NEW ULM– According to the University of Minnesota Extension service, 330 people commute daily from New Ulm to Mankato and 358 employees commute from Mankato to New Ulm.

With that heavy amount of commuting between the two cities, New Ulm Business Resource Innovation Center has launched an area-wide survey to determine the feasibility of a commuter bus program between the communities, which is being called the Spark Bus Initiative.

NUBRIC Director Paul Wessel said many New Ulm businesses are experiencing worker shortages and a commuter bus was a method to bring workers into the community.

Within the last five to 10 years, the amount of commuting to New Ulm has increased dramatically. Roughly 50% of the workers in the town are commuters.

The current challenge is determining how often the bus travels between the communities and where it stops.

New Ulm is currently working on a fix-bus route for the city. In theory, the Spark Bus could drop Mankato workers off at a single location in New Ulm and the fix-bus route could pick them up and take them to the various businesses in New Ulm.

Public input is needed to determine the best times of operation for the bus.

The survey is divided between employees and employers and asks questions about the daily commute. What time do workers leave for work and when do they return home? Where are they coming from; frequency of use and how much users are willing to pay for the service?

The survey is being made available to workers in New Ulm and Mankato, but it has also been distributed to Sleepy Eye and Springfield.

Wessel said there is interest in having a bus commute from the western region of Brown County to New Ulm.

He said New Ulm cannot operate like an island. It is economically beneficial to work with other communities.

Currently, NUBRIC is seeking grants to make the Spark Bus possible by working with Minnesota Department of Transportation, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and Region 9. Before grant proposals can be submitted to different organizations, data is needed to demonstrate the need. This is another reason for the survey.

The hope is to use the survey data to submit a plan for government grants to cover the costs. NUBRIC is also seeking corporate sponsorship, since the commuter bus would benefit area businesses and would help manufacturers be proactive in bringing in workers.

The current timeline is to collect survey data through September and begin planning and submitting proposals in the fall.

The goal is to have funding lined up to get the Spark Bus running in 2023 once the Highway 14 expansion is complete.

The survey can be found on the NUBRIC website or accessed at nubric.org/sparkbussurvey.