I served from 1995-2017 as a city council member in St. Louis Park, as well as 11 years on Met Council’s Transportation Advisory Board. During those years I was an active participant in the planning process for Southwest Light Rail Transit (SWLRT).
Your recent article is both misleading and incomplete regarding the causation of the current cost overruns and delays of this important project. While you noted that St. Louis Park objected to the relocation of the existing freight rail traffic from the Kenilworth corridor to St. Louis Park, you omitted both the rationale for this opposition and the fact that ultimately Hennepin County agreed with these objections, since the risk of derailment was substantially increased.
Fundamentally, the root cause of today’s challenges to project construction is that Hennepin County, which led the planning process until 2013-14, skewed the route selection process to ensure that the light rail transit (LRT) would travel through the Kenilworth corridor and not through the Uptown area, even though the latter area had far more dense population, a far greater number of transit-dependent residents, and a far greater number of jobs and other destinations than the Kenilworth area. It did so because, in the 1980s, the county bought the Kenilworth corridor and publicly announced that it was intended for use as a transit corridor. When the county convened the Policy Advisory Committee, which was tasked with selecting the route for the LRT, it then led the committee through a very skewed process in order to select the Kenilworth route and confirm its predetermined purchase decision.
I was an alternate member of that committee, and participated in almost every meeting. A brief list of how county leaders skewed the selection process includes, but is not limited to:
– Declaring that the question of whether the freight rail traffic should be rerouted was not relevant to the LRT route choice, and refusing to permit discussion on this topic.
– Declining to do any environmental, engineering, or economic analysis regarding possible rerouting of the freight trains, (simply declaring that the reroute would occur), until forced by public outrage to hire an engineer to review this option.
– When calculating the Cost Benefit Ratio (a federal requirement when selecting routes, based on both the projected financial costs and the projected ridership), the county included the cost of a tunnel arguably needed for the Uptown route but did NOT include any costs for a tunnel in the route through the Kenilworth corridor, thus skewing the financial analysis.
– When calculating the cost benefit ratio, arbitrarily excluding all potential riders who lived in Minneapolis between West Lake Steet and downtown, for the stated (but highly questionable) assumption that all such riders would prefer to take the bus, thus further skewing the analysis.
– Dismissing the objections raised by residents regarding the impact of LRT construction on the condominium buildings adjacent to the Kenilworth corridor.
[image_caption]Sue Sanger[/image_caption]
I retained voluminous documentation of this process and have donated all of it to the St. Louis Park Historical Society. I will be happy to meet with you and walk you through the documents, and/or otherwise discuss this issue with you. I can also point you to others who were involved in this process so you can gain their perspectives. I hope you will take this opportunity to dig into the whole history of how SWLRT has been planned, including the actions of Hennepin County as well as Met Council.
Sue Sanger is a former St. Louis Park city council member and served on Metropolitan Council’s Transportation Advisory Board.
Nimbys gonna Nimby
It appears that the author has made some good points about the planning process, but it also appears that she does not appreciate the fact that LRT is trains. How do you route a train through Uptown without spoiling its function as a train? (And without creating issues with infrastructure placement?)
The people involved in planning public transit for our metropolitan area don’t appreciate the difference between trains and streetcars.
In general Kenwood is a financially rich neighborhood. I don’t think many people in it need or want to take any mass transit. The Light rail would have been an intrusion in Uptown in some ways but one opportunity wasted was that THE GREENWAY IS ALREADY A RAIL CORRIDOR. The infrastructure for that portion – if it was routed down Nicollet (already a main bus/transit corridor) or 35W, then west on the Greenway – was already in place UNDER THE STREETS. And, more importantly, it would have served neighborhoods packed with apartment dwellers and jobs instead of a neighborhood of mansions. It sounds exactly like what she’s saying it is – having already declared the Kennilworth purchase as being for transit, those responsible for buying it with taxpayer money had to justify their actions. So instead of doing the right thing for the public they forced their will to cover their asses and created a brand NEW mess. This kind of thing needs to be stopped. Property taxes are way out of hand already and every time the county or city “planners” screw up we have to pay even more. Meanwhile we have runaway homelessness, addiction/OD’s, violent crime, economic oppression on the majority, rising rents & property taxes, congestion from bike lanes (another black hole of unnecessary spending) etc, etc, etc. Maybe a property tax strike is in order. Stop the bleeding and send a strong message that the city and county’s credit at the Bank of Residents has run out. And hold the right people responsible as a stern warning that they don’t get to just walk away and shrug their shoulders without civil and/or criminal charges. How about misappropriation of government funds for starters?
The NIMBY claim always comes from the people whose neighborhood isn’t affected by terrible decision making. The real blame is Hennepin County and the Met Council. And the people in Hennepin County will pay for it.
It would help if the Nimbys in question were NOT of the pretentious millionaire variety, and the the land NOT a rarified enclave of said millionaires, but yes, I’m sure life is tough when no one feels too bad about your plight.
The project has bigger problems than your contempt for people who live in Kenwood. Just another wasteful misuse of public funds due to a poorly planned project by government entities. This failure is right out of the Met Council playbook whose members throughout the process have been appointed by Walz or Dayton. They don’t listen nor are they accountable to anyone. Your frustration is misplaced.
Thank you for this commentary. While I can’t assert the reasons why this decision was made, I’ve been watching this slow-motion LRT line disaster play out for what seems like an eternity.
I am a (greater) Uptown resident and long-time transit rider. Decades ago, I commented on the route and highlighted that my neighborhood very much wanted high quality transit, and that the buses weren’t enough. I was disappointed when the decision was to put it where people didn’t want it, and to withhold better transit from those who did. This disappointment grows with each passing year.
Excuses, excuses, excuses…. Bottom line is boards are full of folks who know nothing about trains, train lines, building a line or anything else having to do with a multi billion dollar project. They use “specialists” to give them recommendations and then decide how to spend taxpayer money. Cost overruns, not making time lines, buddy system in bidding process all happen in everyone of these projects. The only surprise is folks are surprised by folks who have no background in billion dollar projects making mistakes galore.
I guess some people simply cannot resist the urge to re-enact long lost debates so Ms. Sanger is weighing in with allegedly “overlooked” historical facts that were in fact thoroughly debated and examined at the time.
Why would we commission unnecessary engineering and environmental studies for a RR freight line that would never be built in SLP? And this bizarre misconception the function of light rail would be to move people back and forth from Uptown to Downtown rather than MPLS/St. Paul and Eden Prairie (with points in between) has been long since established. The denser population in Uptown is an obvious fact, but irrelevant when designing this LRT route. There was nothing “arbitrary” about this selection, it’s a primary feature of LR and route design. Uptown residents already HAVE ample transit options available, and there are MORE on the drawing board. We have ample surveys and demographics telling us that Uptown residents are NOT looking for transit to Eden Prairie. And since the Kenilworth route received federal funding it obviously met federal requirements and guidelines.
I mean seriously… is Ms. Sanger suggesting that restarting the ENTIRE application and design process from scratch in order to re-consider the Uptown route rather than adding a tunnel to Kenilworth would have been cheaper and faster?
And again, for the umpteenth time we’ll never how much or what kind of complications would arise with a route through Uptown that was never built, so retro-active comparisons are illogical. And again, for the umpteenth time the tunnel was NOT part of the original plan that included the Freight re-route through SLP, so all these people claiming to have predicted all of the problems associated with the tunnel are making dubious claims. And AGAIN for the umpteenth time we need to remember the fact that home owners on the North Side of Cedar Lake Parkway (along the channel and close to Cedar Lake) actually filed a law suit to force a LONGER DEEPER tunnel AND a freight reroute so they would never have to see or hear a train again. This had NOTHING to do with environmental concerns or route selection and everything to do with realizing a dream of a quiet parkway in their back yards. Consider for a moment the cost and complications and costs of a longer deeper tunnel in Kenilworth AND a new freight line in SLP.
At any rate, the only aspect of this that had any potential direct impact on SLP was the attempt to tear down buildings and build a 20 foot berm through SLP, it would have made no difference in SLP had the line run through Uptown instead of Kenilworth so the the SLP council had no voice or choice in that matter regardless.
So yeah, this is another of MANY MANY MANY public infrastructure projects in history that has run out of budget, and that’s frustrating and unfortunate… but this project WILL come online and it WILL be a huge asset for the Twin Cities and SLP when it does.
Thank you Paul for articulating much of what I was thinking as I read this article. Especially the difference needs of people commuting back and forth from uptown to DT and the ones commuting between Eden Prairie and DT.
However much the Kenilworth route may or may not better, the point Ms Sanger is making is that Hennepin County obviously never seriously considered the uptown route and that is a shame.
Yes Mr. Elhai, I can’t explain Ms. Sanger’s perspective but the suggestion that this “arbitrary” is quite misleading. I’m just a bloke who lives around here but I went to the meetings, open houses, and Town Hall meetings where-at you would ask questions, and I always got reasonable answers. Why this route and not another is an obvious question right? When I asked that question I got the information I’m sharing here in my comments, I’m not making this up, it’s what I was told AT THE TIME. The main reason for the Kenilworth route was that it made perfect sense in terms of LR rationale, and no land had to be purchased, nor buildings demolished, it sits inside and existing rail line. If you asked: “Why not Uptown?” you got an answer, not a shrug of the shoulders and a: “Because we said so.” that you get from an arbitrary decision.
Now that doesn’t mean everyone agreed with the decision, but you can’t label the decision “arbitrary” simply because you didn’t agree with it. And you don’t demand the same engineering and environmental studies for routes you’re not going to use as you do for those you’re planning to build.
An I remind everyone, while tunnel wasn’t in the original plan, once the freight companies blew up the original plan with their demand for a whole new line through SLP; a whole new raft of engineering and environmental studies WERE done to assess the practicality of the tunnel. A longer deeper tunnel was ruled out. Sure, unforeseen stuff ended up happening, but that’s the nature of large construction projects. Sure, people complained and predicted problems, but no one predicted the exact problems that have been encountered. The majority of predictions centered around adverse effects on the grain elevator condos, which haven’t actually materialized although complaints have been made. Likewise, no one “predicted” the demand for the safety wall.
The emergence of unforeseen complications and costs doesn’t convert opponents into infallible visionaries who “knew” all of this was going to happen, they didn’t. Nor do these cost overruns and complications convert the entire SWLRT project into a boondoggle or a failure. Boston’s Big Dig was beset with problems and catastrophes that make this look like nothing. But no one in Boston wishes it hadn’t been built.
My understanding is that Ms Sanger’s opinion was written as a result of her experience as “an active participant in the planning process for Southwest Light Rail Transit.” She clearly laid out her evidence that the county refused to consider the Uptown re-routing, and didn’t (some might say in opposition to what was known at the time) to consider that BNSF railway would refuse to make any concessions in order to reroute their trains through SLP or anywhere else. I can’t help thinking that BNSF, due to century-old federal railroad regulations, simply didn’t give a damn about public transportation.
” I can’t help thinking that BNSF, due to century-old federal railroad regulations, simply didn’t give a damn about public transportation.”
Yeah, I don’t know why no one seems to want to pin this where it belongs on the freight companies. It looks to me like thus far articles avoid the most obvious observations and conclusions in order to pin all of this SWLRT planners. And I’ll tell you what else: Over by the old Golden Auto-Sam’s Club portion of the line off of Louisiana Ave. the freight line is getting a bran spanking new spur line connection that it never had before… and I’ll bet dollars to donuts taxpayers are footing the bill for that. I don’t even know who’s going to use that.
Yes yes yes! Why the line avoided Uptown has always been a mystery to Minneapolis residents. That’s where the potential riders are. Yes, Burlington Northern and Kenwood NIMBYs sabotaged the Kenilworth corridor route, but it was a terrible choice to begin with. The Uptown and Lynlake neighborhoods really need LRT; it should have gone through those neighborhoods.
No Mr. Pinkerton, Uptown does NOT need LRT. Again, Uptown residents already have ample transit available and certainly do not need a new option for hundreds of millions of dollars. And somewhere around here is an already funded street car line down Nicolette Ave. AND connectors of different types are designed to get people onto the SWLRT along the Greenway.
I can’t say this is Mr. Pinkerton’s mental space, but we’ve seen a rather extreme form of urban chauvinism emerge as the LR lines started being build beyond the city limits. The idea that our LR lines ONLY make sense when built in densely populated city neighborhoods is just urban chauvinism pretending to be policy wisdom. This urban transit privilege is also contrary to basic principles of equity when it assumes that affluent Uptown residents are more deserving of LR transit than near North or suburban residents. The fact that unlike the suburbs along the route; who all chipped in millions to accommodate cost overruns, the city MPLS hasn’t spent a dollar on any of it’s LR lines, only highlights the sense of entitlement city residents associate with transit.
I also attended most of the planning meetings. Agree with Mr Udstrand’s careful comments, as did many others trying to find the right balance of cost and ridership with the information available. Many differing opinions were listened to. Not a hint of cronyism or malfeasance.
The short version is a basic tenet of public transportation: buses for short hops, trains for long hops.
Well, I’m loath to re-enact debates but I think I can do this succinctly, and I think it’s important to keep this straight. Responding to Mr. Elhai’s comment that Ms. Sanger is speaking from direct experience and laid out her evidence; let’s take a quick look:
1) “Declaring that the question of whether the freight rail traffic should be rerouted was not relevant to the LRT route choice, and refusing to permit discussion on this topic.”
This is misleading. I can’t speak to whatever meetings Ms. Singer is referring to but the subject of the freight re-route was a frequent and spirited subject of debate and disagreement in a variety of venues. And the SLP city council was certainly aware of this plan years in advance when it tacitly agreed to increased freight traffic along the existing tracks. The claim that this was never discussed is simply false. I know I discussed it. Maybe if you sat in a certain silo with Ms. Sanger you didn’t discuss it… but it was most definitely discussed.
2) Declining to do any environmental, engineering, or economic analysis regarding possible rerouting of the freight trains, (simply declaring that the reroute would occur), until forced by public outrage to hire an engineer to review this option.
No engineering or review was required for the original plan to simply increase traffic frequency on existing tracks. And I clearly remember seeing studies and data related to increased noise and traffic disruption in SLP associated with increased train frequency, so again, the claim that no study or review was done is simply a false claim. The public outrage didn’t emerge until AFTER the plan to drastically rebuild the tracks, tear down a bunch of buildings, move the football field, and build a 20 foot berm emerged at the last minute. Why would hire someone to study all of that BEFORE we knew it was a proposal?
3) When calculating the Cost Benefit Ratio (a federal requirement when selecting routes, based on both the projected financial costs and the projected ridership), the county included the cost of a tunnel arguably needed for the Uptown route but did NOT include any costs for a tunnel in the route through the Kenilworth corridor, thus skewing the financial analysis.
Obviously you wouldn’t calculate the cost of building a tunnel you didn’t know you were going to have to build. When the tunnel became a necessary feature of the route, those studies were done at considerable expense.
4) When calculating the cost benefit ratio, arbitrarily excluding all potential riders who lived in Minneapolis between West Lake Steet and downtown, for the stated (but highly questionable) assumption that all such riders would prefer to take the bus, thus further skewing the analysis.
There was nothing “arbitrary” about this assumption. In FACT- several bus lines currently exist and serve Uptown residents. And in FACT the function of this line is to connect the surrounding suburbs, (of which Ms. Sanger was a representative) not move people around within the city. I don’t why a SLP city council person is so concerned about MPLS Uptown residents and their transit options? And I don’t why Uptown residents would get a billion dollar LR line simply because they’d rather not ride a bus? Furthermore, Ms. Sanger contradicts herself when complains that an the cost of an Uptown tunnel was calculated, yet the Uptown route was never seriously considered… you can’t have it both ways, either the route was dismissed arbitrarily, or it’s cost was estimated and calculated… but not both.
5) Dismissing the objections raised by residents regarding the impact of LRT construction on the condominium buildings adjacent to the Kenilworth corridor.
These objections were NOT simply dismissed. In fact, if I remember correctly, all told close to $100 million dollars were spent on several studies analyzing and investigating the possible effects of the tunnel and line through the area and specifically on those condo’s. Whether or not those condo’s have actually sustained damage because of the tunnel, is yet to be determined. Again, the fact that unforeseen circumstances arose doesn’t prove that opponents “knew” what was going to happen, nor does it prove that no one tried to anticipated possible problems.
Ms. Sanger is claiming that the decision to buy the necessary land, and then actually use that land for it’s intended purpose, is “skewing” the decision… actually… it’s called “planning”. Planning infrastructure decades in advance, and then sticking to the plan, isn’t a bad idea in my mind, but whatever. Sure, some people don’t like the plan, but that make it the wrong plan, and it doesn’t mean that alternatives were never considered.
Thanks for this reasoned rebuttal. I (perhaps foolishly) took Ms Sanger’s opinions at face value. I would love to see a response from her.
This is a helpful document I think:
https://metrocouncil.org/getattachment/4364a440-1570-4ccb-8963-5b576d0c38f0/SWLRT-Hennepin-County-route-selection-handout.aspx
Clearly lays out the pros and cons of each alignment. ( It doesn’t show an alignment down the middle of I-394, I wonder if there was serious consideration for it. It seems like it might be a much better use of the carpool lanes, but I have no data about that.)
Thank you Mr. Elhai.
I actually asked about a 394 route at the time, and this is what I was told: A serious consideration, and I think a federal funding requirement, was that the route promote development (i.e. transit related development). Unless you want to go to Delano, a 394 route would only goes through SLP and Hopkins, and then has to make a weird jog southward out by Lake Minnetonka, and TRD is difficult to imagine along that route. You have to remember, all the suburbs along this route lobbied for this LR, and chipped millions when the budget got tight. The route they chose still goes through SLP and Hopkins, and continues on to Eden Prairie. I’m not sure Minnetonka wanted a LR connection? The chosen route gets you through more suburbs, and promotes more TRD. And that development has already begun, thousands of housing units are being built along the line. The other thing about 394 is that they figured any transit demands could be met with express bus runs down the HOV and that would be way cheaper than building LR for the same purpose.
If someone wants to write about this some more, it would be nice to have a discussion that hasn’t already been exhausted. I can think of two aspects of this project that have gotten little if any attention. One would be deeper dive into the federal rail laws and regulations that Mr. Elhai has mentioned.
Why and how is it exactly that federal law apparently grants private sector RR’s the power and/or entitlement to blow up public transit projects? In this case they basically dictated a co-location and subsequent tunnel simply by deciding to double the length of the trains they wanted to run. I don’t recall there being any legal challenge of any kind to that expansion. And what it is about federal laws or any laws for that matter that apparently dictates that any additional financial burden inflicted upon a transit project will be entirely funded by the taxpayers rather than the private sector company requiring that additional cost? If the freight company wants a safety wall, why don’t they have to build that wall and pay for it themselves? Or at least partially pay for it. If they want to run longer trains through a corridor that publicly owned, why don’t they get to pay or help pay for the tunnel that makes that possible?
It would be nice to understand the legal infrastructure that dictated these project modifications. Moving forward more projects like this will be build and designed and it may be very much in the public interest to change, repeal, existing laws or enact new laws in this regard.
The other factor here that hasn’t really been discussed is the rifts, resentments, and tensions within the MNDFL on this front. I’m not privy to Party business but I know that tensions between the Met Council, State, County, and Cities, have simmered and boiled around the Kenwood-Kenilworth route all along. All of this finger pointing may be an expression of some of those tensions. There are quite a few mover-shaker DFLers living in Kenwood/Kenilworth area, and there are also a lot of transit advocates among those ranks as well. You may recall for instance Governor Dayton at one point delayed the project for a year in order to complete a duplicate study on behalf of Kenilworth residents (that study led to another $50 million worth of “mitigations” of different types along the line). And then months later Dayton swatted down MPLS Park Board threats to file a lawsuit of their own, and took a swipe at Mayor Hodges who couldn’t figure what the new LR did for MPLS. It’s possible that Ms. Sanger’s finger pointing here emerges from some residual intra-party friction. I can’t say for sure but I’m almost positive that at least one Henn. Co. commissioner decided not to run again because of this friction related to the Kenilworth route. It’s hard to imagine that DFLers on so many different pages didn’t contribute the delays and associated cost overruns.
Maybe some future article will explore these thus far unexplored aspects of SWLRT problems?
First off, can we get rid of these stupid color names for our LRT routes? Impossible to keep straight. We have the Capitol line running between the two downtowns, the Hiawatha line running from downtown to the airport and next the Minnetonka line from downtown to the Western suburbs.
The Capital line is a slow, stop filled means to get from A to B with lots of things (stops) to get to in between. The Hiawatha has the main points of interest at each end: downtown and the Mall + Airport at the other. With the Minnetonka line we finally get to LRTs main purpose: Jobs at one end and people needing to get to those jobs at the other.