Hmmm. . . I wonder what (typical) subsidies in the form of roads and water and sewer infrastructure will also be provided by Mankato-area taxpayers?

I can think of only two “reasons” for the kind of project that these folks have been put through, when it has been long known that it inflicts great economic damage upon established small-business districts during construction.

One is that, well, there’s lotsa money in it for the construction companies: years worth of it.

The other is that these trains are very obviously not buses, unlike streetcars, which I suspect are more apt to be perceived as transportation for the poor....

A couple of comments have mentioned walking and foot traffic—that’s the key, IMHO. I can’t think of any spot in the downtown core that is inviting/welcoming to people who want to walk and otherwise be outside. It’s a bleak environment of concrete and cars and (mostly) dehumanizing modernist crapitecture—I better not get started on the “skyways.”
Recent rebuilding of several streets for better transit did absolutely nothing to make downtown more friendly—and less dangerous—for walking...

I find Mr. Marohn's perspective on suburbanization to be spot-on, and his proposals for responses generally quite sensible. I was raised in a small Main Street town with many built-to-last two- and three-story buildings along the length of the business district. They were built that way because they worked in a time when passenger rail was the only viable way to get to the next town or beyond.
As the drive-everywhere arrangement unravels, it seems likely that that basic Main Street...