Without White Bear Lake’s walkable destination as an anchor point, planners have had to come up with alternatives. It’s frustrating because the Purple Line is one of the most promising East Metro transit projects, a 15-mile bus rapid transit project that would use regional transit funding (collected regionally for transit capital costs) to invest in improvements in Ramsey County.

(The county commissioner representing the area has decided not to run for reelection.) That left Purple Line planners in the lurch, grasping for another solution. The anti-transit campaign found fertile ground in the tony suburb, and elected local politicians refused to further cooperate with the county. That history is water under the railroad bridge these days. As I wrote then, the impulse was ironic given White Bear Lake’s history as a classic Twin Cities railroad suburb, a walkable town that grew up around a railroad depot with all-day commuter transit service. Such is the way of transit planning in the United States of America, where barriers multiply and planners often struggle to find workable compromise.Īt the time, a grassroots anti-transit movement of irate White Bear Lake business owners was organized to fight reliable transit service between downtown White Bear Lake and St. A lot has happened (or, more precisely, not happened) since we last checked in on Ramsey County’s Purple Line, a proposed bus rapid transit (BRT) project to White Bear Lake.

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