Add/expand public transit service.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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Add or expand public transit in your city or between your city and other destinations, working with other units of local governments as needed. |
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Add/expand Saturday or Sunday bus service; add dial-a-ride to regular service; embed a transit station/stop in a transit-oriented/mixed-use district. Report supportive changes in parking requirements under BPA 14.1. |
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Schedule transit service for at least every 30 minutes during peak hours so that 75% of city addresses are within 1/2 mile of a transit stop; incorporate payment for both local transit and ride-shares (and connections between the two) on a single smartphone app; analyze and set policies to reduce transit enforcement disparities by race, disability, or income. |
Resources
- Note that each of Minnesota's regional Development Organizations has worked on a five-year update of the Local Human Service Public Transit Coordination Plans required by the Office of Transit in MnDOT.
- Putting Transit to Work in Main Street America (Reconnecting America, 2012) explores how smaller cities, towns, and rural places are integrating transit into their communities, recognizing that cars work well in the rural to low-density suburban zones/transects, and public transportation works efficiently starting in the lower density suburbs and really drives down total public-private transportation costs in a buzzing metropolis. Between those two land use patterns/densities on the rural-to-urban transect lies a gap where neither model works really well. And evolving from one into the other is difficult: do we introduce transit first and then build denser/more mixed-use nodes, or do we build first (and increase congestion) and then introduce transit? Cities must fine-tune an evolution to fit their community culture, accepting the co-existence of several zones within the city/region, with the car-based zones shrinking and the walkable transit zones expanding, but both zones relating to each other in positive ways.
- From Sorry to Superb (TransitCenter, 2018) details how transit agencies and cities can build great bus stops that increase ridership.
- Public Transportation in the US: A Driver of Health and Equity (Health Affairs, 2021) share how "new or expanded public transportation options can improve health and health equity by reducing traffic crashes and air pollution, increasing physical activity, and improving access to medical care, healthy food, vital services, employment, and social connection."
- Racism has shaped public transit, and it's riddled with inequities (Rice University, 2020)
Order Number
6