative service.

“The public hearing will be part of a more extensive public engagement process including five Metro Transit sponsored meetings and other community meetings,” Metro Transit spokesperson John Komarek wrote in an e-mail.

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When it comes to dating, yes means yes, no means no, and no action probably means they ghosted you for one reason or another and you should move on. 

However, different rules apply to the Met Council and their light rail projects, as well as highways being planned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. For example, this fall, the Met Council will give cities a statute-mandated opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to the Blue Line Extension project’s engineering design. 

But instead of no meaning “no,” no means “they have to say the conditions to get approval,” Hennepin County spokesperson Kyle Mianulli said in an interview after the Aug. 8 Blue Line Extension Corridor Management Committee meeting. 

And cities can’t ghost the Met Council, because if they do, they’re consenting to the project. It’s why Ward 5 Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison intends to vote to grant municipal consent on the project. 

“If municipal consent isn’t passed, then the project can still move forward. We probably create some complications, but then the city’s voice at that point is essentially moot. They’re gonna go around you, they’re gonna take those other avenues, they’re gonna get their approvals elsewhere and it’s never coming back before you,” Ellison said in an interview after the same Corridor Management Committee meeting.

County and Met Council officials say the municipal consent process is more of an opportunity for cities to formally share their feedback on how the project should be designed, and that they will work with local communities on a solution. They add it’s not an opportunity to ask for things outside the scope of the design, such as rebuilding an adjacent county road and asking for the project to instead be a bus rapid transit line.

What is municipal consent and why ask for it now? 

State statute requires that the Metropolitan Council present their engineering drawings for light rail projects to cities, counties, and/or townships for approval. The communities then have at least 30 days to hold a public hearing, and 45 days after the hearing date to decide whether to formally approve the project via resolution, informally approve the project by not taking a vote, or disapprove of the project. 

Statute does not provide communities a way to approve engineering drawings with conditions; they can only do so through disapproval. Through the disapproval process, communities have to provide conditions project planners would have to meet to gain their approval. The Met Council will then convene a hearing to understand the changes and decide what about the plans will change within 60 days of the communities’ hearing. If the plans change in conformance with what the communities ask for, planners don’t have to return with revised plans for consent. 

Highway projects have a similar process. However, since the Minnesota Department of Transportation does not have a board, any appeal of highway design plans must go before a three-member board appointed by the dissenting community, MnDOT, and one either mutually agreed to by MnDOT and the community, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court. 

Blue Line Extension planners are seeking municipal consent now, after years of planning, so they can conduct environmental review on any changes that the communities want made. The plans are currently at 30% design, which means they have an idea of where the alignment and stations will be, but not detailed plans for the stations and the surrounding intersections. 

“Some of the outcomes of municipal consent might need to change the environmental document. They may ask for something, we’d have to study that in the environmental document before it could be finalized,” deputy general manager Nick Thompson said shortly after presenting at a July 9 city of Minneapolis’ Intergovernmental Relations Committee. 

The county and the Met Council already delayed the municipal consent process by about six to eight months. Project planners needed to change the alignment to not run on Lyndale Avenue North because neighbors there vociferously opposed it. “That would not have made it through municipal consent in Minneapolis,” said Dan Soler, transit and mobility director for Hennepin County.

It’s possible communities may have to vote on municipal consent more than once. This happened with the Southwest Light Rail project, when planners redesigned it to reduce costs by $250 million. 

Changes possible, within reason 

Comments cities submitted as part of the environmental review process may hint at what cities plan to ask for as part of the municipal consent process. For example, a letter the Minneapolis City Council voted to submit in July calls for adding a light rail station at Washington and West Broadway. Both the city and council member Ellison say the light rail station would connect Northside residents with destinations that they have a hard time reaching, which include parks, bars, restaurants, job centers, and the Mississippi River.

“Connectivity from north Minneapolis to the river specifically matters to us and my community where, you see, we’ve had the North Side be cut off from the river and other parts of the city with the 94 trench being there, with the 394 cutting off a lot of north Minneapolis from other parts of the city. We feel a little bit on an island, and we want more points of connectivity along the way,” Ellison said. 

The process does not allow cities to ask for changes deemed outside of the scope of the project’s current design. For example, cities would not be able to ask for the project to study bus rapid transit instead. “We’re asking them about whether they support the current design, which is a light rail transit project,” Thompson said. 

“BRT would be a whole different project. We’ve been advancing a light rail project, and so you can’t just take this rail project and make it a BRT,” Mianulli added. Changing the project could endanger the agency’s ability to obtain federal funds for the corridor. 

Cities also would not be able to ask for road improvements the Met Council deems to be outside of the corridor, though they may be able to ask for it as an environmental impact mitigation measure. The cities of Robbinsdale and Crystal are concerned about traffic spilling over from Bottineau Boulevard over to West Broadway between Douglas Drive and 42nd Avenue, as county and Met Council planners aim to reduce the lanes on Bottineau from six to four. 

Crystal city officials want Hennepin County to rebuild West Broadway between Douglas Drive and the city limits so the road can handle any traffic spillover. “Their own regional forecast model shows 1,000 vehicles per day shift by 2040 from Bottineau to Broadway. It should be obvious that reducing the number of lanes on Bottineau is going to increase that shift, exacerbate that shift,” John Sutter, Crystal’s community development director, said in a phone interview. 

County transportation planners don’t plan to rebuild West Broadway between Douglas and 42nd to mitigate any impacts caused by construction of the Blue Line extension. They believe traffic will continue to flow at, in Soler’s words, “an adequate level of service,” which wouldn’t call for mitigation. 

Cities and the general public would also not be able to ask for conditions to address anti-displacement, because it does not pertain to the project’s design. Hennepin County on Monday released a guide to implement the Blue Line Extension’s anti-displacement recommendations.

All four cities, as well as Hennepin County, plan to hold hearings to hear from their residents what they should consider for municipal consent in the coming weeks. The communities will then vote whether or not to grant municipal consent before Oct. 10.

How has municipal consent played out in the past?

To date, no city has formally dissented over proposals to build light rail in the Twin Cities. Every city along the Southwest Light Rail project approved plans for light rail in their communities. 

Although cities provided nonbinding conditions as a part of approval, project officials say they still worked with communities on those conditions. For example: St. Louis Park’s resolution to provide municipal consent included a condition to reconstruct the Cedar Lake Regional Trail at two city intersections so they don’t intersect. The trail, which is now grade-separated because it passes under both streets through a tunnel, reopened in July. And Eden Prairie’s resolution called for the Prairie Center Drive viaduct to be designed such that it “complements” the experience around Purgatory Creek Park and the Veterans’ Memorial; indeed, the viaducts have carvings of the wildlife found at the nearby creek. 

For the first iteration of the Blue Line Extension, the Crystal City Council in February 2016 passed a resolution neither approving nor disapproving the project’s design. One of the concerns the city had at the time was the lack of a bridge for people walking and biking across Bottineau Boulevard at Bass Lake Road. The project’s current iteration calls for building an interchange, where people walking and biking would only interact with traffic turning onto or off of Bottineau Boulevard. 

Meanwhile, cities have successfully used the consent process to force changes to highway projects. In 2004, the city of Minneapolis voted to deny consent to MnDOT to rebuild Interstate 35W between 42nd and 66th Streets, and Highway 62 from Penn to Portland Avenues. They said MnDOT’s plans relied on freeway expansion instead of improving transit. The appeals board affirmed the city’s denial, and MnDOT changed their plans to build a bus station at 46th Street, which opened in 2010. 

Technically, the Met Council does not need to seek municipal consent for bus rapid transit projects because such a process is not outlined in state statute. The Met Council nonetheless has heeded the wishes of cities that do not want to see bus rapid transit in their communities, such as White Bear Lake, which passed a resolution in 2022 opposing the project. 

Parks departments don’t have an official say, so how do they get heard?

While cities are part of municipal consent, government entities that focus on managing parks, like the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, do not. Still, they have influence on the process assuming they’re engaged with the cities that do have an official say.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board on Aug. 7 voted 6-1 to oppose a Blue Line Extension route that crosses Victory and Theodore Wirth Parkways at grade; both parkways straddle the Minneapolis and Robbinsdale city limits, and both cities are taking note of the park board’s concerns.

Minneapolis City Council member LaTrisha Vetaw said at the July 9 Intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting that she would like to see the Blue Line Extension cross the parkways underground. During a phone interview, however, Park Board Commissioner Becka Thompson, who represents the area and drafted the park board’s letter, isn’t so sure, but agrees that the route should not cross the parkways at grade. 

“If you put it underground, it’d be safe and it’d be great. But I get that literally adds a billion dollars to the price tag,” Thompson said during the phone interview. Both Thompson and Vetaw also want a proposed station there to be moved away from Lowry Avenue.

The Met Council previously proposed building a station on a viaduct, to be connected directly to a ramp that connects with North Memorial Hospital. The park board and North Memorial Hospital cried foul, which resulted in the Met Council proposing an at-grade option. But with the park board’s latest opposition, deputy general manager Nick Thompson says they plan to respond to the park board’s concerns as part of the environmental review process. 

The Minneapolis park board also had concerns with the Southwest Light Rail extension crossing Cedar Lake Parkway. “This situation is very similar to what happened during the initial designs of the SWLRT through the Kenilworth channel. Except in that process, we took more of a lead role. For the Blue Line, we will be involved in the process, but not in a lead role,” spokesperson Robin Smothers said.

Meanwhile, the Three Rivers Park District was able to work with Hennepin County, the Met Council, and local cities to grade-separate the Cedar Lake Regional Trail at Belt Line Boulevard, Wooddale Avenue, and Blake Road as part of the Southwest Light Rail project. The trail reopened in July, the occasion marked by a 50-person bike ride led by Chair Charlie Zelle and project manager Jim Alexander earlier this month.

“They’ve had us at the table for both projects from the early days on and they’ve been good to work with, and the cities have been great partners on this. Those three streets have heavy road traffic, and the trail traffic was quite heavy before the LRT started. All parties agreed that, in the best interest of the trail users, to have great separated crossings,” said Jonathan Vlaming, associate superintendent of planning, design and technology at Three Rivers Park District.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Dan Soler’s title.

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For some drivers, parking is critical, especially when it’s near their home. It’s even more critical to those who don’t want to drive to work, like Loring Park resident Ben Bockover. 

“If I could leave my car here, if there weren’t hours where I’d have to move it, I’d bike,” Bockover said of his commute to his job on Lyndale Avenue, while walking to his car to go grocery shopping. 

On some blocks in Loring Park, people either have to move their vehicles every so often between the hours of 9 a.m. and  4 p.m. on weekdays, or spring for a $25 annual permit to park on some blocks for as long as 72 hours. These blocks are part of what are called Critical Parking Areas, and the zones may soon change as the city of Minneapolis works to get people biking, walking, and taking transit more. 

Changes begin in Cedar-Riverside

The Minneapolis City Council approved the first of three rounds of changes to its so-called Critical Parking Areas on Aug. 1. The changes affect zones in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood by: 

• Eliminating some critical parking spots and allows anyone to park there for free,
• Converting critical parking spots into metered spaces, meaning anyone parking there would have to pay, or
• Changing critical parking spots so that only those with a critical parking permit can park there.

City spokesperson Allen Henry said the project is in response to significant development and land use changes in the city over the past couple of decades. “The restrictions are no longer relevant in several cases,” Henry said. 

The city also is making changes to critical parking areas to get people to walk, bike, and take public transit more often. The city’s goal is for 60% of all travel to occur without a car by 2030. 

Later this year, the city plans to implement changes to zones in Loring and Elliot Park, neighborhoods just south of downtown Minneapolis. The city is still researching potential changes. A presentation for the Minneapolis City Council says the days and hours of when a vehicle would be required to have a permit to park could change, or the zones could be eliminated entirely. From there, the city could either install meters or let any vehicle park for free. After they make changes to Loring and Elliot Park, they plan to finalize changes citywide by next year. 

History of critical parking

The Critical Parking program was established in 1976 at a time when cities across the nation were trying to address suburban commuters parking in residential neighborhoods. The first two zones were created in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, after residents voiced frustration with competing for parking with students and hospital workers. These same two zones are being modified by the city today. 

The zones are established by resident petition. A resident has to collect signatures from 75% of residences in an area that they wish to designate as a critical parking area. After the city conducts a parking study, staff present the designation of such a zone before the City Council for approval. 

Permits for these zones started at $7 when the program was created in 1976, with a $2 annual renewal fee. Since 2004, permits have cost $25 annually. About 2,100 vehicles have a permit to park in a critical parking area, out of around 2,500 eligible residences. 

Parking critical for livelihoods

In its presentation, the city said Augsburg University is a supporter of plans to make changes to how critical parking areas work around campus because permit holders often can’t find spaces. They include restricting on-street parking spaces around campus to only those who have permits, as well as converting the rest of the spaces to metered parking. Augsburg University administration says they are allotted 75 permits for their students to use. 

But Augsburg University spokesperson Rachel Farris says the university has not offered support of the plan.

“Augsburg was not asked to approve or support a set of proposed changes to city parking on campus and around Murphy Square Park, but did provide feedback to the city traffic and parking services department related to parking availability, parking spot turnover, and snow clearance under the plan,” Farris said. 

Meanwhile, the executive directors of both the Loring and Elliot Park neighborhood associations say the city has not contacted them to discuss proposed changes to their critical parking areas.

“We seem to have some real difficulty getting timely notices from public works, if at all. It’s hard to understand since residents and businesses here are the taxpayers and paying for these projects,” said Jana Metge, executive director of Citizens for a Loring Park Community. 

The city plans to conduct engagement “after the proposed changes are determined,” Henry said. 

Nonetheless, residents in both Loring and Elliot Park are not happy about the prospect of existing critical parking zones being converted into metered zones. 

“We have chosen to park in metered zones before, but primarily that causes a lot of stress. Those spots, you have to wake up early and either move your car or pay the meter or risk getting towed. And I’ve already gotten one citation on my windshield before because I was trying to park somewhere and my time expired before I woke up,” Loring Park resident Cassandra Hagen said while walking on the street, adding she is struggling to make ends meet with her wages. Hagen uses her car to get to work downtown, as well as to visit family in Cook, Minnesota. 

She thought about buying a bike, but can’t afford to do so because she has to pay to maintain and insure her car. She also considered taking the bus to and from work, but she’s worried about how she would get home after her shift at night, especially during the winter. “Being in downtown, like an urban setting, I’ve seen at my job (that) we deal with a lot of stuff because of that urban setting, unfortunately, and it’s very tough, but that makes me more wary of public transportation, especially because it’s not something I grew up knowing how to use,” Hagen said, adding she is willing to learn how to use public transit. 

Safety concerns are also what prompted Elliot Park resident Mellie Salas to drive to get around. She experienced harassment while being out and about.

“I’ve always had men come up to me the minute they see me alone. It’s best to have a car to feel safe out and about,” Salas said as she moved her belongings from a car that doesn’t work to another car she just bought. She also doesn’t think parking spots that are part of the Elliot Park critical parking area, designated ahead of the 1982 opening of the now-demolished Metrodome, should remain as they are today. 

Salas also needs a car because she does not feel safe biking and walking in the winter.

“It’s not safe to bike and walk in the winter because of the snow. They don’t even plow the sidewalks or the streets and sometimes it gets too cold to walk,” Salas said. 

As challenging as it is for her to drive in the city, Hagen would rather stick to that form of commuting.

“It’s just much easier to say I’ll just drive my car that I’ve spent so much money and time on than to take public transportation, which would cost extra couple dollars, or an extra $120 to get a bicycle,” Hagen said.

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Just after noon one cloudy Sunday, Burnsville resident Fay Li found herself in a study room at the Burnhaven library studying for an exam to become a registered nurse. 

The library, however, wouldn’t open for another hour. Li got access to the library as part of initiatives by two south metro libraries, called Extended Access, to allow patrons access to facilities during hours when the building is officially closed and when staff isn’t present. 

Fourteen such libraries in Dakota and Scott County are accessible to patrons with pre-registration, with the Galaxie library in Apple Valley and the Savage library being accessible as of this month. One more library branch each in Dakota and Scott County will be accessible after-hours later this summer. 

For Li, who commuted from Shakopee to the Burnhaven library before relocating just to take advantage of extended access hours, it’s given her time to study for the exam. 

“One time I was just coming here to study and I really wanted to stay. One of the leaders said we have self access hours,” Li said. 

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Full after-hours access years in the making

Scott County began its foray in making its libraries accessible in off hours shortly after the Great Recession of 2008. County officials said they made their library meeting rooms accessible off-hours between 2009 and 2010. 

Scott County Library officials say the response to off-hours meeting room use inspired them to provide access to other library resources. 

“The positive response to after-hours meeting room use inspired SCL (Scott County Libraries) to consider how we could similarly provide access to other desirable resources like Wi-Fi, computers, and study spaces,” Scott County spokesperson Lisa Kohner said. 

From 2018 to 2019, Scott County worked with the University of Minnesota’s Resilient Communities Project to determine how to increase library access. The collaboration was part of a larger county effort to implement its 2040 comprehensive plan goals, which was crafted under the same state law that mandated Minneapolis’ controversial comprehensive plan. 

Through the Resilient Communities Project collaboration, a research team of St. Catherine University library science students found enthusiastic interest in libraries open to the public beyond staffed hours, particularly from those who live in Jordan, a town off of Highway 169 10 miles southwest of Shakopee.

Scott County Libraries launched extended access at the Jordan library in September 2021, making it accessible to those with a registered library card from the hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Since its launch, the branch has seen 11,619 extended-hours visitors. The Scott County library system has 1,370 registered users as of June 25. 

Meanwhile, Dakota County Libraries launched extended access at the Farmington library early last year, making it accessible to users from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. County spokesperson Mary Beth Schubert said it started with Farmington because the branch had limited hours and “the need for more access was greatest there.” Since its launch, 2,737 people have registered to access libraries countywide after hours.  

Scott County soon began to expand to other branch locations, including to New Prague in June of 2023. Extended hours usage at the New Prague branch soared since it started, doubling from 122 visits in June of 2023 to 255 in May of this year. The New Prague library has the second-highest off-hours visits among Scott County libraries, after the library in Jordan. 

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During a recent four-hour visit to the New Prague library on a Friday afternoon, when it is closed, a MinnPost reporter saw a group of homeschooled children playing with toys in a meeting room, as well as people coming and going to browse books and use computers. 

Jennifer A., a New Prague resident who declined to share her last name with MinnPost for privacy reasons, was one of those patrons.

 “I don’t have internet access so that’s why I come here,” said Jennifer, adding she has a very old computer.

The initiative costs Scott County $20,000 per branch annually, which includes software, security measures such as cameras, and staff time. For Dakota County, it spent $275,000 for security cameras, speakers for automated announcements, building modifications, and software adjustments, and plans to spend $150,000 annually on energy costs and utilities for all 10 locations. 

“Ongoing software costs and staff time to support the process are needed whether we offer this service or not,” Dakota County spokesperson Mary Beth Schubert added. 

Despite the lack of staff present off hours, Scott County librarian Kristy Rieger believes the initiative will require more staff, not less. 

“Reducing staff would counterintuitively erode both the user experience and the sustainability of SCL’s overall operations. Many SCL, city, and county partners are working behind the scenes to ensure visitors have a great experience, regardless of when they visit the library. Long term, we expect extended access to gradually increase the need for staff, contingent on impacts to basic operations (shelving, item processing, etc.) and community demands for programming,” Rieger said. 

How to get extended access

Nine of 10 Dakota County library branches are now accessible for extended hours, with the Galaxie library in Apple Valley joining the roster on July 8. Dakota County expects the Wentworth Branch library in West St. Paul to be accessible sometime in August. 

Meanwhile, five of seven Scott County library branches are accessible off-hours, with the addition of the Savage library on July 1. The county expects to make the Prior Lake branch accessible sometime in September.

Scott County library officials have no immediate plans to make its Shakopee branch accessible for extended hours. 

“As our largest branch, and our only branch with two floors, the Shakopee Library would likely require extensive and costly facility modifications to safely support extended access. As a result, we felt it best to pause and revisit Shakopee at a later date,” Rieger said, adding they increased staffed hours at Shakopee library in March 2024.

Securing access to a Dakota or Scott County library is relatively simple. A person first needs to have a library card from a Minnesota regional library system, which includes any library in the Twin Cities. They then need to register the library card in-person at a library associated with the system you wish to use after hours. They will also need to bring a state-issued identification card so library staff can verify the person’s identity.

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After a library card is registered with their system, a person will need to review a video about the service, as well as complete an access form. The access form for Dakota County libraries can be completed online, while the access form for Scott County must be completed in-person. 

Rieger expects for patrons to obtain extended hours access on the same day they sign up. Indeed, the MinnPost reporter was granted extended hours access at Scott County Libraries the same day they registered their existing Hennepin County library card with the system last November. Meanwhile, Dakota County library officials expect to take one to three weeks to process applications for extended access, though the MinnPost writer was able to receive a proximity card to access Dakota County libraries in a little more than a week after registering their Hennepin County library card with Dakota County. 

After-hours access elsewhere

In September, Hennepin County libraries converted its Osseo branch library into a self-service branch. Once open three days a week, the library is now open when Osseo City Hall is open.

Marnie Schuster, a Maple Grove resident, found herself visiting the Osseo City Hall to make copies one Monday in July. With the Osseo library open more often, Schuster thinks she may start visiting more. 

“It’s right by my kids’ high school,” said Schuster. 

Hennepin County Library also allows users to pick up reserved books at the Arvonne Fraser and Ridgedale libraries during certain hours when the library is not open. Holds at these libraries are kept in a separate room and can be accessed by scanning a library card. 

Meanwhile, both the Carver County Library and Great River Regional Library systems, the latter serving central Minnesota, are considering following in Dakota and Scott County’s footsteps in allowing their patrons to use their libraries during off hours. 

For the Great River Regional Library, it has not decided where to start the pilot. Because some of its libraries are located in city facilities, those cities would have to approve the pilot. 

“It is too soon for us to name the specific location. We are discussing possible locations and will need city approval in order to move forward,” Executive Director Karen Pundsack said in an e-mail. 

Libraries in Anoka, Carver and Washington counties, as well as the St. Paul Public Library, have lockers available for those who wish to pick up library materials either outside of library hours or outside of library facilities. For example, Carver County has three such lockers in municipal buildings in Cologne, Mayer, and Victoria, as well as one additional set of lockers at Southwest Transit’s Carver Station. The four Carver County lockers combined have a total circulation of 10,317 in 2023.

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