Removing the "Bus People" from Nicollet Mall

Jan 26, 2025

I’ve met Jacob Frey a couple of times. Seems like a nice guy. But the language on the Mpls website makes it hard to trust his motivations for removing buses from Nicollet Mall downtown as more than capitulation to businesses complaining about “undesirable” people.

The goals are confusing. The plan is ambiguous. And the problem is loosely defined.

Here is the blatant language from the Mpls’ own website:

“The goal of this work is to make transit as good or better than transit on Nicollet Mall today.”

https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/transportation-programs/nicollet-mall-downtown/

Kudos to whoever snuck that little bit in there. Basically buses are being moved from a street dedicated entirely to buses for the purpose of maintaining THE SAME level of transit service. What we’re hoping to get at the end of this multi-million dollar project is basically what we have now. But you know, three blocks over.

Nobody: “Gosh, it sure would be nice if downtown bus service were the same.”

Seriously, what is going on here?

There are lots of untried ways to improve transit on Nicollet Mall. For starters, give the 15-30 people on a bus signal priority over the half dozen people in cars at each intersection. We could adjust stop frequency. We could try pre-paid boarding. And so on.

But why bother? For this project to succeed, it doesn’t need to improve transit service. The city is trying to move buses so that they provide the same level of service we have now.

Again, what the heck?

Why not leave well enough alone? If Nicollet Mall’s bus situation is not bad enough to be improved, why go to the trouble and expense of moving it?

The Mpls website goes on to say that Frey is motivated by the “increase in empty storefronts in the heart of downtown.”

And when the buses are gone, what happens to Nicollet? On paper this looks like moving a system that is designed to deliver people. So, with less people coming to Nicollet Mall, what will happen? More people will come to Nicollet Mall?

If that’s what you believe, then you’re really trying to remove the bus people so that the “good” people can flourish in their absence.

If the transit status quo is fine as long as it’s somewhere else, then we’re not really trying to solve a transit problem. If the motivation is empty storefronts and we think buses are related to that problem, we have to ask how?

To be fair the same Mpls website goes on later to say that “Our goal is to improve transit on Nicollet Mall and downtown.”

We aim to improve transit on Nicollet by eliminating mass transit on Nicollet.

So cars? You want to put cars back on Nicollet Mall? It would be great if we were talking about walking and rolling, but if we are it would be a monumental shift in how Mpls addresses transit and I just find that kind of shift hard to believe. So it must be cars, right?

The website has two bullet points that refer to walking:

* Explore the future of Nicollet Mall as a pedestrian zone.
* Look at other options for transit service in downtown.

The first bullet point suggests Mpls is gonna do some kind of study as soon as the buses are gone. The second bullet suggests the answer is going to be cars: “other options for transit” so long as they’re not buses.

What else could it be? Gondolas? A canal? Hyper loop?

I’m not really being fair on this last point. I’m just jaded. I would welcome a perspective shift toward pedestrians and I think Mpls (and the whole United States) needs more places that put people ahead of cars.

It’s just that Nicollet Mall is already a pedestrian zone. It has the widest sidewalks in downtown (maybe in all of Mpls). The only traffic is buses which are a compliment to walking, and the buses max out at about 10 mph, making Nicollet just about as comfortable for walking as you can get. Even the curbs are lower which makes crossing in the middle of the block more practical.

The problem with Nicollet Mall as a destination for pedestrians is not that it’s uncomfortable. It’s that it’s boring. There’s just not that much going on.

As Bill Lindeke discusses in his recent article, “The lack of shop windows or active storefronts make revitalizing Nicollet Mall a challenge.”

https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2025/01/nicollet-mall-needs-bikes-and-other-wheeled-wanderers/

But the buses are not hindering that revitalization unless you think the people on the buses are the problem. If bus people are bad for business, why do we have buses at all? Why move them when we could just get rid of the buses and the bus people entirely. We could just force everybody to drive everywhere (or stay home). We could extend rush hour by 2-3 hours every day.

Surely business everywhere would be revitalized. Right? We could tear down the empty storefronts so the additional cars from all of the revitalization have somewhere to park. And that would surely make walking in downtown more attractive. People would drive hundreds of miles to park and then walk in downtown’s parking lots. [Sarcasm]

The problem with activating anything downtown is downtown was designed as a place to work. It fills up with people who patronize the storefronts when there are lots of jobs downtown. The work-from-home movement has decimated urban cores all over the country. And the storefronts don’t have enough draw on their own to get people to drive into downtown and, we seem to be arguing, those people don’t take the bus either.

Downtown Minneapolis needs to work as it was designed (as a job hub) or be redesigned (over decades) as a place for people to live. People tend to like convenience. Residents shop near where they live. More people, more business for the storefronts.

The problem with the pedestrian mall idea is that without buses, people will have to drive to walk there. There aren’t enough downtown residents to support all of the storefronts. Yes, shoppers can ride a bike to get to Nicollet Mall, but downtown is generally a horrible place to bike because of all the cars. Yes, they can walk to Nicollet, but from where? Downtown Minneapolis is an island surrounded by I-35, I-94, and the Mississippi River. Unless you live downtown, it’s a long way to walk.

For most potential customers all of these options (including buses) require you to opt out of dozens of other conveniently located “storefronts” along the way. Unless you’re going downtown already for some other reason (like a job), the existing Nicollet Mall storefronts don’t have enough draw to get you down there. Buses aren’t the problem. Bus people aren’t the problem. People are the problem.

Actually, people are the solution. What these storefronts lack is customers. Add people to Nicollet Mall and you will get customers. Remove buses from Nicollet Mall and you just won’t have any buses.

Again, if that’s your gaol, to have the same level of service we have already, by all means, move the buses all over the place. But if vibrant storefronts is your goal, this ain’t gonna work. Full stop.

Now, what do we do about the “undesirables” on Nicollet Mall? The truth is, some people ARE bad for business. inebriated people shouting and fighting and smoking and littering and harassing and urinating is not a draw for very many customers.

This is a frequent occurrence on the sidewalks in front of Recovery Bike Shop in the summer, so we have some understanding of the problem.

When you call, the police make a good point: “We can move them along, but we can’t really arrest them and they don’t pay fines.” In other words, apart from the damage to your sales, these people are mostly harmless and you’re on your own.

We have neighborhood meetings. We talk with the neighbors. We sit down with our elected reps and the police. The only real solution that anybody ever offers is more police, which is to say, “We can move them along….” We can push them into a different neighborhood so that they become someone else’s problem.

As a society our main solution is to spend more and more resources pushing these people into other neighborhoods and hoping that neighborhood doesn’t push back. We pretend like making it someone else’s problem is a solution.

But these aren’t problems. They’re people. They’re our neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, I do not like these people. But our humanity demands that we respect them.

So let’s be honest with ourselves. We have a problem. And the problem is us. The problem is the people in our community. And our community is our problem. And we have no idea what to do about it.

Take the city's survey, but there is no option to leave the buses where they are.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MplsDowntownTransitSurvey

If you think Nicollet Mall should keep it's buses, write to Jacob Frey directly (and copy city council president Elliott Payne):
jacob.frey@minneapolismn.gov
elliott.payne@minneapolismn.gov