The DTA knows riders would like expanded service.  The problem is money:

Heilig and other DTA officials have heard from riders who want more night and weekend routes to help them get to work. If that's going to happen, then riders might have to pay for the expansion themselves.

"There is no more state money and there is no more federal money that we can add to the pot," Heilig said. "One of the things that the board is evaluating is that should we look at raising fares so that we can add on the services that people are asking for. At this point, we are looking at 100 percent funding on our own."

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/155071/publisher_ID/36/

Taking a cab home from a movie on the weekend is still a lot cheaper than owning a car.  Any solution is going to come down to funding.

When I was a mid-level bureaucrat at a certain educational institution I proposed that we should consider subsidizing a bus that ran from downtown, canal park and possibly lincoln park back to East Hillside and certain educational institutions to help keep drunks off the road.  This is "harm reduction" thinking, very practical and not very welcome if people are just looking at costs and logistics, there has to be a certain morality or ethics brought into the equation to make it sensible.  Thing is, it wasn't even my idea, we had something like it when I was in college, it was called the "safety bus" and whatever it cost, it was worth it.  No one on that bus ever died of hypothermia walking home from a party or in a drunken crash and before the safety bus every year we had at least one or two of those.  So does Duluth.  

Suggestions like that ended my tenure there

Yes it's time for better transit.
 
In order for riding busses to be feasible extended hours and more frequent service is needed, even if many of those off-peak busses are nearly empty. Extended offerings will draw riders to the system and fill up the busses, increasing the efficiency of the system.

But much like the road and highway system, transit is heavily subsidized by the government. Fares pay only about 30% of operating costs. Duluth experience of a diminished operating budget for transit is shared by every major city in the country.  It's not without irony that while the political will has suddenly emerged to expand transit infrastructure the funds for operation have been slashed (even as ridership increases across the board).
 
That said, I cannot wait for the Grand Ave/Superior Street Light Rail Line extending from Fond Du Lac to 60th Avenue East to open.   Imagine how transformative LRT will be for Duluth.

I quite agree. After living near Chicago and getting used to their much more expansive transportation system, I feel house-bound back home here in Duluth!

Having a dedicated transit system would be a great start. Duluth used to have a really nice streetcar system with electric streetcars, but we needed more room for cars. 

Buses are part of the traffic *problem*. They don't get you there faster than a car. Light rail does! Subways do! That said, I'll take what I can get.

What would it cost to keep the Sunday hourly schedule running an extra 3 hours on Saturday and an extra 4 hours on Sunday?

I lice where I can walk places - if I didn't, I'd be homebound or driving.

get a car, commie. make the bars pay for drunk transit like the warehouse used to do.

1.  Buses have to be full to be viable?  That would make then unique among transit options.

2.  I would wholeheartedly support increasing parking tickets and even meter fees.  Structure fees, less so, because I'm still thinking my taxes covered some of those monsters.

That said, hooray for the cheapness here.  I woulf not endorse an increase in fares unless pass rates would remain the same (for monthly and possibly weekly passes).

It's legitimate to choose to live without a car for either financial or sustainable reasons, and then subsequently advocate for better non-car options.

It's true that relatively low congestion, cheap or free parking, and heavily subsidized gas prices incentivizes cars.  Our auto-dependence has influenced most aspects of our lives, where we live, where we shop, and how our cities are designed.  But what happens when a crisis in the Middle East pushes gas to $6/gallon? Can we redesign Duluth overnight to be less fossil fuel dependent? A couple years ago Paul Krugman wrote a piece called "Stranded in Suburbia" where he argues long after the SUV is nothing but a museum piece, the suburbs built around the automobile will continue to immobilize and impoverish its inhabitants.  Establishing viable alternatives and transit corridors now will influence development that is going to allow us to continue to be mobile down the road.  Busses meet a need, but they don't influence sustainable development or generally attract ridership from people that can choose cars.  LRT rail does.
  
Duluth needs to begin the arduous process of reorganizing around transit, biking, and walking.  At least this challenge will be mitigated by the fact those are the transportation options we were built around in the first place.  

The infrastructure drives the use, and the users demand the infrastructure.  An astounding 37% of commuters in Copenhagen get to work on a bike.  That is because they built the infrastructure to make that option safe, and imposed the real costs on driving that we opt to socialize in America.
 
Or I suppose we could keep driving the only reasonable option because who cares if we poison the air we breathe and the water we drink, keep getting fatter, continue to live isolated & sedentary lives, fund lunatic-fundamentalist-petro-dictators who want to kill us, and complacently accept the daily carnage caused by careless drivers in 3000lb hunks of steel.  Hey it's convenient!

Clarification, I wasn't advocating complacency.

I'll withdraw the idea of raising meters, but hold onto increasing fines.  After all, fines are avoidable if you pay your meter (park legally).

That's a fairish compromise, wildgoose?

I'm ok with that, parking meters weren't the big regressive issue for me, anyway.  In fact, I laugh at how much people whine about paying for parking in Canal Park, and I cry at the folks who are up in arms and criticizing the city about paying $4 for Bentleyville parking.

Shane and Bob are my new Heros!