When Matt Privratsky moved to St. Paul as the Metro Transit’s Green Line started to roll down University Avenue in 2014, he was taken aback by what he thought was a bare-bones sign at Grand and Snelling avenues directing passers-by to the light rail.

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St. Paul City Council agrees on no levy increase “That sign is little more than just a compass telling you where north is,” said Privratsky, 28, a public-transit rider and “clean energy” advocate who lives in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood. “And those (signs) were also only on main corridors. I wanted people throughout the neighborhoods knowing how to get to the trains.”

So Privratsky applied for funding from the Knight Foundation’s Green Line Challenge. The challenge is an effort to better connect residents and business owners in the neighborhoods along the light-rail corridor to the $957 million public-transit project.

With a $23,500 grant, as well as a few thousand dollars from the transit-advocacy coalition East Metro Strong, Privratsky got to work mapping locations for 176 street signs.

The new-and-improved signage — posted on city property in recent weeks with the approval of St. Paul Public Works — dots residential streets within about a mile of the Green Line’s transit stations.

“There’s some on the Near East Side and some on the West Side that are just slightly longer than a mile, but I wanted to make sure people in those neighborhoods were still connected,” Privratsky said.

“There’s a simple map that shows you how to get to a Green Line station — not just the Green Line, but a station — and how long it will take you to get there, and how far it is, so you don’t have to pull out your phone,” he said.

Privratsky, who lives about a mile north of the Green Line, said he believes St. Paul residents sometimes suffer from the perception that public-transit options are out of their way and too far from home.

The “perceived distance” shortens — sometimes dramatically — after riders walk to a station once or twice.

“Until you’ve done it, you’re not going to be comfortable with it,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, it’s part of your routine, and you’re seeing more of the businesses and the community assets that are in your neighborhood, because you’re seeing them at street level.”

Privratsky is hoping that as the metro’s public-transit system evolves, so will its street signs.

“In general, we haven’t done quite as well as other metro cities in terms of having good signage,” he said.