The Southwest light rail transit project is rarely spoken of without the precursor “troubled.” As such, a report by the Office of Legislative Auditor ordered by a rare state House-Senate bipartisan agreement must carry the precursor “much-anticipated.”
Released last week and discussed Thursday by the House and Senate’s Legislative Audit Commission, the special review was something of a disappointment. Rather than follow the normal pattern of findings and recommendations, the review was instead an explanation of a lot that was already known about how the project’s budget and timeline expanded.
Judy Randall, the legislative auditor (a different office than State Auditor Julie Blaha), told the commission that the limited scope was intentional and that there is more to come.
“We have a team still working on a program evaluation and that’s still on the way. But we decided to do a special review to try to get some information out to members and the public as quickly as possible,” Randall said.
Of the nearly 20 questions posed by the Legislature, “we decided to pull out the ones we could answer the most quickly,” Randall said. “What is the budget? How has it changed? Who is paying for Southwest? What is the timeline, and how has it changed?”
In the report’s cover letter, the Office of the Legislative Auditor admitted to other limitations. “We did not evaluate whether cost overruns or cost delays were justified. We also did not evaluate the quality of project designs or engineering; the adequacy of the route-selection process; or whether different designs, engineering, or routes could have resulted in lower costs or fewer delays.”
[image_credit]Source: Office of the Legislative Auditor, analysis of Metropolitan Council data[/image_credit][image_caption]Sources for the Southwest LRT Project Budget, March 2022[/image_caption]
Given the somewhat limited scope of this report, here’s a look at some of the things readers of the report didn’t learn, what they did and what is yet to come.
Four things we didn’t learn:
1. Any evidence of fraud or wrongdoing. Those expecting the Met Council to be blasted, or were hoping to see clear evidence of wrongdoing or fraud that could lead the project to be scrapped were likely disappointed. That doesn’t mean such evidence doesn’t exist in the history of the project first approved in 2011 by the Federal Transit Administration. It is just that the auditors didn’t go there – at least not yet.
2. A lot of new information. Given the scope of the special review (it is specifically NOT called an audit which is a broader examination of a program), there isn’t all that much new. This report is the legislative auditor’s attempt to understand the long history of this project, including how the price tag doubled and the projected opening was extended by nine years.
3. How the project’s budget grew and how the project was delayed. We already knew from the Met Council back in January that the project budget has grown to $2.74 billion. That’s when the Met Council also revealed there’s no identified source of money for the $534 million gap between the new budget and money available. When announcing the new budget and timeline, the Met Council also projected the first paying riders won’t board trains until 2027. In fact, it was those admissions by the Met Council leadership that turned up the fire under the council and the project and led to the request for the legislative auditor’s special report.
4. Why the budget grew and the project’s timeline was delayed. The Met Council had already explained the main causes for the time and budget delays that the report describes in detail:
- The long back and forth over whether freight lines through the corridor would be relocated, giving the entire space to light rail, or co-locating light rail and freight in the same narrow corridor.
- The construction of the tunnels for light rail trains in the Kenilworth Corridor, tunnels made necessary by the decision to co-locate freight and passengers.
- The demand by BNSF that if light rail was to share the right of way owned by the railroad it would need to build a long, expensive wall meant to prevent collisions between light rail and freight trains if either train derailed.
[image_credit]Source: Office of the Legislative Auditor, analysis of Metropolitan Council data[/image_credit][image_caption]Cumulative Cost of Change Orders by Month, March 2019 to April 2022[/image_caption]
1. The funding gap still exists. The report showed what the Met Council pointed out in January is still a problem. That is, no progress has been made to close the gap from earlier this year when the council staff pointed out a few sources for the first $80 million. Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle said he is working on that question. “I am confident we will have an answer and will have it by the end of the year,” he said Thursday.
2. Met Council staff’s decisions contributed to increased costs. When the giant construction contract was put out for bid, two expensive pieces weren’t included: the barrier wall and a station at Eden Prairie Town Center that had been removed as a cost-cutting move and then put back after that city received a federal transportation grant and covered the difference with city funds.
[image_credit]Metropolitan Council[/image_credit][image_caption]The interior of the SouthWest Station.[/image_caption]
3. The relationship between the Met Council and Hennepin County is sour. That isn’t a positive development, because Hennepin County and the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority (both of which have tax authority and are governed by the same seven commissioners) are the only sources of additional funds for the project. That’s because generally the federal contribution is frozen when funding agreements are signed.
When the Counties Transit Improvement Board, the five-county funder of regional transit projects, dissolved, Hennepin County took on the obligations within the state’s largest county. The situation improved with the doubling of the county’s transportation sales tax. But that funding source covers the county contribution not just to SWLRT but also the Blue Line extension, operating costs for light rail within the county, bus rapid transit projects and the Northstar commuter rail.
[image_credit]Source: Office of the Legislative Auditor, analysis of Metropolitan Council data[/image_credit][image_caption]Available Contingency Funds, July 2019 to February 2022[/image_caption]
“According to a Hennepin County official, the county would be unable to provide additional funding in Southwest LRT if doing so would impair the county’s ability to meet any of these other commitments,” the legislative auditor’s report stated.
4. The Met Council remains all in. Zelle said the council remains convinced Southwest LRT will benefit the region both as transportation infrastructure and as a driver of economic growth. Killing it now would cost more than completing it, he said Thursday.
Two things we still might learn when another report is released some time next year.
1. An evaluation of Met Council staff actions. After discussing the decision to not include the Eden Prairie station and the corridor wall in the big bid process, “OLA’s upcoming program evaluation plans to examine whether the Council adequately accounted for these expected change orders in the project’s budget, contingency fund, and/or timeline.”
More answers to the 20 questions posed by the Legislature. Lawmakers want the Office of the Legislative Auditor to make recommendations as to how the Met Council can avoid future problems and increase transparency. They also want the legislative auditor to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.
Met Council is a problem, and it appears they are the cause of much waste. Another reason for this entity to go. Cities are well able to determine for themselves how to proceed. Many places are all built out and should be exempt from Met Council mandates. Minnesota is not a growing state. Our weather is far different and as such should be a lot more creative in the quest for alternative solutions. White Bear Lake said no to the Purple Line and then brought on board electric vehicles that tour around the city. It’s at least willing to consider something that is a benefit rather than a full scale boondoggle other cities are having rammed down their throats, by the “wizards” of Met Council. Figure out where people are going, and do destination type transit. Because right now we have a mostly a sad system built on out of date ideas.
I believe that the likelihood of such problems arising would have been far less, had we enjoyed the greater accountability and better interaction with the public that would have been afforded by a Met Council with a board elected entirely by the citizens of the various Met Council districts.
Such a change of governance remains desirable and doable.
What a mess. Build it and they will come? Where are the riders going to come from? The trains are empty today and they are running less of them. If there is already a budget shortfall and it won’t be completed until 2027, there are sure to be more cost increases going forward.
Freeways and automobiles = Horse and buggy
Trains are older than cars.
Great summary of a devilishly complex situation, Peter.
Complex? Unelected political appointees that aren’t qualified to operate a paper bag are give tax authority and mess up the largest transit project in state history. Not complex, the wherewithal to tax and elected status should never be separated…unless we want to go full Monarchy.
As opposed to elected officials that have as their single highest goal to get reelected and will never make a tough, unpopular decision that is supported by facts if it threatens their sweet elected gig.
This journalist has always supported SWLRT in his reporting.
Should we be “surprised” that this project is way behind schedule and way over budget?
Ooohh…
This is Republican nirvana: The opportunity for endless finger pointing and blaming.
Edward, newsflash, fingers need to be pointed! This convoluted merger of Federal Government money, Hennepin county, Minnesota tax dollars, a couple of other government agencies plus unfunded cash is ripe for exactly what is happening. Getting that many government folks together who have no idea what they are doing, is a recipe for disaster. Doubling down on dumb ideas don’t make them right and ignoring the faults in bedded in the system leads to more. As always, total disclosure is the best but will not happen with this many agencies trying to hide their incompetence.
I have no problem with a review. And if you have been following along we already know what it will say: almost all the over runs in the first 5 miles due to NIMBY pleasing and RR negotiations. Given existing LRT lines it had to start at Target Field and there was no easy way to get to MPLS city limits.
The idea that the decisions were made by incompetents fulfills the need for finger pointing, but the truth is that hind sight is 20 20 and things happen..
Sorry, the “NIMBY” pleasing argument is a myth. The biggest delay and increased expense in the Kenilworth Corridor is due to the tunnel—which was NOT proposed by the neighborhood or the city. In fact, both opposed it after Met Council chair Gail Dorfman proposed it. And every objection the neighborhood raised has turned out to be accurate. Don’t blame MPLS for the Met Council’s failures.
What is not new–the Met Council and Hennepin County commissioners refusing to admit their mistakes. Mass transit is a noble goal, this was a terrible route. For starters, many in the areas it goes through did not want it, other areas with higher density did want it, and then you have the having to tear up wetlands and areas near lakes/trails. They should have increased the wonderful express bus line through the areas and focused the light rail in the Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center area where you have density and people in need of more transit options. It will be interesting to see how many who live within 1-2 miles of the SWLRT put homes up for sale and move out further, causing more sprawl. The reality is that the county will now work to increase density in that area to justify the need for SWLRT. The Met Council and the commissioners listened to some business owners and ignored others. My guess is the funding will come from Hennepin County property taxes.
Ideally, a rail line like this should equally serve (or as equally as possible) everyone along the route. A line going from downtown Minneapolis to Brooklyn Center and then Brooklyn Park (with an expansion to say, Maple Grove later on) would have benefitted every community along a NW route.
If the project is 62% completed, as this article states, then yes killing it now would cost more than it would to complete it. That being said, considering how over budget this mess has become, perhaps they should be looking at ways to finish it while scaling it back. Do we need 16 stops? I appreciate the photograph of the SouthWest Station interior, but have all 16 stops started construction yet? If not, why not scale it back to 8 stops for now. Surely more stops can be added once ridership returns to previous pre-pandemic levels.
Back when this project was green lit (how many years ago now?), everyone I spoke with about it said it made more sense to create a line from downtown Minneapolis to the NW burbs because it would serve more passengers. Had they done that instead, the line would have likely been completed and operational by now, with expansion projects already underway.
To put into perspective what a terrible investment this project is consider this alternative use for 2.74 billion dollars. Estimating that a multi-place charging station costs about $500k to build it would have been possible to create a grid of them across the state where the farthest anyone would be from one at any time is 2.5 miles. That would be about half of this project’s current budget. The remaining $1.3B could have been put into grid improvements and green energy production. Instead, we are getting a short, expensive to maintain route that will only be minimally useful to a small number of people. One that doesn’t reduce traffic or fossil fuel consumption and isn’t able to carry goods or services.
This project was never a good idea and was never rationally justified on any level by any of its supporters. It has always been a project about what rail symbolizes rather than transportation.
I call it “Light Rail Religion.” Worshiped, no matter how badly designed.
Shoot, for about $50,000 you could put 2-3 charging stations in existing parking lots of malls, stores, rest stops, gas stations, parks, and schools; much faster and more efficient with existing infrastructure in place already.
Provide a tax credit of $15,ooo per charging station and you would have businesses clamoring to install them.
Either way. That is a lot of money that could have been put to use elsewhere with a greater impact.
Like I said earlier, hindsight is 20 – 20…
Any summary is bound to be short on certain details so we can’t blame Callaghan for that. I will say that the “back and forth” referred to is woefully short on a few really significant historic details.
This wasn’t just “back and forth”… these were lawsuits, and demands, and gubernatorial interventions, all of which changed little or nothing while causing years in delays and adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost.
The wealthy residents in the Kenilworth area filed multiple lawsuits that cost millions to respond to and years in delays. And I would remind everyone that the “NIMBY” demand here was an even longer and deeper, MORE expensive tunnel that would have buried the entire Kenilworth section and run UNDER the channel. If you think the tunnel we ended up with has been riddled with problems imagine it being more than twice as long and running under the channel.
Then Dayton inflicted another year delay by suddenly deciding to demand that yet another study, (completely duplicating those already completed), for ANTOTHER $50 million.
Then the City of MPLS AND the MPLS Park Board who don’t even own the land decided to oppose the route, and that took years to resolve.
And finally, the private freight rail companies, who don’t own the land either, decided to ram a 20 foot berm through neighborhoods in SLP park so they could double the length of their trains, and THAT blew up the tacit agreement we had to re-route the freight rail.
Another question I would have, which I’ve never seen asked, is why SWLR and taxpayers are on the hook for the cost of the “safety” wall? If the the freight lines want it… why don’t they have to build it and pay for it? Did they have to prove it was necessary? Did anyone challenge this demand and the additional cost? Presumably it wasn’t in the original design because engineers didn’t think it was necessary, so why does the freight line simply get to demand it at not cost to themselves?
Well, whenever anyone writes any kind of article about SWLR, there are those who simply cannot resist their urge to re-enact long settled debates that they already lost. While seemingly unavoidable, this is nevertheless tedious.
There are a number of actors here who did their upmost to delay this project and blow up the budget, and they succeeded… so all this faux outrage and surprise over the budget is not very compelling. Meanwhile, since this project is NOT going to be abandoned, tracking down costs and over-runs can be a necessary responsibility but, it’s not the end of the story.
The trouble is that while the decision has been made on SWLRT the same people who advocated for it are going to support the next line and conveniently forget all the places they have clearly been shown to have been wrong.
This seems clear when none of them seem to ever want to show any accountability and always do, as you do, work to pass the blame. It isn’t like this is the first big public works project in modern history. All of the issues around the rail road, cities, and local residents, are clearly part of any similar project and not some suprize. These are political projects and saying problems exist due to opposition is disingenuous at best.
While cost overruns bring the topic back up, they aren’t the core issue. The core issue remains that every bit of accounting shows that light rail is a very expensive way to move a very small number of people, short distances, between two points that aren’t their actual origin or destination. Because it is simply subsidizing transportation capacity for everyone regardless of need, and causing induced demand, it ends up increasing our total environmental impact rather than shrinking it. On top of that, it isn’t even safer than the alternatives.
But yes, it became policy and if your goal is to make policy and not worry about the quality of that policy, it is a win.
“The core issue remains that every bit of accounting shows that light rail is a very expensive way to move a very small number of people, short distances, between two points that aren’t their actual origin or destination. ”
Dan, you lost this argument because Cars and roads and highways are far less efficient and cost effective than mass transit. Mass transit systems all over the world move millions and millions of people a day. You point to ridership numbers here if you want, but before the pandemic every light rail line we opened exceeded projections, and the pandemic is unlikely to have caused permanent damage, especially given volatile gas prices. Obviously you have to build transit before you find out how many people will use.
EV’s might make cars and trucks more competitive, but you guys don’t want to give up your ethanol so you’re against EV’s as well. Whatever.
Cost overruns are NOT unique to mass transit projects… see Boston’s Big Dig for example. So whatever… we get it… you don’t like light rail… you think you can just building new lanes all over the place… that doesn’t make it a bad idea or failed policy, nor do cost overruns.
Obviously you have to build transit before you find out how many people will use it ?
Don’t we already know the answer to that question. Mass transit including light rail is not new to the twin cities. The ridership before , during and after Covid has never even come close to paying the operating costs of these systems. It is still off 40% of pre-pandemic levels and may never return to what was never a high level of ridership to begin with. We know light rail is unpopular and expensive yet we’re $2.75 billion into this incomplete project and we’re talking about how successful the next line to the NW metro will be.
I wasn’t arguing against mass transit (or even all rail in general), I was pointing out clear fundamental issues with this project. I also think ethanol is a terrible waste. I also don’t think we should be building more automotive lanes. You seem to be creating a lot of strawmen for some reason and have three strikes so far. Does that mean you’re out? It would be easier if you addressed the actual points made rather than the ones you imagined.
The fact that cost overruns aren’t unique was that whole point. The idea that the things that have impacted this project (tunnel, local residents, etc.) are somehow unique or unpredictable is ludicrous. They weren’t accounted for because they made the project look less attractive despite them being reasonably likely. It is the same thing as contractors underbidding to get the work and then chang-ordering their way to profit.
The argument for making light rail here look good has been so narrowly framed it has been made immaterial. Projections that aren’t attached to any meaningful metrics to measure value are pointless. Especially when they are created by people with a vested interest in the project looking like a success. Besides, when anything is heavily subsidized, it will likely be consumed more often. The number of people using it isn’t a metric that stands alone. It needs to be connected to something meaningful.
The more efficient statement comes with a lot of caveats. The first issue is that light rail only hauls people and not goods, most services, or provide for emergency vehicles. That means that even if the majority of passenger miles were via rail, it doesn’t eliminate the need for the vast majority of lane miles. Especially since the places it is connecting aren’t dense enough to eliminate the need for other means of transportation to get to passengers’ final destinations. Often meaning a less direct total route. Taking light rail 10 miles home from work and then getting in your car and driving 2 miles to a grocery store and then 1 mile home doesn’t equate to rail reducing automotive use by 10 miles. Same as taking rail to and from work but then instead of stopping on your way home to pick up groceries you order Instacart where the driver drives 6 miles.
However, the biggest flaw in the efficiency argument is that building more capacity, of any sort, induces more demand. This was included in the environmental impact statement. It basically said that it will have no impact on traffic because any cars it takes off the road in the short term would be filled in quickly and traffic would return to previous levels. Basically meaning the project will not reduce the use of automobiles. Whatever energy is used to build and run light rail will be in addition to what is happening on the roads.
But rail exists primarily because there is a vocal group of people who like the aesthetics. I recall that when the first line was created the biggest reason given (because there were no real metrics) was that it would encourage people who have bad opinions of buses to use mass transit. Basically, it was built to get relatively wealthy people to use the system. I have no desire to subsidize the transportation of people who can easily afford to pay the real cost. Rail, road, or otherwise.
Finally, the idea that “Obviously you have to build transit before you find out how many people will use (it)” seems to imply that all engineering and modeling is pointless. That no rail project should ever have to justify itself. I wouldn’t think that should apply to adding freeway lanes and it shouldn’t apply to rail either.
Exactly!!!
The Transit Authority needs a SERIOUS approach to ridership issues immediately: If it means a Transit Cop in every car right now, they better do it. If SWLRT becomes a longer ride for homeless housing, smoking, drinking, drug use, public urination we will have a 2.7 billion dollar disaster on day one. If LRT is a safe and efficient way to get from A to B just watch SWLRT succeed: The first line with lots of jobs at one end and lots of houses at the other.