The drama surrounding the Southwest Light Rail Transit Project (SWLRT) is reaching its finale. The Minneapolis City Council has reached a tentative deal with the Metropolitan Council on the Kenilworth Corridor dispute, and a new timeline moves municipal-consent decisions to August.
How did we come to be fighting over this route? The answer is rooted in how metropolitan economies developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a desire to avoid the mistakes of the freeway-building era of the 1950s and 1960s.
Metropolitan corridors
According to John R. Stilgoe, who developed this idea in “Metropolitan Corridor,” his 1983 book:
Metropolitan corridor designates the portion of the American built environment that evolved along railroad rights-of-way in the years between 1880 and 1935 … . Along it flowed the forces of modernization, announcing the character of the twentieth century, and abutting it sprouted new clusters of building. … And suddenly, in the years of the Great Depression, in the ascendancy of the automobile, it vanished from the national attention. Yet the corridor remains, although now often screen by sumac and other junglelike trees and avoided by highways, still snaking from one well-known, often-studied sort of space to another.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area grew via these corridors, and they continue to define our urban and suburban geography. As John S. Adams and Barbara J. VanDrasek note in their book “Minneapolis – St. Paul: People, Place, and Public Life,” “The historical need to build tracks, marshaling yards, passenger terminals, warehouse, and car manufacturing and repair shops in both cities before permanent settlement filled in has persistently influenced land use through the Twin Cities. Rail yards and tracks govern the location of industry, neighborhood development, and the layout of road networks.”
An important consequence of this development pattern is that the quality of neighborhoods improved the further one located from the central city. Adams and VanDrasek point out that for Minneapolis before 1900, in particular, “Congestion, high densities, and general squalor near the mills gradually gave way to lower densities, higher ground, and cleaner air farther way.”
They add, “The rich, having alternatives, chose to avoid the noise, soot, and odors of transportation, industry, and commerce. In addition, they shrewdly avoided the congestion created by a hundred trains and more than a thousand railroad cars entering, waiting in, and leaving the cities daily, blocking streets and isolating certain neighborhoods for hours on end.”
The Kenilworth Corridor
The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway (M&StL) started laying track in what is now the Kenilworth Corridor in August 1871 and reached Carver by November 1871. At the same time the railway built a roundhouse and other facilities under the bluffs of Kenwood. These facilities grew over the years into a large complex of tracks and buildings.
Don Hofsommer, in his books “Tootin’ Louie: A History of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway,” “The Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway: A Photographic History,” and “Minneapolis and the Age of Railroads,” documents the history of the Kenilworth Corridor and how the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway (M&StL) and the communities through which it passed developed together from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. A recurrent theme is that the residents along the corridor and the railroad that operated trains in the corridor always had a love/hate relationship.
Here are some samples from Hofsommer’s “Tootin’ Louie”:
[In the early 1900s] community relations were at issue in Minneapolis, where M&StL skirmished with nabobs of Kenwood neighborhood, several of whose homes stood on a bluff above the Cedar Lake Yard and shops. Matters reached a fever pitch in 1910, when M&StL sought to expand operations very modestly, provoking a city council order to desist and then the arraignment of M&StL’s general manager for violation of an antismoke ordinance by switch engines working in the yard. This followed complaints from the Kenwood set that smoke and gasses from M&StL’s yard and shop were killing stately elms and maples in their neighborhood; that their household furniture, curtains, carpet, and even food were being destroyed; and the their wash could not be hung out to dry without being ruined. Moreover, said angry residents’ nocturnal slumber was impossible because of “the ceaseless whistlings, the jarring of heavy cars, and ringing of engine bells,” which, they claimed, made them “ill and fretful.” Kenwood residents and city officials urged that M&StL move all operations to Hopkins, only a few miles distant.
Back in Minneapolis there was no sympathy in 1934 for parvenu residents of Kenwood, who again sought to have M&StL yards and shops removed from Cedar Lake to Hopkins and wanted M&StL to reroute its two main tracks north of Cedar Lake along Great Northern’s line. The 750 M&StL employees who would be affected by a move to Hopkins, residential and commercial interests along Great Northern’s line, Great Northern itself, and others who would be asked to pay for a project benefiting only the Kenwood nabobs took a uniformly contrary view. The issue did not go away, however, and took on new energy when Kenwood leaders dreamed of using “relief laborers” paid by Washington New Dealers in a way that would reduce the burden to local taxpayers. Nothing happened, but the denizens of Kenwood continued to feel victimized by the railroad and its assorted ilk.
Yet Hofsommer also notes that under a late-1930s corporate reorganization plan, M&StL proposed “closing the Cedar Lake shop and moving all locomotive work to Marshalltown [Iowa] – an idea that Marshalltown greatly applauded but Minneapolis roundly condemned (ironically, given the eruptions against M&StL over many years by the Minneapolis suburb of Kenwood.)”
What do we learn from this?
The controversy over the Kenilworth Corridor is only the latest dustup in our transit history and it certainly won’t be the last. The Metropolitan Council’s regional transit plans envision utilizing existing corridors throughout the area.
Using existing corridors makes sense when we remember how the Interstate Highway System was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. Freeways such as 94 and 35W blasted through St. Paul and Minneapolis neighborhoods and set off waves of citizen protests.
I think John Stilgoe put the matter best in his most recent book, “Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape”:
Consider the fate of many Americans who own homes near long-abandoned railroad rights-of-war, perhaps routes now converted to nature trails. As traffic increases congestion on active tracks located some distance away, railroads, shippers, and commuters may demand that the nature trails become a rail route once again. Abutters may scream, “Not in my back yard!” just as so many abutters now complain about increased train traffic – and especially grade-crossing whistle noises – but in the end the “greater public good” may demand rail restoration.
There is no way to avoid the pain of this process short of not building or improving our transportation infrastructure. What we should do is ensure that public policy redistributes some of the gains from building these projects back to those who bear the burden when we use these corridors.
What a timely and useful and well-written article you have given us, Prof. Johnston! Thank you for reminding us of the history of Minneapolis railroads, corridors through cities, and the relatively parvenu nature of the people living in the Kennilworth corridor where there once was a vibrant rail yard.
I particularly congratulate you on recalling for us who actually is always made to “pay for” lots of the changes demanded by those parvenus. They always want the workers and the rest of the taxpaying public to fund their preferences, as now with the hugely expensive Southwest light rail line.
Irrelevant and obscuring article
The author misses and functionally obscures the far more pertinent and important recent history of Southwestern exurbia as well as its relationship to the rail corridor.
From 1980-2000, the population of Eden Prairie grew from 16,000 to 60,000. The Sept 2012 Money Magazine Best Places to Live issue lists a coming LRT as yet another reason to live in Eden Prairie, as well as its median household income at $116,000. Eden Prairie has 5 stations and over one third of the ridership of SW LRT. Eden Prairie and wealthy Minnetonka required $300 million + be added to the budget to route SW LRT away from the HCRRA trail in their communities.
Combined, these two wealthy exurbs, Eden Prairie and Minnetonka, will be given a massive infrastructure amenity, 6 stations, over 40% of total ridership, with few if any burdens or blights in exchange.
The author also misses the current underlying power and special interest politics of brute force applied to Mpls to submit to the bait and switch and incompetence of Hennepin County regarding the freight reroute in exchange for LRT. Certainly, Eden Prairie and Minnetonka would not accept this bait and switch deal resulting from Hennepin County incompetence, and likely few in the metro would name call and bully them into doing so.
In truth, this article is irrelevant and actually obscures the current situation in the Kenilworth Corridor.
Parvenu?
What a refreshing change from NIMBY: I’ve been called many things in my life, but “parvenu” is a new one. Thanks so much.
Thanks
…for an excellent article, and for adding two words to my vocabulary (parvenu and nabob). They so perfectly fit the NIMBY attitude of a few.
2st St. Station
Great article!
One thing to add. The proposed 21st St. station area is where the M&StL had a passenger rail station. We’re actually restoring passenger rail service that existed back about the 1870’s or so. The AIA guide to Minneapolis has some information on the station and a nearby hotel, long since vanished.
Changing attitudes
The current controversy over the SWLRT points up just how much the process has changed over the years with regard to public projects of this magnitude. Mr. Johnston mentions the public outcry caused by the construction of the interstate highways through the heart of the city during the 1960s and later. What he does not mention is the magnitude of that construction. The disruption the SWLRT might cause is trivial compared with the devastation caused by the interstates. 35W alone cut a 3-block wide swath down the 11-mile length of the city, demolishing hundreds of houses. By the time the construction of the I-94/I-35W corridors were done, fully 10% of the city’s housing stock was lost. So many properties were demolished, the MNDOT Library has maintained extensive files on these “ghost houses”, which are still requested to this day. Can you imagine the prospects now for any construction project proposing demolition on this scale? Nil. The inconveniences brought to the Kenilworth corridor are insignificant by comparison. But we’re apparently much less willing now to drop our pants and bend over at the insistence of “Progress.”
Excellent and timely
Such a pleasure to read and learn!
A more complete story
The rail corridor of which Kenilworth is a part runs all the way out to Eden Prairie. In the 1990s, freight trains abandoned this corridor. As part of the “Rails to Trails” movement, Hennepin County bought the land and converted it to recreational trails, planning to use it in the future for transit. When the east-west freight route through Minneapolis (now the Midtown Greenway) was severed by the Hiawatha LRT, Hennepin County granted “temporary” trackage rights in Kenilworth to a newly formed railroad, TC&W. TC&W was to move when LRT became possible in Kenilworth. That was the deal.
Meanwhile, in 2009, Hennepin County conducted a transit Alternatives Analysis that proposed using the length of its former freight rail corridor for light rail, from Minneapolis though Minnetonka to Eden Prairie. The cost was pegged at about $900 million. These suburban communities, however, stated in no uncertain terms that if the Rails-to-Trails recreational corridor in their communities were to become LRT corridors, they would not be part of the project. Period. At that point, Hennepin County (with consultation of the Met Council) decided to buy a different right-of-way for Eden Prairie, resulting in an alignment that was $300 million more expensive; the resulting price tag became $1.2 billion. Since the Met Council took over the project in January, 2013, even more money has been funneled into the Eden Prairie alignment — in fact, most of the increase in the cost to the current $1.65 billion is for changes and enhancements in the suburbs, not Minneapolis.
It’s easy to pretend that the problems with SWLRT is a simple story about a handful of rich NIMBYs in “Kenwood,” and the professor has added to the vocabulary of those who would do so. In reality, people throughout the region are deeply and truly concerned about the potential impact of SWLRT on lakes, parks and urban greenspace. Kenilworth has become the second most used bicycle trail in the city. Further, much of the concern in Kenwood and CIDNA in recent years (not in the 1930s) is that this enormously expensive transit project serves Minneapolis poorly and promotes sprawl.
Thank goodness the highway construction projects of the 20th century would be unthinkable today. But under the SWLRT “compromise” proposed this week, the “temporary” freight stays in Kenilworth next to the LRT (in a hard-to-access valley with little development potential), St. Louis Park gets to keep freight out of its community, and Eden Prairie gets a $500 million(ish) subsidy. Not a big win for the urban core.
Why name-calling?
I’m disappointed to read such a degraded form of “journalism” in MinnPost. Name-calling and hate-mongering don’t enhance your brand.
I wish participants in this important public discussion could govern themselves such that they would refrain from invoking economic class and race (as at the recent Anwatin meeting) to instigate hatreds and intra-community enmities.
Shame.
Huh?
This article makes no sense to me: what is he actually saying? It’s not clear. Trains are the only transit option? Because we’ve done things a certain way before, we must do them that way now? Equity demands that we sacrifice parkland (Theordore Wirth being the next target), because planners lack the will and/or imagination to come up with anything better, despite years of citizen input requesting a different route through Minneapolis? What?
Besides, most of the really rich people live out the suburbs still, just like they did way back when, and their needs and desires are priority number one. Which is why we’ve got this alignment. And it’s got little to do with inevitability and a lot to do with money and politics.
And Public Good?
And little to do with public good, either. Which is why he’s careful not to define exactly what public good is going to be served. Because the numbers don’t add up to public good. The numbers add up to public boondoggle.
Economic class has always been a factor in who lives and works and plays where in Minneapolis. As elsewhere. No avoiding it, although many people with money would love us to forget about class.
This article simply reminds us of the history of the Kenilworth area, a history that includes a former very potent railroad presence and specifications of when the monied folks in the area began to assert their preferences against railroads. It’s an old history, worth re-telling no matter who gets upset about it.
This article simply directs attention away from the current dynamic economic class factor that is driving the SWLRT process today – the concentration of wealth in the southwestern exurbs. Ironically, the history portrayed in this article functions to obscure current economic reality, and in fact it supports the powerful economic interests of the wealthy southwestern exurbs.
The widespread lack of accurate reporting or analysis of the actual factors involved in pushing a suburban-centric project alignment, not supported by the transit community, and producing only a meager increase in new to transit riders, reveals the business dominated nature of politics in the Twin Cities area – the actual power politics involved no one is touching with a ten foot pole.