Off the Rails: Minnesota Transportation After COVID-19

Transportation agencies’ misguided agenda ignore transit reality at a steep cost to users and the state.

Preview:

Off the Rails details the ridership and public safety challenges faced by Minnesota’s system of public transportation in the post-COVID era. The report was written for American Experiment by national transportation expert Randal O’Toole. Using data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the report reveals that the Twin Cities’ light-rail system sees more crimes per billion passenger-miles than any other light-rail system in the country.

The report also shows that transit has been the slowest mode of travel to recover from the pandemic, and it is unlikely that it will ever capture more than 75 percent of the ridership it carried in 2019. This is largely due to ongoing public safety issues and the change in employment patterns in the downtowns of Minneapolis and St. Paul, with more companies adopting work-from-home or hybrid work strategies. To respond to these challenges, the report concludes that transit will need to reinvent itself to survive.

In addition to transit and safety, this report also provides analysis of other aspects of transportation, including Motor Vehicles and Highways, Intercity Travel, Transportation Finance and Light-Rail Myths and Realities. It also chronicles some of Minnesota’s biggest transportation boondoggles, such as the Southwest Light Rail Transit project.  

Key findings and recommendations from the report include:

• Transit: Metro Transit should modify the Southwest light-rail project into a dedicated busway, which will cost less and allow for more flexibility.
• Transit: To better serve Twin Cities workers who don’t work in downtown Minneapolis or downtown St. Paul, Metro Transit should revamp its bus system to serve multiple hubs with multiple spokes.
• Safety: Address the lack of rigorous fare enforcement and put fences and turnstiles around every light-rail stop to not allow people inside unless they have paid their fares.
• Safety: MnDOT should build upon data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission to develop a data-driven system of identifying safety issues on state and local highways, roads, and streets.
• Congestion: After safety, MnDOT should make cost-effective congestion reduction its top priority.
• Low-Income Subsidies: Advocates of transportation equity need to refocus their efforts away from subsidies to transit, which few low-income people use, to providing low-interest loans to low-income people buying cars. Such loans can help people out of poverty by giving them access to far more economic resources than they can reach on mass transit.
• Intercity Travel: Minnesota should reject proposals by Amtrak to help fund increased passenger train services, which are unfair competition to existing bus companies and airlines. Most routes where Amtrak has proposed such state-funded service are already served by buses that offer more frequent service at lower fares than Amtrak. Many are also served by airlines that offer much faster service, often at competitive fares.
• Transportation Finance: Rather than fund transportation out of general funds, Minnesota should find better ways to fund transportation out of user fees, which will result in better infrastructure maintenance and discourage expensive megaprojects that provide few transportation benefits.

A full copy of the report can be viewed here.