Legislation aims to align transit, road projects and housing development

Rep. Katie Jones (DFL-Mpls) feels that a plan’s been missing when it comes to how to make commercial and housing development, road construction projects and transit routes work together. So she’s sponsoring a bill designed to modify requirements regarding transit and land use in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

HF4449 would establish transit performance measures, require a transit system investment framework, mandate alignment with the framework for road projects, and set requirements on transit-oriented development.

The House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee laid the bill over, as amended, Monday for possible omnibus bill inclusion.

“This bill creates a foundation to build confidence and cost effectiveness in the transit system, and to grow it to reach the needs of more people,” Jones said.

Jones said she sees three issues holding the state back in its quest for improved transit:

• a lack of numeric goals for the Twin Cities metro area transit system;
• inefficient coordination of road construction and transit projects; and
• inadequate tools for building a more effective transit system.

Jones believes her bill would improve the system by increasing frequency of routes, establishing an average operating cost per passenger per service hour, and establishing speed and reliability metrics. It also includes measures to provide earlier knowledge of planned transit in a corridor and employ more transit-oriented development in land use.

Two amendments were rejected by the committee on party-line votes.

Rep. Bjorn Olson (R-Fairmont) wanted an exemption from the framework available for projects designed to address a documented safety issue, while Rep. Jon Koznick (R-Lakeville) would have allowed local units of government to opt out of the framework.

The bill would require the Metropolitan Council to create a transit system investment framework for transit coverage expansion and system improvements, with the initial framework completed by Feb. 1, 2027. The framework would include identification of busway and guideway routes and estimated schedules for route projects.

“This bill has the best of intentions in it,” Olson said. “And I really like the concept of providing some metrics, saying we want to decrease the cost of ridership. We want to increase utilization.”

But Olson expressed concern that the process would push too much of transit operations to the metro core and leave the suburbs underserved. However, Rep. Larry Kraft (DFL-St. Louis Park) commended the bill for its forward-looking approach.

“I think your pulling in high frequency is so important,” he said. “When you change over from needing to check a bus or light rail schedule to being able just to go because you know there’s going to be one there very soon, it’s a mind shift change that really drives further usage.

“If you want an example of that, look at Brampton, Ontario, which has 700,000 people [actually, 656,480] and 260,000 rides a day on transit, all by focusing on high frequency.”