The East Metro transit establishment is (finally) getting it right.

By pivoting to a more practical Bus Rapid Transit service model it is signaling that the concept of a Riverview Transit Corridor lives on, and by announcing plans to acquire additional off-street right-of-way it is hinting that there may yet be a role for rail-based transit in the corridor. But to ensure that both long- and short-run narratives play out, policymakers must act now, not 2032, to both jump-start short-run, bus-based, corridor mobility and then to secure sufficient throughput capacity to realize Riverview’s ultimate economic, logistical and recreational potential.

Metro Transit can start by implementing a “Highest Frequency” arterial Bus Rapid Transit (HF-BRT) service over a rebuilt West Seventh that improves current 12- to 15-minute express bus frequencies to five to six minutes and then extends the service north to Maplewood over the Purple Line BRT route. This will move Riverview and Purple Line riders to, from and through downtown more efficiently by reducing annoying curbside wait times and eliminating downtown transfers; it will move Gold Line and other transferring riders through downtown faster via shorter platform waits, and it will afford all riders unprecedented service reliability and broken trip recoverability.

There is nothing new or radical about five-minute bus service over extended city arterials. It is being done today in the suburbs of Toronto, where key components of the Brampton “ZUM” network operate at five-minute rush hour and 10-minute midday frequencies over arterials connecting suburban activity centers to Toronto’s rail transit network. Several of these 10-mile routes now handle over 20,000 weekday riders thanks to multiple double-digit year-over-year increases. Not surprisingly, the operator is planning to upgrade key parts of that network to either full, dedicated guideway, BRT status or as extensions to Toronto’s light rail network.

As such, it is a blueprint for what can happen here.

Five-minute service, however, is just the start.

City and Ramsey County authorities must also secure sufficient off-street right-of-way to cover longer-run, corridor-wide, traffic growth and usage contingencies. Acquiring the 4.5-mile CP Spur, an abandoned railroad pathway connecting the 100-acre mixed-use Highland Bridge development with the Randolph Avenue/West Seventh commercial district, makes that happen.

Through a bit of geographic luck, the spur comes sufficiently close to West Seventh at key transfer points to make it a viable trail and busway supplement to West Seventh itself. It will be just a short walk, for example, from the spur to Sibley Plaza, Lexington Parkway and Randolph Avenue station sites on West Seventh, as well as to the Mississippi River recreational corridor at Otto and Shepard Road.

Beyond these alignment attributes, the spur can safely support transit operations 10- to 15-mph faster than over a congested West Seventh, making it the only realistic right-of-way option for an eventual regional light rail presence in the corridor, should social and economic conditions warrant.

And, finally, the spur in transit deployment can accelerate conversion of 125 acres of industrial real estate along scenic Shepard Road to transit-oriented residential and commercial usage near potential Randolph (does St. Paul really want a garbage truck fueling station there?) and Homer Avenue station sites based on similarly successful Green and Blue Line station area conversions near the University of Minnesota and 46th Street, respectively.

The West End has waited for more than a decade for equitable transit service on its well-patronized Riverview Corridor as proponents tried without success to sell the public on a slow, rail-based, street-running alternative. Met Council can mitigate that by deploying best-in-class five-minute bus service now, while Ramsey County can nail the happy ending to the Riverview mobility saga by securing for the common good the right of way for what someday could be a faster, safer and far more effective version of … the Modern Streetcar.

Jerome Johnson is a retired transportation economist and cofounder of Citizen Advocates for Regional Transit (CART), a St. Paul based mobility advocacy organization.

 

By ANNIE MA, AMANUEL BIRHANE and FU TING, Associated Press

Harvard University is challenging President Donald Trump’s move to block foreign students from coming to the United States to attend the Ivy League school, calling it illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands.

In an amended complaint filed Thursday, Harvard called the president’s action an end-run around a previous court order. Last month, a federal judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s ability to host foreign students.

The filing attacks Trump’s legal justification for the action — a federal law allowing him to block a “class of aliens” deemed detrimental to the nation’s interests. Targeting only those who are coming to the U.S. to study at Harvard doesn’t qualify as a “class of aliens,” Harvard said in its filing.

“The President’s actions thus are not undertaken to protect the ‘interests of the United States,’ but instead to pursue a government vendetta against Harvard,” the university wrote.

The amended complaint came in a lawsuit filed last month challenging the previous action from Homeland Security. A federal judge in Boston blocked the move after Harvard said it violated the school’s First Amendment rights. The new filing asks the same judge to block Trump’s latest action too.

If Trump’s measure stands, it would block thousands of students who are scheduled to come to the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for summer and fall terms.

“Harvard’s more than 7,000 F-1 and J-1 visa holders — and their dependents — have become pawns in the government’s escalating campaign of retaliation,” Harvard wrote.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Winning admission to Harvard University fulfilled a longtime goal for Yonas Nuguse, a student in Ethiopia who endured the Tigray conflict, internet and phone shutdowns, and the COVID-19 pandemic — all of which made it impossible to finish high school on time.

Now, it’s unclear if he will make it this fall to the Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He and other admitted students around the world are anxiously tracking the school’s feud with the Trump administration, which is seeking to keep it from enrolling international students.

The war in the country’s Tigray region forced schools to close in many parts of the province. Nuguse, 21, took a gap year to study and save money to pay for his TOEFL English proficiency test in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

“The war affected me a great deal and when I found out the news that I was accepted to Harvard, I was ecstatic. I knew it was a proud moment for my family, teachers, mentors and friends, who were instrumental in my achievement,” he said.

Increasingly, the nation’s oldest and best-known university has attracted some of the brightest minds from around the world, with international students accounting for one-quarter of its enrollment. As Harvard’s fight with the administration plays out, foreign students are now navigating deep uncertainty and weighing other options.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a directive seeking to block U.S. entry for Harvard’s international students. It marked the administration’s latest effort to squeeze Harvard’s foreign enrollment after a federal judge in Boston blocked the withdrawal of its certification to host students from overseas.

“Harvard will continue to protect its international students,” the university said in a statement.

The standoff with Harvard comes as the administration has been tightening scrutiny of student visas nationwide. Thousands of students around the country abruptly lost permission to be in the U.S. this spring before the administration reversed itself, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last week the U.S. would “aggressively revoke” visas for students from China.

“It is one blow after another,” said Mike Henniger, CEO of Illume Student Advisory Services, who works with colleges in the U.S., Canada and Europe to recruit international students. “At this point, international student interest in the U.S. has basically dropped to nil.”

The future of Harvard’s international students has been hanging in the balance since the Department of Homeland Security first moved to block its foreign enrollment on May 22.

For many, the twists and turns have been exhausting. Jing, a 23-year-old master’s student, is currently completing an internship in China this summer, and unsure if he can reenter the U.S. for the fall semester.

“It is tiring, we all feel numb now. Trump just makes big news headlines once every few days since he got back to the White House,” said Jing, who agreed to speak under his family name out of concern about retaliation from the Trump administration.

Jing said he is going to watch and see what happens for now, in case the move against international students is a negotiating tactic that does not stick.

The possibility that Trump could block foreign enrollment at other colleges only raises the uncertainty for students planning to pursue their education overseas, said Craig Riggs, who has been working in international education for about 30 years and is the editor of ICEF Monitor. He said he urges families to consult carefully with advisers and not to overreact to the day’s headlines.

“The rules under which students would make this huge decision to devote years of their lives and quite a bit of money to studying at Harvard have been shown to change quite quickly,” Riggs said.

An aspiring economist, Nuguse was the only student accepted to Harvard this year from Kalamino Special High School, which caters to gifted students from underprivileged backgrounds from across Tigray.

After receiving acceptances also to Columbia University and Amherst College, Nuguse chose Harvard, which he had long dreamed of attending. He said he hopes it will work out to attend Harvard.

Nuguse was granted a visa to study at Harvard, and he worries it might be too late to reverse his decision and attend another university anyway. He received an email from Harvard last week, telling him to proceed with his registration and highlighting a judge’s order in Harvard’s favor in the dispute over foreign enrollment.

“I hope the situation is temporary and I can enroll on time to go on and realize my dream far from reality in Ethiopia,” he said.

Associated Press writers Collin Binkley, Jocelyn Gecker and Cheyanne Mumphrey contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk argued on social media on Thursday, the world’s richest man threatened to decommission a space capsule used to take astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

After Trump threatened to cut government contracts given to Musk’s SpaceX rocket company and his Starlink internet satellite services, Musk responded via X that SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”

It’s unclear how serious Musk’s threat was. But the capsule, developed with the help of government contracts, is an important part of keeping the space station running. NASA also relies heavily on SpaceX for other programs including launching science missions and, later this decade, returning astronauts to the surface of the moon.

The Dragon capsule

SpaceX is the only U.S. company capable right now of transporting crews to and from the space station, using its four-person Dragon capsules.

Boeing’s Starliner capsule has flown astronauts only once; last year’s test flight went so badly that the two NASA astronauts had to hitch a ride back to Earth via SpaceX in March, more than nine months after launching last June.

Starliner remains grounded as NASA decides whether to go with another test flight with cargo, rather than a crew.

SpaceX also uses a Dragon capsule for its own privately run missions. The next one of those is due to fly next week on a trip chartered by Axiom Space, a Houston company.

Cargo versions of the Dragon capsule are also used to ferry food and other supplies to the orbiting lab.

NASA’s other option: Russia

Russia’s Soyuz capsules are the only other means of getting crews to the space station right now.

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The Soyuz capsules hold three people at a time. For now, each Soyuz launch carries two Russians and one NASA astronaut, and each SpaceX launch has one Russian on board under a barter system. That way, in an emergency requiring a capsule to return, there is always someone from the U.S. and Russian on board.

With its first crew launch for NASA in 2020 — the first orbital flight of a crew by a private company — SpaceX enabled NASA to reduce its reliance on Russia for crew transport. The Russian flights had been costing the U.S. tens of millions of dollars per seat, for years.

NASA has also used Russian spacecraft for cargo, along with U.S. contractor Northrup Grumman.

SpaceX’s other government launches

The company has used its rockets to launch several science missions for NASA as well as military equipment.

Last year, SpaceX also won a NASA contract to help bring the space station out of orbit when it is no longer usable.

SpaceX’s Starship mega rocket is what NASA has picked to get astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon, at least for the first two landing missions. Starship made its ninth test flight last week from Texas, but tumbled out of control and broke apart.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — David Festa fell behind 2-0 to four of the first six batters he faced on Thursday. All four of them scored, three coming on a Max Muncy home run. But he settled down in the second inning and, it seemed for a brief second, as if he could be on the Zebby Matthews path.

on Friday in Seattle, Matthews allowed four runs in the first inning and then absolutely dominated for his next six. Unfortunately for Festa and the Twins, that didn’t happen on Thursday and the shaky first inning was instead a sign of things to come for the young right-hander the Twins’ 14-3 loss to the Athletics.

The Athletics had scored just six runs in the first three games of the series riding a nine-game losing streak. They snapped that losing streak emphatically.

Muncy’s home run was one of four on the day for the Athletics. Festa allowed three of them, including a pair in the third inning. After his departure, Jorge Alcala served up a grand slam, which was Tyler Soderstrom’s second home run of the day. All told, Soderstrom drove in six runs in the Athletics’ win.

For Festa, who gave up eight runs in 3⅔ innings, it was a much different type of outing than the three he turned in during his call up earlier in the season. In those three starts, he gave up a combined three runs in 13 innings pitched, then returned to Class AAA St. Paul, where he battled some inflammation before coming back and pitching well, earning Twins Minor League Pitcher of the Month Award.

Festa was initially supposed to start for the Saints on Wednesday but instead was on a flight to Sacramento, taking the rotation spot of Pablo López, who suffered a shoulder injury on Tuesday night that will keep him out for two to three months. That injury has opened up an opportunity for Festa, one of the most promising young arms in the organization.

The Twins scored a run on Matt Wallner’s third home run of the season and two more in the seventh on RBI knocks from Ty France and Brooks Lee.

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