On Oct. 13, the Metropolitan Council approved the final corridor plan for the METRO B Line, including all 33 stations and routing. The project now moves into the detailed design phase, which will occur into 2022, with construction in 2023 and service anticipated to begin in 2024. The B Line is a $65 million bus rapid transit line that will substantially replace local bus route 21, connecting Union Depot in Saint Paul with Uptown in Minneapolis along Selby and Marshall avenues and Lake Street. The approved plan built upon over 2,500 community comments and coordination with cities and counties. BRT improves the transit experience by providing faster, reliable service every 10 minutes, seven days a week during the day and most of the evening, on streamlined routes with upgraded stations and onboard amenities. 

Route 21 is Metro Transit’s second busiest bus route with about 10,000 daily rides in 2019, but it runs in a corridor with an average speed as low as 8 miles per hour during rush hour. The B Line aims to make service about 20% faster.     

The METRO Purple Line (formerly the Rush Line) — a bus rapid transit project planned to start service to the northeast metro area in late 2026 — has received environmental clearance from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Clearing this hurdle helps to pave the way to transfer the project from Ramsey County to the Met Council in late 2021 or early 2022. This was the final stage of the environmental review process for the Purple Line project.  Over the past three years, county project staff have taken in thousands of comments from the community, connecting with more than 3,400 people at events, pop-up meetings, open houses, virtual events, and a variety of other efforts. In 2020, the cities of Saint Paul, White Bear Lake, Vadnais Heights, and Maplewood passed resolutions of support for the project’s preliminary design plans. The 15-mile METRO Purple Line will connect Saint Paul, Maplewood, White Bear Township, Vadnais Heights, Gem Lake, and White Bear Lake.