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.. - Metro Transit Sectors 1 and 2 Restructuring Study Volume 11: Service Plan ineffective. Despite an extensive system of transit lanes, transit moves through downtown _ Minneapolis at extremely slow speeds, and these speeds both discourage ridership and amplify .- operating costs. The current pattem of transit operations in downtown Minneapolis features a series of single bus. only contraflow lanes, with stops in the lane itse~. It is impossible for buses to pass each other, because the next lane to the left is usually a bidirectional bike lane. This arrangement requires all buses to proceed through the lane in the same sequence. Any delay affecting any bus - such as a wheelchair boarding - also delays all the buses behind it. A breakdown in the transit lane can cause huge disruplions throughout the system that can take hours to rectify. A multimodal analysis of downtown circulation would address the following general ideas, among others: · Create two-lane bus corridors on half of the streets currently used, retuming the other lanes to auto use Two-lane bus-only corridors, such as Portland's transit mall, permit buses to pass each other and therefore move through downtown more rapidly. These lanes also have a crucial emergency-services value, because the bus passing lane can be preempted by emergency vehicles that may have no other way of moving rapidly through a gridlocked downtown. Retuming certain streets to pure one-way vehicle operation would also improve traffic operations, since it would simplify tuming movements to and from those streets. Bike lanes would be retained. · Increase the passenger amenities on the transit streets. This becomes more cost effective if more service is concentrated on fewer streets, so that more passengers are waiting at fewer stops. The fully-enclosed but transparent sheiters in downtown 51. Paul are among the best that we have encountered, and should be considered as a model, though due to passenger volumes Minneapolis transit sheiters need to be substantially larger. The goal should be to eliminate the need to wait outside for transit in the harsh climate extremes of the Twin Cities. . e · Improve utilization of the "transit hubs.. These facilities, located around the periphery of downtown, are currently used primarily as layovers. Because buses leaving them are typically headed across downtown and out the other side of the city, the hubs are geographically unattractive as places to board the service. This is unfortunate, because the extensive shelter and ameniliesfor passengers at these hubs is severely underutilized, while passengers are overcrowding many unsheltered onstreet stops. Any circulation study should look for opportunities to use hubs as the last outbound stop (and first inbound stop) on key express routes, so that more passengers can use them as their logical point of access to downtown. LAND USE AND THE PTN Land use is the responsibility of local jurisdictions, but the region as a whole has land use and transportation goals that will be met or defeated through the cumulative effect of these local decisions. The goal of reducing sprawl requires that better use be made of underutilized land within the existing built area. The Primary Transit Network can be a crucial tool to that end. e Nelson \Nygaard Consulting 7-6 November 2, 1999