MN: Rochester's park-and-ride system gears up for greater use

Sharon Wangen was testing Rochester's newest park-and-ride lot on a recent Tuesday morning in preparation for her usual route being disrupted later this year.

"I thought I'd try this route," the Rochester resident said. She commutes daily by bus to her job in Mayo Clinic's transfusion medicine division. On this Tuesday, she got on the city bus at the 75th Street park-and-ride.

Up to now, Wangen has been parking her car and catching a ride downtown at Mayo Clinic's west shuttle lot, on Second Street Southwest. That lot will soon become temporarily unavailable to her and many others, as it is transformed with the addition of a 2,500-space new employee parking ramp , as well as a city-run transit station and private housing development.

Construction of some elements in what's been dubbed West Transit Village is expected to start this spring, which means many more commuters, like Wangen, will need to find new ways to get to work.

A nearly $7.7 million contract for city infrastructure in the planned transit village was approved Monday . Development of the transit village is related to an overall $175.1 million commuter bus project, Link Bus Rapid Transit, which has been delayed after a set of construction bids for the transit line came in well higher than city estimates.

Construction is expected to help reverse, at least temporarily, a five-year decline in the use of the city's park-and-ride.

"There's been kind of a changing dynamic there," Rochester Public Transit Project Manager Mike Collin said. "We think that will begin to tick upwards again as a lot of the construction starts, and a few of the parking ramps are taken down."

The four park-and-ride locations are at the University Center Rochester campus, at Graham Park, at CMX Cinemas Chateau, and at 75th Street along U.S. Highway 52. The 75th Street lot replaced a park-and-ride on the former IBM campus.

Just prior to the pandemic, in 2020, an annual count of cars in the city's four park-and-ride lots found 1,951 cars. Since then, the highest annual count has found just 613 cars. This year's count, 273, was the lowest in recent history.

Pine Island resident Peggy Lee said she's been a daily user of the new 75th Street park-and-ride lot since it opened last year . She said the lot is closer to her home and provides less stress than accessing parking she was using closer to her job at Mayo Clinic Spine Center.

"I hate driving downtown," she said.

Kathy Fuqua, a newcomer to the 75th Street lot, said the convenience, with 15-minute bus arrivals during peak periods, is key.

Fuqua, a Mayo School of Continuous Professional Development employee, is a hybrid worker, driving to Rochester from Rosemount once a week, and said the ability to catch a bus on the north edge of the city works well for her.

While an increase in hybrid and remote workers likely contributed to reduced parking activity in recent years, Collins and others note remote working is only available for people whose jobs don't require personal interaction.

It means Mayo Clinic nurses, lab researchers and other on-site staff, as well as downtown restaurant, retail and hotel workers, still must show up to the workplace on a regular basis, as do a variety of other downtown workers who might have used the park-and-ride lots in the past.

Mayo Clinic employees are the most frequent users of the city-owned and contracted lots providing free parking and a paid bus connection to downtown.

Since Mayo Clinic reimburses Rochester Public Transit for each employee riding on a city bus, Collins said Rochester Public Works can track the use, which shows nearly 99% of the 9,500 rides provided in January at three of the city park-and-ride lots — all of them except for University Center Rochester — were by Mayo Clinic employees.

Buses serving the UCR park-and-ride, however, saw that the majority of 2,400 rides in January — nearly 73% — were taken by people without Mayo Clinic badges, perhaps taking advantage of stops near RCTC's Heintz Center or Olmsted County's eastern campus.

Park-and-ride service is for more than Mayo Clinic's employees. It's also available to other downtown workers, but employers including Natalie Victoria say younger restaurant workers, such as those at Victoria's and The Tap House, tend to have young families and schedule demands that make the park-and-ride service, or other options not involving their cars, impractical.

"Most of these people are dropping their kids off at daycare or school and heading into work. ... It's not easy for them to just throw their kids in their backpack and ride their bike to work or hop on a bus," she said, noting her business maintains six parking passes and leases two private parking spaces to meet some needs, but most employees need to pay for their own parking, which can be $14 to $16 for a daytime shift.

Catherine Malmberg, Destination Medical Center Economic Development Authority's director of public infrastructure and development strategy, said "trip chaining" that links work commutes to other errands and stops is not uncommon for younger families, especially young mothers and families with limited incomes.

"I may be coming into work in the morning and heading home at the end of the day, but I'm also trying to accomplish other things along the way," she said.

Malmberg said the DMC-supported Link Bus Rapid Transit project could spur development of amenities, including day cares and retail, that meet some commuter needs, but the final developments will depend on what private developers see as good investments.

The Link Rapid Transit system is already sparking some retail and housing developments. But many more remain to happen, and they aren't likely to happen before the Link system starts running at the end of 2026 or in early 2027.

At that point, Collins said, Rochester Public Transit will have completed a new transit development plan, which could alter bus routes for improved connections to downtown service and park-and-ride facilities, opening options for commuters.

Malmberg said the changes expand commuter opportunities for all downtown employees, especially those within walking or biking distance of the Link hubs.

"It captures a lot of area," she said of residential neighborhoods that will have access to the new system without the need for driving.

Until new infrastructure is in place, other shifts are expected in the city's commuter parking and transit landscape.

Mayo Clinic project manager Jay Smith said the organization's parking officials meet regularly to discuss potential impacts and solutions related to the new parking ramp he's helping guide at the western Link hub, as well as other planned parking structures.

Mayo Clinic plans to add up to 1,000 parking spaces in a new employee ramp near Saint Marys Hospital this year, and a planned 500-stall ramp on the site of the former Travelers Hotel, 426 Second St. SW, is expected to be used for employee parking until Mayo Clinic's " Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester " expansion is completed.

The latter of those two ramps, dubbed the South Ramp , will eventually be converted to provide patient parking.

Mayo Clinic's employee parking needs will also shift as its lease of nearly 1,400 spaces in the former Kmart lot in southeast Rochester is set to expire upon Link's implementation. An agreement between Mayo Clinic, the city and the site's owner, Camegaran LLC, calls for the site to move toward development once the new 2.8-mile transit system is in place.

It's unclear what the net gain in employee parking will be for Mayo Clinic. At least 2,500 employee spaces are being removed amid the expansion, and new ramps are slated to create roughly 3,500 spaces.

Mayo Clinic's news bureau did not respond to a request to speak with transit and parking staff about the future use and sponsorship of the city lots, but the organization's director of enterprise community engagement, Erin Sexton, speculated Mayo Clinic's anticipated 2% to 3% annual growth means parking pressures will remain.

Addressing future need

The pressures could be addressed by the city's park-and-ride system — which, although it has seen diminished use since the pandemic, still has an important role to play for Mayo Clinic. In recent five-year plans submitted to the city, the clinic has estimated that 900 to 1,000 of its employees are regular users of park-and-rides. As a result, Mayo Clinic sponsors the locations at Graham Park and near the Chateau Theatre in northeast Rochester.

The latest contract shows Mayo Clinic reimburses the city for the $4,600 it pays monthly to Olmsted County to lease 245 spaces at Graham Park. And Mayo also repays 97% of the city's $3,000 cost for 300 stalls near CMX Cinemas Chateau. At the University Center Rochester campus, the city has use of nearly 750 park-and-ride spaces for free, in exchange for Rochester Public Transit providing free bus passes to students.

The fourth park-and-ride lot is now at 75th Street Northwest near U.S. Highway 52. The city owns that lot, but previously leased spaces at the former IBM campus for $9,600, and Mayo Clinic covered 99% of the city's expense there.

The 75th Street lot has space for 478 vehicles, cost $3.25 million to build ($2.52 million came from the federal government), and is maintained with revenues from the transit service.

Collins said a similar arrangement is expected to develop with the planned nearly 200-space parking structure near the Rochester Recreation Center . A $12 million project, it is being built using a $7.4 million federal grant and $800,000 in state funds. The facility is expected to serve as a park-and-ride location on weekdays while offering added Rec Center and 125 Live parking in the evenings and on weekends.

Collins said it remains to be seen whether the city will shift other northeast parking to the new ramp to expand overall park-and-ride spaces for the long term.

"It all remains to be seen because there's a lot of kinds of dominoes that come into play here, such as the Unbound project and how many more staff that will have," he said.

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