Taking Public Transit in the Twin Cities

Did you make any green resolutions on Earth Day? Good for you! If you pledged to use public transit more, but haven't quite got around to riding the bus or the train yet, here's a little reminder.

Metro Transit has been criticized for not running enough routes within the Twin Cities, compared to other large metropolitan areas. There are vast areas of the suburbs lacking in bus services, and many places in Minneapolis and St. Paul with a long walk to the nearest bus line. Several services only operate once or twice an hour.

But where the buses and trains do run, they run on time, they are usually clean, good value, and fast compared to services in other US cities that I've lived in.

Metro Transit operates hybrid buses on several lines in Minneapolis, and plans to have 170 hybrid buses in service by 2012. The hybrids are easy to spot: they are painted green. Metro Transit clearly takes "going green" literally.

Even though I have a car, If I'm going to downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul, I ride the bus or the train. No parking hassles, most bus lines connect to either or both downtowns, and the fare is less than the price of the gas I'd use.

I admit that even though I'm a fan of Metro Transit, I still drive my car an awful lot. But every little counts, and if everyone in the Twin Cities replaced just one five-mile car journey by public transit a month, we'd save 180 million pounds of CO₂ emissions from cars every year.

Ready to take the plunge into public transit? Below are beginner's guides to the bus and the train. And here's a good date to start: Metro Transit is offering free bus and train rides to the May 3 and 4 Living Green Expo at the State Fairgrounds.

• Riding the Bus in the Twin Cities
• Riding the Hiawatha Light Rail Line Trains