​LinkFM new bus route connects downtowns

Free ride links Fargo and Moorhead

Downtown Fargo-Moorhead has a new public transportation route. It’s the first of its kind in the city and it’s absolutely free to ride on it. The route and bus are called LinkFM, and it’s a partnership between the City of Fargo and the City of Moorhead. The system links the two downtowns by transporting the public to and from each side of the river. The bus arrives at its stop every 12 to 15 minutes along its route and is close to many downtown destinations. It’s a circulator bus route that begins and ends at the Moorhead Center Mall and travels along First Avenue and NP Avenue to Seventh Street.

We caught up with Fargo City Commissioner Mike Williams to learn more about LinkFM, which launched this past June. Williams sits on the Metro Area Transit Coordinating Board as one of his committees assignments as city commissioner.

HPR: Tell us about the LinkFM bus route. What it’s all about?

Mike Williams: Well, for many years, the Planning and Parking Commissions have been looking at ways to maximize the available parking that’s already downtown. We’ve always been looking north and south on Broadway but the railroad tracks would really make it tough to make a short time connection, because for circulators, 15 minutes is about as long as you want to have for a circulator route. So this year we came up with the idea to go east and west and connect the two cities.

HPR: Now that it’s been running for few weeks, how have things been going?

MW: We worked with our subcommittee, there’s two Moorhead City Council members on our subcommittee. It was Steve Gehrtz and Nancy Otto and myself and commissioner Piepkorn in Fargo, and then we worked with Joe Nigg of the MATBUS Planning Team and Melissa Rademacher, the Moorhead Mall manager, and Matt Maslowski from Moorhead Economic Development. So we kind of came out with a strategy as far as a soft opening because it was kind of a quick hitter to start in June. We wanted to work the kinks out and make sure that the route was set the way we needed, the stops were in the right place. So for the first six weeks it was considered kind of a quiet start without any real marketing or advertising. And then we launched with the marketing the day before the Street Fair with the LinkFM wrap, which is very distinctive, and then the speakers that play music inside it and out.

HPR: And you’ve had some good ridership so far?

MW: To begin with, we were only doing like 35 rides and now we’re doing much more. Over the Street Fair we did over 600 rides on Thursday and over 700 rides on Friday and then over 600 again on Saturday. So we had 2,000 riders, which is way more than what we anticipated, but again the idea is usually it takes nine months to a year to establish a route, so this is all in anticipation for building the route for the long term. So we have a nine month pilot for this, the funding is in place through February. So NDSU and Moorhead State students and Concordia students will be coming in a few weeks. This will be convenient for them too.

HPR: What effect do you think this will have on parking? I know some people complain about parking downtown.

MW: The idea is we’re changing some of the transportation culture downtown -- more people biking and walking in particular. Transit ridership has almost tripled since 2004. We had 800,000 riders in 2004 and now we have 2.2 million. To put this route in perspective, when we started the downtown to campus NDSU routes in 2004, that first year we only had 13,000 riders on those routes and now we have hundreds of thousands of riders on those routes. There’s 1.1 million college-age riders of the 2.2 [million], so half are college-age riders that are taking transit, and so that’s part of the culture shift. It also shows that it takes a while to get a route established, so typically you will expect a slow start and then you build on that.

HPR: I understand too that the LinkFM has different genres of music that are played on each day of the week?

MW: There’s a different theme each day of the week, so there might be ‘80s pop one day, there might be country one day, there might be orchestral music another day. If you go to www.golinkfm.com, it will show you that schedule. On Fridays we feature local musicians and local music, so it’s a way to promote some of the local talent.

HPR: Is there any kind of stigma that you think people need to get over about riding the bus? People that aren’t used to doing it, who are maybe worried about safety. Is there anything you’d want to get out there about how this will save you money, it’s good for the environment, etcetera?

MW: A couple of things to think about is on this route within three blocks either way north and south along that corridor, there’s over 6,000 parking spaces that are public and private. So the idea is instead of trying to go right where there’s the most demand, with this route you can just go where it’s most convenient and inexpensive and just park once and either walk, bike or bus. With the bike share you can do a bike or you can jump on the Link. If you look at a map, which you will see on the website, just think three blocks either way and it reaches the center of both of our downtowns from Sixth Avenue North down to First Avenue South.

So it pretty much covers the entire swath of downtown if you are willing to walk a few blocks. The idea is, instead of driving around looking for parking spaces, you park once and be on your way. As far as the savings go, one of the big drivers I think for college-age students, is that when you choose to have one less car in either a family or not bring your car to school, you can save for a family $8,000 to $9,000 a year, according to the AAA and the federal transit studies. It’s huge avoidance costs. For affordability for homes, like we have a Habitat [For Humanity] house that we were doing on 10th Avenue and 10th Street. Within five blocks of that house, there’s 25,000 jobs, so just to put it in perspective, $130,000 Habitat house, you could pay the mortgage payment by having one less car and not make any more. So if you are a family with two kids and you have two cars? If you have one less car and are able to walk, bike or bus, then you can make your mortgage payment on your house. So it has a lot to do with where you choose to live, as far as affordability, but then also having that access to reliable transportation and transit. You don’t have to drive everywhere you go, so that’s a huge factor for affordability.

HPR: And it’s safe?

MW: Yeah it is safe. Our drivers are trained and there are cameras. As far as the stigma goes -- I think that’s something that some people aren’t used to -- riding the bus. And that’s another thing about the Link is to give them an opportunity to casually give it a ride. We get comments constantly, a lot of positive feedback and comments about all of our buses, about how clean they are, and then on the Link in particular, about how much fun it is. One of the other things that we are looking at is for the panels on the inside of the bus, on the roof, we will be issuing some RFPs for local artists. We will give them a chance to do a square on the ceiling as a palette and then we’ll have some local art in the bus too.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

The LinkFM bus route operates Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more info, visit www.GoLinkFM.com