Metro micro is a new transit bus that can pick up passengers on a whim.
“There’s no route,” said Julie Martinez from Metro Transit. “There’s no bus stop. It’s wherever you are. That’s a lot easier for people to latch onto. You don’t have to learn a schedule. It’s just get up and go.”
“Similar to Uber and Lyft you can track where your bus is,” said Christina Pflueger who is with the Met Council. “You get notifications when your bus will arrive. The buses will wait two minutes for you. It’s definitely on demand. So when you request that ride be ready.”
Metro micro was launched in mid-September and the cost to ride is cheap, which is part of the appeal.
Said Martinez: “It’s a good deal.”
Said Pflueger: “Very affordable and it’s point to point.”
Buses run Monday through Friday from 5:30 am to 10:30 pm and on weekends from 7 am to 10:30 pm.
“You use an app on your phone, similar to Uber or Lyft to request a ride within the zone and get brought to wherever you need to be,” Pflueger said. “It’s public transit, so it’s available to anyone that wants to ride. It’s $2.50 and $3.25 during rush hour, so very reasonable plus a 2 1/2 hour transfer if you need one.”
Fleet of five buses
At peak hours, Metro micro has a fleet of five buses operating.
“Our buses have eight seats in them plus the ability to have wheelchairs,” Pflueger said. “So were fully ADA accessible.”
Most of Blaine is in the Metro micro transportation zone.
“We are a service that starts up by Sand Creek Park and runs all the way over to Blaine City Hall and down to Spring Lake Park High School,” Pflueger said. “So it’s a service within a zone. It’s very on-demand.”
“This zone was created because they identified where there were gaps in our transit system,” Martinez said. “Where there’s not fixed route service where it can be difficult to serve.”
Anastasia Morgan is a Metro micro driver. She’s seeing a steady increase in passengers.
“It’s slowly been progressing,” Morgan said. “Getting more and more people every day.”
“So far it’s going very well,” said Pflueger.
For Morgan this is more than a job. It’s a chance to provide rides for people who aren’t mobile.
“There are a lot of people in this area alone that don’t have vehicles or that have different needs or aren’t able to walk or see,” Morgan said. “This fills that need for them to get out and go be a part of the community. I feel like everybody deserves that opportunity…I’m just grateful that I can give people something that they need because a lot of people struggle to get around. This is a service when I didn’t have a vehicle, I wish I had.”
“It’s almost too good to be true, so for those that have discovered it, it’s really exciting because it’s affordable, it’s accessible,” Martinez said. “As long as you need a ride within that area it can connect with other forms of transit or just to get you within the zone.”
Metro micro started in North Minneapolis in 2022 as a pilot and earlier this year the service was launched in Woodbury, Roseville and Bloomington.
