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
Rural Transit:
- The State of Minnesota and all regions across Greater Minnesota have transit plans with MnDOT.
- An Active Roadmap: Best Practices in Rural Mobility (Smart Growth America, 2023) provides strategies for improving rural transportation options, including case studies.
- 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.
Transit Infrastructure:
- Climate Strategies that Work (U.S. DOT, 2024) provides actionable information for 27 transportation-related emission reduction strategies (including Bus Rapid Transit, Free and Reduced Fare Transit, Intercity Bus/Passenger Rail, Public Transit Expansion) through well-vetted guides detailing benefits, implementation steps, and resources.
- Create Better Bus Stops like Metro Transit’s program using their design guide.
- See MnDOT’s project development guidance for transit systems.
- From Sorry to Superb (TransitCenter, 2018) details how transit agencies and cities can build great bus stops that increase ridership.
Payment Options:
- Incorporate programs that reduce or remove transit fares for specific groups of people, often seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income individuals. For example, Metro Transit's Transit Assist Program (TAP) reduces fares to $1 for every ride.
Health and Equity of Transportation Systems:
- 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
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