King’s Corner

This is my bus stop:

Or, at least it should be.  The city, or, at least I would venture to guess it was the city, had gone through the expense of putting up the shelter as busses were stopping here on a regular basis.  And with this shelter being a mere block from my house, it was mighty convenient.  Heck, even as we were searching for a house to purchase not much more than two years ago one of the things I was looking for was proximity to mass transit.

What I didn’t expect was that Metro Transit would cut back on service for my bus line, only a few months after we purchased the house.  This is now my bus stop:

It’s nearly half a mile away.  Now, instead of coming down Main Street and passing by my street, the bus goes only as far as five blocks away before it heads south.  And I don’t have a shelter to wait in anymore, just a narrow strip of sidewalk where it appears that area planners never really intended for a stop to be, something that gets really treacherous when there’s mounds of snow and ice building up.  In all fairness, the shelter by my house is still used during rush hour times.  But I tend to not use the bus during those times, and I also tend to be traveling with a toddler or later at night.

When they did the original cut, Metro Transit did start an hourly local shopping bus that went past my shelter and connected me with the main route into Minneapolis during the day.  That was nice for a while, but that particular route has been cut completely.  It’s discouraging and frustrating, as one of the things that I enjoy about this location is the proximity to transportation, both current and future (more on that later).

While the mission of Metro Transit is to provide service for communities in the area, and I understand that when the budget gets tough then things need to get cut.  But the cuts seem unfairly cruel to suburban routes as opposed to the city routes.  When a route that serves neighborhoods in Minneapolis has cuts in service, it means that the bus will be coming every 7 minutes as opposed to 5 minutes.  When a route in the suburbs faces cuts, it means that the bus won’t be there anymore.

Am I being a bit selfish?  Well, partially.  When your bus is just a half a block away it’s a lot easier to just head out the door a few minutes before it’s scheduled to show up and catch it, then if you miss it it’s not that big of a hassle to just go back home and kill some time before the next one comes along.  And it’s certainly nicer during inclement weather to be able to stand under a roof while waiting.  So, yes, when I have to haul a toddler half a mile I take even more time out of my day to take off long before I need to so as to make sure that I don’t miss the bus, lest I have to wait another half hour for the next one.  And, let me tell you, if it’s raining on a toddler the toddler gets crabby if she’s cold.

But I am speaking for my fellow residents.  I speak of the people in these apartments that loom over my bus stop, who tend to be transit dependent:

And the people in these townhomes, who tend to be elderly or disadvantaged:

The apartment dwellers I feel for, as they already had the elementary school next door shut down.  An unfortunate side note is that they also bus their children five miles away instead of sending them to the school within easy walking distance, so these parents that had the rare opportunity to be heavily involved with their childrens’ school are now strangely punished.  The townhome residents I am particularly mired on behalf of.  More than once I have met a confused, old resident, one that is in no way fit to walk the mile from those townhouses, finally make it to the new stop after waiting an abnormally long amount of time at the sheltered stop, wondering where the bus is.

Mass transit should be easy if Metro Transit wants people to actually use it, and it seems to me that easy means providing regular service at obvious locations like bus shelters.  Things will be easier come 2015, when the Southwest Transit Light Rail line comes through my fair city on its way from the outer ‘burbs on into Minneapolis.  And more frequent, if the Hiawatha Line’s 15 minute headways are any indication.  But, the nearest train station will still be a half a mile away, and I do worry about what will happen to my bus service.  While the quick service into Minneapolis will be appreciated, it will bypass a few of the locations that I currently use the bus to reach, like the St. Louis Park Rec Center just off Excelsior and (even more egregious) the current preferred route will bypass Uptown altogether as well.  So, while I have one improvement to look forward to, I do fear the loss of the bus service I currently enjoy with the arrival of the light rail.

That is, unless they cut my route further even before the train shows up.  When that happens, I fear that I may have to resort to the gross expense of a car, as I doubt that I can get my wife to move any closer to Minneapolis.  Less frequent bus service I could handle.  No bus service is a pain.