For a place with only one light-rail line open, the Twin Cities have had an awful lot of news about mass transit recently. It seems almost daily that another story is written about the Green Line. It opens on June 14 so I won’t be discussing it too much — I intend to focus on what’s next! After the Green Line, how will mass transit expand?

Recently, attention has been turning towards the Midtown Corridor, where the Midtown Greenway runs parallel to Lake St. This corridor, where a railroad once ran, was turned into a bike and pedestrian greenway that has become immensely popular over the past few years. However, since the Greenway does not take up the whole space on the corridor, and there is a growing need for better mass transit on Lake St. and the Greenway, transit planners and activists have been examining ways to improve transit between Lake St. and Hiawatha (where the Blue Line station is located) and West Lake St. (where a new light-rail station will be located in the Southwest Corridor light-rail project).

Earlier in February, Metro Transit’s Policy Advisory Committee chose a Locally Preferred Alternative — a so-called working plan on where the line will be located and what it will look like. They chose to pursue rail within the Midtown Corridor alongside the Greenway.

While it will likely not be a light-rail due to the higher costs associated with this form of transit, the study alludes to the possibility of one-train light-rail cars running on streetcar-style tracks. There is a lot that still needs to be studied, planned and engineered, but this decision to move Metro Transit forward is huge.

With the rail option, travel times will fall dramatically between Lake and Hiawatha and West Lake from 42 minutes today on bus to 13 minutes via the rail option. This is likely to be a hit for the people living along the corridor, especially those in new mid-rise apartment buildings, as well as people tired of waiting in congestion and struggling to find parking in Uptown.

In addition to pursuing a rail line alongside the greenway, the Policy Advisory Committee also approved a plan that included creating an enhanced-bus line on Lake St. Similar to a bus rapid transit line that is currently being planned for Snelling Ave. An enhanced bus line on Lake St. would feature bus stations with greater amenities, faster service, and technology that would help buses from getting stuck at traffic lights — so-called signal prioritization.

The combination of both rail and an enhanced bus line in this corridor speaks strongly to the progressive ideas Metro Transit has for mass transit in the Twin Cities. In fact, it was only 10 years ago that the Blue Line first opened. Since then, we have fully built another rail line (now just a little over two months from opening), a new BRT line, a commuter rail line and are working on expanding both light-rail lines. Now these improvements in the Midtown Corridor will be added to this list.