On Saturday, the Green Line officially gets three minutes faster.

When the 11-mile light rail line from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul debuted on June 14, Metro Transit schedules predicted trips from Target Field Station to the Union Depot in St. Paul to take 48 minutes. Instead, some trips rolled in at over an hour. By late July, the average weekday trip still averaged 53 minutes.

The new Metro Transit schedules predict travel times will be 45 minutes, end to end. As a result, schedules for connecting buses and departure times for the Blue Line are also being tweaked. The new schedules go into effect on Saturday.

To speed up the system, the city of St. Paul has worked with the Metropolitan Council, the metro’s regional planning agency, to improve communication between sensors under the track that effectively talk to the city’s traffic lights, informing them that a train is between one and five blocks away.

Using “Predictive Priority” technology, the city adjusted 19 of 29 University Avenue traffic signals in St. Paul alone, on top of additional changes aimed at coordinating traffic flow between adjacent signals.

The trains do not fully pre-empt red lights, but the communication from one system to the other can shorten a yellow light or extend a green light, allowing trains more time to pass.

More information about the new schedules is posted online at MetroTransit.org.