Here’s a quick time-saver for local journalists—next time a new suburb-to-suburb bus route eats it due to low ridership, you can just plug whatever into this template. It happens like every six months.

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If you run it, will they ride? It seems that when it comes to the Route [THREE DIGIT NUMBER], they might not.

After [ABOUT THREE MONTHS TO A YEAR], Metro Transit is discontinuing the service between [APARTMENT COMPLEX IN A SECOND RING SUBURB FREEWAY ARMPIT] and [DESOLATE INDUSTRIAL PARK IN A DIFFERENT SECOND RING SUBURB], citing low ridership.

The trial run cost [SIX FIGURE TO LOW SEVEN FIGURE DOLLAR AMOUNT], funded through a [UNIT OF GOVERNMENT] pilot program.

“It’s crucial in the suburbs to link jobs to housing with transit,” said [SUBURBAN MET COUNCIL MEMBER WHO ONCE TOOK THE BUS TO THE STATE FAIR]. “There was a PowerPoint about it.”

Local planners consider suburb-to-suburb transit, which has been repeatedly tested and retested in our metro area before failing, an untested idea in our metro area.

“Boy howdy, we’ll see,” said [GUY NAMED SCOTT WHO GOT A BA IN CIVIL ENGINEERING IN 1985], a transportation engineer for [WHATEVER] County.

Some questioned the logic of running buses between auto-oriented cities where everyone has a car, parking is free, and traffic is light. Will passengers drive to a nearby mall parking lot and wait for a bus and then pay $2.25 to spend 38 minutes on a slow bus to another mall parking lot in a different city when the trip would take 10 minutes by car? The jury is still out, according to officials.

“We tried [EVERYTHING SHORT OF GIVING EACH PASSENGER A GOLD BAR],” added [SUBURBAN MET COUNCIL MEMBER WHO ONCE TOOK THE BUS TO THE STATE FAIR].

However, all hope isn’t lost—next month, Metro Transit will be starting service on an experimental route from [A LITERAL FIELD OF WHEAT IN WESTERN HENNEPIN COUNTY] to [A HALF VACANT STRIP MALL IN HAM LAKE]. The state legislature allocated [SIX FIGURE TO LOW SEVEN FIGURE DOLLAR AMOUNT] for the project, while long-planned improvements to the Route 5, which serves tens of thousands of passengers on buses that regularly turn away riders due to overcapacity, are still seeking full funding.

“There’s no way to tell ahead of time if this will be successful,” said [GUY NAMED SCOTT WHO GOT A BA IN CIVIL ENGINEERING IN 1985]. “But we’re hopeful.”