Caleb Spronk, 35, has a lot of great memories — and some not-so-great ones, too — of riding public transportation in Minneapolis. There were the random conversations with strangers, late-night rides after last call at the bar, and those raucous times packed onto a Metro Transit train with dozens of other Twins fans after a big win at Target Field. Even the time he was slapped in the face by a teenager who didn’t take kindly to Spronk’s request to stop holding the doors open wasn’t enough to taint the overall experience of riding transit in the Twin Cities.
Then Covid hit, and Spronk, like many people, stopped using the train. As a software developer, he was privileged to be able to work from home. But when he eventually returns to the…