"Business Responds"

That’s a concern to commuters and city residents, but also to businesses. Numerous stories in local media have documented the revenue losses being suffered not only by businesses close to the I35W river crossing, but in Northeast Minneapolis, which takes more drive time to reach from the south these days.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, citing two studies done by it and the state’s Department of Transportation, says added travel time is costing road users a collective $400,000 a day. It pegs the cost to Minnesota’s economy at about $17 million in 2007, and $43 million in 2008.

Christenson says Business Responds wants companies to increase their employees’ use of Metro Transit’s Metropass to reduce the load on local roads. Metropass gives users a month’s unlimited use of buses or light-rail trains. Employers can buy the pass for $69 and sell it to employees for that amount or less—a substantial savings for employees. In return, employers can take a federal payroll tax deduction of $110 per month per participating employee, and are eligible for an additional state tax credit.

“Most employers offer Metro-pass for about $70 a month,” Christenson says. “What we’ve asked employers to do is to step up their subsidies or to fully cover the cost of the Metropass. Our goal is to move as many people as we can out of single-occupant vehicles and into transit. The Metropass has proven to be the best way of doing that.”

Coloplast, Leonard Street and Deinard, Xcel Energy, and other companies are covering all or most of their employees’ Metro-pass costs. “We saw that there were going to be major concerns with traffic,” says Larson at Xcel. “We’re a major employer in downtown Minneapolis—this is where our headquarters are—and we wanted to set an example. Along with financial support, we knew that there would be challenges for some people to adapt their work schedule to the bus schedule. So we’ve encouraged managers to be flexible with start and stop times to ensure that employees have enough flexibility to ride the bus.”

Business Responds has significance beyond what it accomplishes in connection with the bridge collapse and recovery, according to Klingel and Christenson.

There has been cooperation between business and local government in the past with regard to emergency preparedness, “but that was totally different than hand-in-hand coming together to solve issues,” Klingel says. “The bridge collapse is a great tragedy with a horrific loss of life, but out of this has come a great appreciation for and understanding of the role both sides can play in our community.”

Unlike other successful examples of public-private partnership, “this was an emergency response requiring immediate action,” Christenson says. “This was unusual in its raw speed, and we moved very quickly.”

In that sense, Business Responds is not so much a model for handling future crises, he says, “it’s an impulse. And it’s an impulse fed with years of practice between sectors. And it’s what makes Minneapolis great.”