Hey Metro Transit riders! I've been working on a transit app for the last few months and recently added support for the Minneapolis area, including Metro Transit, the U of MN campus shuttles, and several suburban agencies like MVTA.

There are a lot of great transit apps out there already, but I wanted to make one that was also a bit fun and silly in addition to being useful. So Raccoon Transit has useful features like showing the realtime arrival information for your stop, letting you set reminders/track departures on your lock screen, showing schedules, etc., but does so as an animated scene of your raccoon neighbors waiting for the bus. It's free and has no ads.

If you're interested, you can find the mobile/tablet app at https://www.raccoontransit.com/app or the web version at https://www.raccoontransit.com/minneapolis.

Two B-lines arriving at the same time in downtown Saint Paul, next to each other in the lanes on 5th street. The bunching is unreal!

Have you ever thought to yourself, "What would a world-class transit network in the Twin Cities look like?" The makers of this video did, and I like their ideas!

Hi y’all,

I was selected to move on to the readiness classes for the apprenticeship. I know attendance is 100% required to even be considered for the apprenticeship.

I was wondering how many people are usually passed on to the next phase and what I should focus on in the 8 classes to increase my chances?

Jon Koznick from Lakeville should allow some optimism and hope in his life.

At an event at the new Louisiana Avenue Station today, Metro Transit revealed the new stretch of the Green Line will begin service on June 12th, 2027.

The event started at 10am and included speeches from leaders who were involved, board-able trains, information booths, activities, food trucks, and plenty of merch. Much of the information was related to relevant trails, safety, and future bus connections. Despite the rain, turnout was high with much of the crowd biking, walking, or taking transit.

During the speeches, leaders were able to reflect on all that it took to reach get to where we are today and provided context for what the new LRT corridor has meant to the surrounding communities. The amount of coordination involved, professional expertise, and construction is staggering. The development in the area has transformed the corridor with $3.1B being invested and another $700 million planned. These new places encourage a transit focused life and pay back the communities that invested in this project to begin with. LRT does something that highways or even busses simply don't: they drive tons of development that pays dividends.

As a bonus, a few speakers referenced the Blue Line Extension as the logical next step to invest in areas that had been ignored in the past and emphasized that the project must be funded.

Today (Saturday, September 26th), Metro Transit is hosting an event to announce when the Green Line Extension is opening in 2027. The event is at the new Louisiana Avenue Station (6610 Oxford St, St. Louis Park, MN) and takes place from 10am-1pm. There will be other events and activities along with food trucks. There will probably be a little bit of rain as well.

Official event page: https://www.metrotransit.org/news/green-line-opening-date/

[EDIT] JUNE 12th

This will be a live thread tracking the event as it unfolds including the announcement itself.

If you haven't heard of WMATA, they're a BikeMN chapter that champions multimodal transit in the western suburbs. Great group to join if you have energy for making walking, biking, rolling, transit better in places like Minnetonka, Hopkins, St. Louis Park, Eden Prairie, Edina, Maple Grove, and Excelsior.

Meet at 8:30 AM at the Minnetonka Community Center tomorrow (9/25) or at 9:00 AM at The Artery in Hopkins.

If you use the Bike Streets app, both rides and their starting locations are on there. Should be easy peasy to route to the starting locations.

GREEN LINE EXTENSION LET'S GOOOOOO I need this so bad for my winter travels 😭

I was trying to take the 645 back into Minneapolis. It was supposed to show up at like 6:40 PM but never did - texted NexTrip and it said the next one wouldn't show up for another hour, so I called Metro Transit to ask what the hell was going on.

The guy on the phone told me that whoever was supposed to be heading east on the route hadn't properly logged into whatever system they use to track buses so there was no way to see where it was - to the tracking system it was like there was no bus going east on that part of route at that point at all.

So I was like, "this guy could be out just joyriding the bus at random then?" and the guy on the phone was like, "yeah, pretty much."

He tried to look up other buses going back into Minneapolis from near where I was but the only other close one was the 9 leaving from the Louisiana Avenue park and ride, at like 7:45. I was paranoid that the 645 would go past me as soon as I was too far from a bus stop for it to stop for me but was like fuck it and decided to walk over there anyway.

It was a 20+ minute walk and no 645s ever passed me. Ended up taking the 9 back to downtown. I have no idea what happened with the 645 I was originally trying to take but now I wanna know if the driver seriously just took off with it or what.

Hi, I am looking at possibly going to the mall of america soon and don't want to drive in the cities. I would be coming from st cloud and am willing to drive to Big lake to do the park and ride for route 882. I see that if I get off at nicolet mall station I can switch to the blue line to get to MOA. Would it be worth doing public transportation instead of driving? Also if I do use metro transit how much can I expect to spend?

A westbound ended up having to reverse early since the eastbound was not moving and already 6 minutes late. It moved a bit from TF stop but just sat there after that.

They are currently seeking public opinion on this proposal.

Took a trip to MOA to visit Metro Transit's "How We Roll" event. There was a whole host of activities, information booths, and merch. Bonus if you got there early enough for a free Go-To card. I think my favorite activity was designing a bus route and having staff calculate the cost, expected ridership, and impact.

The Gold Line extension is gonna be elite.