Metro Transit’s C Line Bus Rapid Transit project will include stops at 23 new and existing stations, including this planned station at Penn and Plymouth avenues in north Minneapolis. (Submitted rendering: Metro Transit)
As construction begins this spring on the $37 million C Line project between downtown Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center, the project team is taking some cues from past experiences with bus rapid transit lines.
The Metro Transit project is designed to offer speedier bus service on Penn Avenue and Olson Memorial Highway between Hennepin County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis and the Brooklyn Center Transit Center. The 8.5-mile route includes 23 new and existing stops.
The C Line will be the metro area’s second arterial BRT route when service begins in 2019. The A Line, completed in 2016, runs along Snelling Avenue from Roseville to St. Paul, Ford Parkway in St. Paul, and 46th Street in Minneapolis, where it meets up with the Blue Line light rail transit station.
Metro Transit officials say the A Line has been a hit with riders. But after nearly two years of operations, Metro Transit is doing some fine-tuning. Changes include making the station walls a little deeper for “slightly more weather protection,” said Katie Roth, Metro Transit’s manager of bus rapid transit.
Like the A Line, it will make good use of “transit signal priority” technology, which gives priority to transit vehicles at signalized intersections.
“We have the ability to grab a little extra green, or a little early green, on some of these lights if the traffic conditions are appropriate for that,” Metro Transit Senior Engineer Shawn Combs Walding said Tuesday before a C Line groundbreaking event in north Minneapolis. “We are using all those tools to just make a little fine-tuning and make sure things are reliable along that line.”
Metropolitan Council Chair Alene Tchourumoff was among the C Line project supporters who spoke at a ceremonial groundbreaking for the project on Tuesday in Minneapolis. The $37 million project begins this spring and ends in 2019. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
C Line stations will include shelters with heat and light, security cameras and telephones, real-time transit information, and “pre-boarding” fare payment, according to Metro Transit. Eight intersections along the route will be revamped.
The C Line is part of a larger Penn Avenue improvement project that includes a Hennepin County-led reconstruction of Penn Avenue between West Broadway and Lowry Avenue in Minneapolis. That work will begin this spring and wrap up this winter.
From a construction standpoint, the C Line requires a lot of coordination and good communication, according to the project team.
“Whenever you do one of these major construction projects, I can’t sugar-coat it — it’s not easy,” Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin said in an interview at the event. “There are disruptions. And the key to that is good planning, then good communication with the businesses and the residents to tell them what is going to happen when so they can plan around it.”
Metropolitan Council Chair Alene Tchourumoff said the council worked closely with the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County in planning the work.
“We actually spent a lot of time thinking about how to make sure we minimize impacts to roadway users and the community,” Tchourumoff said in an interview at the event.
The line will eventually connect to the Bottineau Light Rail Transit line, or the Blue Line Extension. Once the Bottineau service begins in 2022, a portion of the C Line route will shift a few blocks south from Olson Memorial Highway to Glenwood Avenue.
That realignment will move forward once the $1.536 billion Bottineau project is fully funded, said Charles Carlson, Metro Transit’s senior manager for bus rapid transit.
The Met Council awarded a $3.8 million contract in 2016 to HDR Engineering to oversee design and engineering of the C Line. Rogers-based Thomas and Sons is heading up construction. Of the $37 million project budget, construction accounts for about $13 million and the rest is for buses and equipment, Combs Walding said.
The C Line alignment runs along the current Route 19 bus corridor. A trip on Route 19 currently takes about 23 to 46 minutes from downtown Minneapolis to Brooklyn Center, but that will be sliced to 20 to 25 minutes when the C Line opens, Metro Transit says.
Stations will be located every quarter-mile to half-mile along the route.
McLaughlin said he expects the C Line to spur new development along the route. Though “good things are going on” in the area, including the new Thor Construction headquarters rising at Penn and Plymouth avenues, there are opportunities for more development, he noted.
McLaughlin noted that vacant lots along the line present opportunities. “There is going to be an ability to get those redeveloped,” he said, “and you get an energy around these transit projects that really pulls in the private sector investment. That is what we are trying to do.”
Gov. Mark Dayton’s bonding proposal includes $50 million for additional BRT lines and service. Future construction could bring BRT service to nine more corridors on heavily traveled bus routes.
Future BRT lines in the queue include the D Line (along Chicago and Emerson Avenues from Brooklyn Center to Minneapolis and Bloomington); the B Line (along Lake Street and Marshall Avenues in Minneapolis and St. Paul), and the E Line (Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis).
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