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Transit Equity on the North Side
Photo by Chris Gregerson
As part of the "Twin Cities Stories: Using Data for the Common Good" project, IRP generated a series of maps for the Minneapolis Urban League concerning Twin Cities bus service adjustment recommendations. Due to budget constraints, the transportation committee of the Metropolitan Council approved a plan this summer to eliminate $8.6 million in transit service to help offset a shortfall in transit funding. In this original proposal, 18 routes would have been eliminated and 34 lines reduced in service. These cuts in service came at the same time that fares were set to rise by 25 cents, which went into effect July 1, 2005.
The Minnesota state legislature held a special session in 2005 in which they approved $40 million additional funding for transit, allowing Metro Transit (a division of the Metropolitan Council) to hold off on further cuts in service. The reductions of $8.6 million were still necessary, equating to 3.5 percent of service reductions and reducing ridership by 1.6 million rides over a two-year period.
Metro Transit held a number of public meetings to discuss the proposed cuts in service and route eliminations. Residents and activists in the North Side of Minneapolis were particularly vocal in their concerns that bus service to their neighborhoods was being disproportionately reduced in comparison to the cuts other neighborhoods faced.
Cheryl Morgan Spencer of the Minneapolis Urban League and Cheryl Wilson of MICAH (the Metropolitan Interfaith Coalition on Affordable Housing) met with staff at the Institute on Race & Poverty requesting that IRP create relevant GIS maps to help make the case that the largely low-income and minority population of the Near North was bearing the brunt of the system cuts. The Minneapolis Urban League was particularly concerned with the canceled Route 7 service on weekends, which many North Side residents used for shopping and to attend church services. Residents and activists expressed that the reduction in service was a damaging loss in the fabric of their community.
IRP created a series of maps to document geographically where the eliminations and reductions were slated to take place, alongside demographic data on the neighborhoods that were most concerned about the effects of the cuts on their residents. IRP director Myron Orfield presented the maps in a number of public meeting settings and fielded questions about the potentially disparate impacts on people of color on the North Side.
Metro Transit defended its process for determining which routes to cut or eliminate with the explanation that they used a mathematical formula to highlight underperforming routs. Metro Transit staff said that because North Minneapolis routes had been left largely untouched in times of past reductions in service, the current reductions seemed to fall overly hard on those neighborhoods, but in fact service has been stripped more methodically from other Minneapolis neighborhoods over time in recent years. The formula used to find low-service bus routes apparently does not take into account the social demographics of the ridership areas, which audience members concurred was a serious flaw in the formula.
Eventually Metro Transit heeded the advice of the community, and responded this fall by adding a new weekend cross-town route to serve Plymouth Avenue in north Minneapolis. Route 29 links Plymouth Avenue residents with businesses on West Broadway. It doesn’t run as late in the day and it doesn’t link residents with downtown Minneapolis the way Route 7 did, but it nevertheless addresses the most immediate concerns of affected residents. On the Metro Transit’s web page, they note this news: “This service, in part, replaces weekend Route 7 service, which was canceled on Plymouth Avenue due to low weekend ridership,” said John Suttles, a Metro Transit bus operator who coordinated the service with community leaders. “The Urban League told us weekend service was essential and that, working together, we could build a sustainable level of ridership. We are very pleased with this partnership.”
IRP worked with the following project partners to help restore transit service to the North Side:
The Minneapolis Urban League
MICAH
Metro Transit
The attached PowerPoint (available at upper right) contains all of the maps IRP created to document the demographics of the North Side of Minneapolis and the proposed bus service adjustments. The maps can also be downloaded individually from the "Transit Maps" folder on the right side of this screen. The maps included in the PowerPoint and on the folder are the following:
Weekday bus service frequency
Weekday eliminations and reductions
Weekday eliminated trips
Weekend eliminations and reductions
Weekend eliminated trips
Unemployment
Percentage worker bus riders
Percentage low-income worker bus riders
North Side residents commuting to work
Job center growth
Near North commuter shed
Dependency ratio
Percentage below poverty line
Percentage American Indian
Percentage Asian
Percentage Black or African American
Percentage Hispanic or Latino
Percentage White
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