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From Toronto to Minneapolis, Surface LRTs Failing to Meet Travel Time Targets

  • Reality Check

Many of our followers are already familiar with the saga of Toronto’s Line 6 Finch West LRT — whether from our own coverage when the line opened or, more likely, from the steady stream of national news stories highlighting its serious reliability and speed problems.

Yet despite this very public record, some pro‑LRT voices in Toronto continue to argue that Finch West’s failure to meet its travel‑time targets is a uniquely “TTC problem,” rooted in local operations practices rather than the technology itself. My long‑standing observations of surface LRT systems across North America tell a very different story. As I noted in our earlier “Reality Check” blog post, even Seattle’s Link LRT system is struggling with slower‑than‑promised travel times, though to a lesser extent.

Today, I want to turn to another case that illustrates the same pattern even more clearly: the Minneapolis–St. Paul Green Line.

An overview: Street‑running LRT between Minnesota’s “Twin Cities”

Opened in 2014 as the Central Corridor LRT, the 18 km (11-mile) Metro Green Line links downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul—the two major centres of the Twin Cities region. Conceived as a transformative east‑west spine, it connects five major activity hubs: downtown Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota, the Midway district, the State Capitol, and downtown St. Paul.

Unlike the region’s first LRT line, the Metro Blue Line (2004)—which runs on an exclusive rail corridor—the Green Line was built almost entirely in the median of University Avenue, an arterial roadway linking the two cities. Its at‑grade, street‑running design closely resembles Toronto’s Finch West LRT and depends heavily on traffic‑signal coordination to maintain speed.

Map of Minneapolis's Metro Green Line LRT showing stations and nearby highways

Travel time issues similar to Toronto's Finch West LRT

During original planning, the Green Line was projected to complete its end‑to‑end trip between Target Field in Minneapolis and Union Depot in Saint Paul in just 35 minutes[1], averaging 31 km/h (19.25 mph); this was later revised to 39.6 minutes[2]. However, as testing began, those assumptions quickly fell apart. One month before opening, dry‑run trains were taking roughly 67 minutes due to poorly tuned signal priority and intersection timing, mirroring the same issues now seen on Finch West.

As it turned out, the original estimates were based on optimistic assumptions about signal priority and minimal cross‑traffic delays[3], and it became evident that those faster travel times were not realistically attainable on the final LRT line as it was built.

As in Toronto, local advocates scrutinized the travel times and collected data [4][5] to compare the LRT’s performance to the existing bus routes on University Avenue—the #16 (local) and #50 (express)—and to determine whether the new line would actually deliver faster travel times. Rider groups banded together, lobbying local governments to fix signal priority issues and ensure results from an investment of nearly $1 billion USD.

Above: Samples of data collected by transit advocates comparing Green Line expected times with existing bus times.
Note that times shown above, including the Green Line, reflected expected and not actual travel times on all charts (more clarification on this below)

Upon opening, Metro Transit was able to schedule trips for 48 minutes[6][7]—averaging only 22 km/h (13.75 mph) between the two downtowns. While faster than the 67‑minute test runs, this fell far short of the original planned projections of 35 minutes from end-to-end, and offered only a minimal improvement over the Route #50 express bus. In addition, to cut costs and reduce the number of light rail vehicles required for service, Metro Transit opted to run trains at lower 10-minute frequencies instead of the earlier planned peak-hour frequencies of every 7.5 minutes—reducing service on the existing Blue Line LRT too in the process.[8][9]

Ultimately, the Green Line LRT proved to be only 2 minutes faster than the 50-minute scheduled runtime of the bus service that it replaced.[10]

Worse yet, as noted by transit rider groups, the Green Line offered no speed advantage over the region’s existing express highway service on the I‑94 freeway just a few blocks south. (The Route #94 express bus reliably connected the two downtowns in 25-30 minutes[4][5][7], aided by bus‑only shoulder lanes[11]—similar to the Highway 99 shoulder‑running design used by the #351 bus in South Surrey).

The nonstop 94D will still best the Green Line’s projected 40-minute downtown-to-downtown trip time — and that’s assuming the Green Line doesn’t take an hour or more.

Adam Platt, MinnPost

Will Metro Transit’s Green Line really replace 500 bus trips?

Transit signal priority remains imperfect, 10 years after opening

Green Line LRT waits at a red light
A Green Line LRT in the distance waits at a red light for cars to pass. Photo: Twin Cities Pioneer Press

Torontonians hoping for a quick fix to the Finch West LRT’s travel-time problems should be warned that the Minneapolis example shows that only little progress may ultimately be made. More than a decade after opening, the Green Line’s travel time has not meaningfully improved. Operational tweaks briefly reduced the scheduled trip from 48 to 45 minutes in 2015[12], but by July 2020 this had climbed back up to 46.5 minutes[13], and by October 2025 again to 49 minutes[14]—longer than the travel time on opening day.

A major reason is the persistent failure of the line’s transit signal priority (TSP) system. While issues with TSP were noticed by many early on as the system began operation[15], local media were still calling out the same unresolved issues with TSP and overall travel times as recently as 2024[16]. Much like Toronto’s Line 6, Green Line trains are routinely forced to wait at intersections where turning vehicles are prioritized over transit—and this has remained unfixed for more than ten years.

Especially in St. Paul, the lack of signal priority at intersections forces the train to constantly halt at stoplights before allowing people to deboard. Even when the train is on time (rare these days, due to people holding the door), the trip between the downtowns takes 45 minutes, over three times slower than driving.

Bill Lindeke, MinnPost

A better future for the 10-year-old Green Line should include signal priority, business investment

A ridership "success", but it's not all roses

Despite significant issues, the Green Line is often called a success because it managed to meet and exceed ridership projections (Ridership projections were for 41,000 daily riders by 2030, and actual daily ridership surpassed that count by April 2016[13]). However, attaining these outcomes ultimately came at the expense of existing transit riders and regional ridership growth.

Advocates warned that Metro Transit would eventually cut the Route #94 interstate bus service to force riders onto the slower Green Line light rail, and that prediction proved correct. With the Green Line’s launch, Route #94 lost its all‑day service, retaining only weekday peak and limited midday trips, while evening and weekend service was eliminated. Midday service had also been set to be eliminated, but was retained at the last minute after plans to cut back the Route 94 service received significant public backlash[17][18].

The local Route #16 bus route on University Avenue, meanwhile, was truncated at the University of Minnesota—meaning riders bound for Downtown Minneapolis had to either choose the light rail instead, or otherwise transfer to/from either the light rail or another bus.[18]

A Route 94 bus shown running on an exclusive shoulder bus lane on Interstate 94 between Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

From bad to worse: Transit ridership declines

Although the Green Line was widely viewed as a ridership “success”, Metro Transit’s overall system saw ridership fall in the years that followed. Bus usage began declining almost immediately after the line opened—partly because bus riders shifted to the Green Line (including due to the service cuts on Routes #94 and #16), and partly because the arrival of rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft in 2014 had introduced new competition for short‑ and medium‑distance trips.

Metro Transit’s own charts illustrate the trend clearly[19][20][21]. Systemwide ridership peaked in 2015, then steadily declined, returning by 2019 to pre-Green Line levels. A second chart shows the dynamic more sharply: during the Green Line’s first two years, its rapid ridership growth coincided with a steep drop in bus ridership. After that initial shift, Green Line growth flattened while bus ridership continued to erode.

Lessons learned for future Twin Cities transit projects

Future Twin Cities projects should prioritize dedicated right‑of‑way and end‑to‑end speed over curbside placemaking if the goal is to shift regional travel behavior; the good news is, it appears that the challenges of the original Green Line have fundamentally shifted the design philosophy for Minneapolis’s next generation of transit—offering lessons that could potentially be applied in Toronto.

The Southwest LRT, a 23.3 km (14.5-mile) extension of the Green Line west to Eden Prairie, reflects a return to planning for higher speed. Unlike the street-running segments of the Central Corridor, the Southwest extension uses an exclusive right-of-way with extensive grade separations, including tunnels and elevated guideways, enabling the trains to reach their full speed of 90 km/h (55 mph). These design choices, which decouple the LRT from city traffic, enable an average speed of 43.7 km/h (27.2 mph) and an end-to-end travel time of approximately 32 minutes[22] (recall that the current Green Line on University Avenue takes 48 minutes—50% longer over a shorter distance).

Minneapolis Southwest LRT elevated guideway construction
Construction crews build an elevated guideway for the Minneapolis Southwest LRT. Photo from: Tutor Perini

Simultaneously, the Gold Line BRT—which began service between downtown St. Paul and Woodbury to the east in March 2025—is being leveraged to bypass the Green Line’s inherent speed bottlenecks.

In October 2024, Metro Transit announced the westward extension of the Gold Line to downtown Minneapolis along the I-94 freeway, providing a fast, frequent, and all-day rapid transit connection between the two downtowns, superseding the Green Line LRT.

Map of the Minneapolis Metro Gold Line showing extension
Map of the Minneapolis Metro Gold Line BRT, showing future extension to downtown Minneapolis as a "bypass" of the Green Line LRT/University Avenue

Scheduled for completion in 2027 at a cost of just $20 million USD, this project demonstrates a pivot toward flexible, freeway-based rapid transit to provide the higher speed and reliability that surface LRT has struggled to deliver. It will utilize and extend the existing bus-on-shoulder lanes and dedicated freeway infrastructure along I-94[23] to effectively upgrade the Route #94 bus to a rapid transit standard. It will also interline with the existing Gold Line segment, meaning that riders who would normally transfer to the Green Line LRT to continue into downtown Minneapolis would have a one-seat ride on the bus—a decision that will likely reduce Green Line ridership.

Ahead of the Gold Line BRT’s introduction, the missing evening and weekend service on Route #94 was restored in June 2025 after more than a decade of calls from transit advocates—an effective admission that the previous decision to cut service was a mistake.

Conclusion

I can see the “Gold Line extension” model applied in Toronto to address challenges with the beleaguered Line 6 Finch West LRT. Nearby freeway, railway, and utility corridors could provide the rights-of-way necessary for rapid bus infrastructure, offering bypass or express services to key destinations like Humber College at the line’s western terminus.

While this approach might seem to undermine the billions already invested in the Finch West LRT, it offers a pragmatic way to more quickly offer improved transit service in the area—a solution local policymakers should seriously consider.

Ultimately, the story of the Green Line serves as a cautionary tale for modern urban planning: transit cannot achieve significant mode shift if it fails to respect the “time-competitiveness” of the commute. By pivoting toward exclusive rights-of-way for the Southwest LRT and high-speed BRT corridors for the Gold Line, Metro Transit is finally acknowledging that for public transit to be a viable regional option, it must move faster than the traffic it aims to replace. This is a critical lesson applicable across both Canada and the United States.

Footnotes

  1. Metro Council Central Corridor Evaluation of Alternatives “AA/DEIS Locally Preferred Alternative” — June 2008[↩]
  2. Metro Council Central Corridor Evaluation of Alternatives Final “Preferred Alternative” — June 2009[↩]
  3. A 2020 before-and-after study by the FTA admits that the original estimates were based on “aggressive traffic signal priorities for trains”[↩]
  4. Travel Times on Existing Central Corridor Routes – Streets.mn, May 16, 2014[↩][↩]
  5. Green Line Travel Time Update – Streets.mn, May 30, 2014[↩][↩]
  6. Green Line will run 48 minutes end to end — The Minnesota Daily, May 29, 2014[↩]
  7. Green Line rail rides will take 48 minutes from downtown to downtown – The Minnesota Star Tribune, May 30, 2014[↩][↩]
  8. The FTA’s 2020 before-and-after study noted that Metro Transit deviated from its federal funding agreement with this operating decision[↩]
  9. Strangulation on the Green Line — “Interference on the Tracks” — Streets.mn David Markle, July 7, 2014[↩]
  10. Metro Transit page on Route #50 Express bus — Dec 6, 2013[↩]
  11. “Between downtown St. Paul and Highway 280, Route #94 buses can use bus-only shoulders” — Metro Transit page on Route #94 Express bus — Feb 14, 2014[↩]
  12. The Drive: Quicker trips coming for Green Line riders — Minnesota Star Tribune, March 1, 2015[↩]
  13. per the FTA Central Corridor before-and-after study, July 2020[↩][↩]
  14. per Metro Transit release, October 2025[↩]
  15. Should light rail get priority at St. Paul stoplights? — Twin Cities Pioneer Press, August 22, 2014[↩]
  16. A better future for the 10-year-old Green Line should include signal priority, business investment — MinnPost, June 17, 2024[↩]
  17. Metro Transit tweaks planned Central Corridor bus routes — Mike Hicks on Streets.mn, September 28, 2012[↩]
  18. Central Corridor Transit Service Study Final Plan — Metro Transit PDF[↩][↩]
  19. Metro Transit performance page – as of Jan 1, 2026[↩]
  20. Metro Transit Annual Ridership, by Mode – 2004-2018[↩]
  21. Metro Transit rides per person, 2012-2024 — Center of the American Experiment[↩]
  22. Southwest LRT Travel Demand Methodology & Forecast – on pg. 1[↩]
  23. as noted in the media release by Metro Council[↩]

Pictured in header: A Minneapolis Green Line LRT train

Reality Check

Reality Check is the online blog run by the founder of SkyTrain for Surrey, a BC-based community organization that has advocated for the expansion of the Vancouer SkyTrain system, including our successful advocacy for the under-construction Surrey-Langley SkyTrain extension.

Media Contact: Daryl Dela Cruz ​– Founder, SkyTrain for Surrey ・ Phone: +1 604 329 3529, [email protected]

From Toronto to Minneapolis, Surface LRTs Failing to Meet Travel Time Targets