Question to Regional Transit Planners:
Why does the Red Line Freeway BRT along Cedar Avenue/Mn 77 not continue beyond Mall of America on 77 and 62 to interline with the Orange Line on I-35W to downtown Minneapolis? [Yes I know, there will still be Express Buses services from 77 to 35, but you weaken the brand, no? All the other colored lines go to downtown, and red is a primary color.]
Why is it better to make people transfer at Mall of America to Hiawatha (Blue Line) and stop 16 times rather than go on the Freeway BRT and stop 2 times before reaching downtown? [Yes I know, it is not for people going downtown, but then, are we really expecting this to carry lots of people justifying high frequency.]
Are you afraid picking up passengers at Mall of America to downtown will reduce your LRT ridership? [Or am I too cynical?]
A poor implementation here will harm the future of Highway BRT just as the poor plan of Northstar is hurting Commuter Rail. The UrbanMSP thread is here, but I haven't seen these questions addressed.
I expect the reason for discontinuing the red line at Mall of America is to boost ridership on Hiawatha to make rail transit appear more successful. When the Hiawatha Line was implemented many bus routes in south Minneapolis were reoriented to run east-west to intersect the rail line instead of going directly downtown as they had previously. The reorientation increases ridership of rail transit even though it might decrease overall transit ridership.
The advantage of a single seat ride from Cedar Avenue to downtown appears attractive. Express bus service seems like one of the most popular transit options, especially when load factors are considered.
Take a look at http://www.humantransit.org/2009/04/why-transferring-is-good-for-you-and-good-for-your-city.html and http://www.humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-grids.html There is no question that rerouting buses into the Hiawatha line was the right move, and to suggest that it's going to harm ridership runs counter to any reality in terms of the effectiveness, usability or efficiency of the system.
As for the Red Line itself, that I definitely have more sympathy for looking at through routing, but looking at that map in and of itself isn't going to tell you a whole lot. You really need a pretty detailed analysis to get a decent handle on the costs involved, and what kind of benefit there really will be. Without having dug through detailed studies I would not be surprised if through routing the Red Line didn't end up being very expensive in terms of infrastructure and vehicle miles without significantly improving travel time (how much private right of way is involved on the Orange line vs Hiawatha? for that matter, number of stops aside, which route is actually faster?). Realistically even if travel times are lower you are also going to serve far more destinations by connecting to a line with the relatively frequent stops of Hiawatha than to a full express (again, see http://www.humantransit.org/2009/06/slippery-word-watch-express.html), and you quickly get into the question of how many people really are headed downtown.
At the end of the day I don't know either the city or the corridors involved well enough to say if this is the right decision or not, but it certainly doesn't feel wrong at a high level. Ultimately transfers are not a bad thing for the network when they serve to improve connectivity, and at a glance this seems to. While through routing might be nice it also means a usually expensive duplication of service, and there are almost always better uses for the resources involved in doing that.
In any case, feeding high capacity lines is not a bad thing in it's own right except where it forces unreasonable detours. Routing buses into a grid like network is really very hard to see as creating detours for many, greatly simplifies most networks and generally increases connectivity usability and efficiency. In terms of the Red Line, the route looks very much like an extension of the Hiawatha corridor in function, in which case you'd need something pretty special to find that the best use of resources is to divert riders off the corridor to avoid what should be a well managed transfer from one high capacity, relatively fast, system to another.