Here's Kim Wilson's, Woodbury MN city council member, and her full unedited response to a question regarding the half billion dollar Gold Line bus rapid transit line from Woodbury to St. Paul.
We wrote the following based on data directly from the deputy project manager for the Gold line Morgan Abbott. If you doubt the facts of the following please contact her. Most of the data can also be found by simply using google.
Our Woodbury stop is one of 16 on the $500 million dollar Gold Line. In its best month it had 2,500 monthly rides from our station since it opened over a year ago. We spent over $100 million from Washington County alone on the capital costs and we spend $13.1 million a year on it now for our one Woodbury stop. We need yearly rides, so multiply 2,500 by 12 months a year and you get 30,000 rides a year. Divide that by two because each rider takes two rides a day. Take that and divide it by the $13.1 million and you get $86 per rider a day. Multiply that by 20 working days in a month, that's $1,700 a month per rider. That's $20,640 a year per rider from the Woodbury station. The average car loan is 5 years, with a $1700 a month payment (7% interest) we could buy each rider a $87,000 car every 5 years for cheaper...
Did you support this bus line? Are you disappointed with the poor ridership and great cost? Do you support expanding on this route deeper into Woodbury as it has been proposed?
Kim Wilson responded:
Thanks for the opportunity to respond.
The Gold Line has never been a project I supported, even before I was elected to the City Council. My concerns started with the cost. Spending roughly $500 million on a nine-mile bus line was, in my view, an excessive investment for the transportation need it was intended to address.
If additional bus service was needed to connect people to and from Woodbury, we could have expanded bus service without constructing an expensive, dedicated transit corridor. That would have provided something the Gold Line cannot - flexibility. Transportation needs change as communities grow, but a dedicated bus lane locks service into a fixed route. As Woodbury continues to expand south and eastward with new housing, retail, employment, and warehouse development, the transportation cannot simply move with those changing needs.
I also questioned the assumptions used to justify the project. Ridership projections relied on data collected before COVID dramatically changed commuting patterns, and express bus riders were included in those projections. The quarter-mile radius used to identify potential riders also did not always reflect the reality. A person may live within a quarter mile of a station on a map, but highways and other physical barriers can make reaching that station difficult or impractical.
Supporters will point to the bridge and other infrastructure improvements Woodbury received as benefits of the Gold Line. Those improvements have value, but I don't believe we needed a $500 million transit project in order to make necessary infrastructure investments.
Supporters will also say this did not cost Woodbury taxpayers any money - yet Woodbury taxpayers have spent millions on landscaping, lighting, and other improvements associated with the Gold Line corridor. There is also the hidden costs that are harder to track - the significant amount of city staff time devoted to planning, coordinating, overseeing, and now managing issues related to the Gold Line.
My opposition to the Gold Line has never meant opposition to public transportation. It is about whether we are solving transportation problems in the most practical and fiscally responsible way. I would have preferred a flexible bus system that could respond to actual ridership and changing development patterns without requiring a massive infrastructure investment.
For me, the question has always been simple: Could we have provided effective transportation service for substantially less money while maintaining the flexibility to adapt as Woodbury grows? I believe the answer is yes.
Just a footnote regarding the expansion to Minneapolis:
I am concerned that extending the Gold Line to Minneapolis could come at the expense of the highly utilized express bus service that currently provides Woodbury commuters with a more direct trip to downtown Minneapolis. As the transit system changes, we need to make sure we aren't eliminating or reducing the successful transportation options that residents are already using.
The decision to extend the Gold Line to Minneapolis also reinforces one of my major concerns with the original project. It's my understanding, the Minneapolis extension will largely use existing I-94 bus-only shoulders and existing transit infrastructure rather than constructing another expensive dedicated bus corridor. If that more flexible and cost-effective approach makes sense between St. Paul and Minneapolis, why wasn't a similar approach seriously considered from the beginning for service to and from Woodbury?
Public transportation should be designed around the needs of the people who use it. That means preserving successful express service, providing flexibility as communities grow and travel patterns change, and making sure taxpayers are getting the greatest transportation benefit for the dollars we spend.
