A decision in the early 2010s to put part of the Southwest Light Rail Transit project underground is the likely inflection point where financial gaps and construction delays began to plague the project.
[image_credit]Metropolitan Council[/image_credit][image_caption]Charlie Zelle[/image_caption]
But for the tunnel, the SWLRT project might have already been delivered, nearly on time and nearly on budget. But for the tunnel, paying passengers might be riding already purchased rail cars. But for the tunnel, angry legislators from both parties might not be awaiting more reports from the Office of the Legislative Auditor.
The cursed part of the now-$2.74 billion extension of the current Green Line is a tunnel that makes up just 2,870 feet of the 14.5 mile route from Target Field to Eden Prairie.
The decision to build a tunnel under the corridor between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles may now be considered water under the bridge – an irreversible decision on the 64 percent completed project. But it is expected to feature prominently in subsequent auditor reports due next year as the examination moves from setting out the facts of the blown budget and the missed timeline to questions of why and who.
[image_caption]State Rep. Frank Hornstein[/image_caption]
The Minneapolis DFLer noted how all of the studies prior to 2012 strongly supported the option known as relocation, describing the movement of existing freight lines out of the corridor to allow light rail and a bike trail use of the space on the surface. After 2012, the studies all pointed to an option known as colocation which put all modes in the same space with light rail moving beneath the surface as a pinch point on the southern end of the corridor. The difference appeared because the city of St. Louis Park and the Twin Cities and Western Railroad opposed moving freight lines.
[image_credit]Source: Corridor Management Committee, “Corridor Management Committee Meeting,” (slide deck, Metropolitan Council, St. Paul, April 2, 2014), 10[/image_credit][image_caption]Selected colocation design for the Kenilworth Corridor “pinch point” along the Southwest LRT route.[/image_caption]
“We knew this was happening,” Hornstein said, “but to have it laid out in that chronological order and you could see so clearly the advocacy from the railroad and the city of St. Louis Park in moving this into Kenilworth despite a lot of previously recognized technical issues.
“That’s coming home to roost now because that was anticipated in the 2010-2012 timeframe,” he said. Hornstein, who preferred a route that used Nicollet Mall and the Greenway rather than the existing rail line, said he had no question that the project would be completed by now had relocation been the choice.
The tunnel is being squeezed into a narrow corridor as a way to accommodate three transportation systems – light rail in the tunnel and freight rail and a popular pedestrian/bike trail on the surface. A plan to drive steel sheets into the ground to support the walls of the tunnel ran into problems when boulders were discovered during construction. Changing construction methods most recently caused a $500 million cost overrun and a three-year delay, pushing back opening to 2027.
But what if no tunnel was needed? That is where the project was heading in the early 2010s. Every study pointed the process toward what was dubbed “relocation” to describe the need to move a freight rail line run by Twin Cities and Western out of the Kenilworth Corridor that was owned by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority. Completed in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, six different studies concluded that relocation – not colocation – was the way to go.
“A tunnel through the Kenilworth Corridor to allow colocation would be vastly more expensive than other available alternatives, produce unpredictable environmental impacts; and invite continuing maintenance, safety and security problems,” is how the auditor summarized a study by R.L. Banks & Associates in 2010.
The draft environmental impact statement for the county and the Federal Transit Administration in 2012 concluded that – again as summarized by the audit – the “colocation alternative did not meet the project’s purpose and need, required complex and high impact construction staging, and was not a practicable alternative due to the associated environmental impacts.”
So what happened? According to the auditor’s review, comments that came in as part of the draft EIS process from St. Louis Park and the railroad objected to relocation of the freight service. These are not just any interested parties. State law gave every municipality a virtual veto of the project unless their wishes were met. And federal law gives railroads extraordinary power over state and local governments. There was also a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers submission questioning the impact of relocation on waterways.
A series of new studies commissioned by the Met Council found that colocation, including a tunnel, was feasible and in October of 2013 the Met Council adopted the colocation option as the route of choice. The one significant change was to move from two tunnels to just one at the south end of the corridor. Trains would travel at the surface in the north end and over the Kenilworth Channel before moving beneath the surface.
The legislative auditor assigned three factors to the project’s delays and cost increases:
- Uncertainty about the final location of freight rail
- The construction of the tunnel
- The BNSF-forced construction of a concrete barrier wall to separate freight and light rail tracks
Two of the three might have been avoided with relocation rather than colocation.
The issue came up in subsequent lawsuits brought by a coalition called the Lakes and Parks Alliance to challenge the process. The suit claimed that contrary to state law, the Met Council had already settled on a route rather than allow the environmental review guide that decision.
[image_caption]U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim[/image_caption]
“For the council, walking that tightrope is difficult,” Tunheim wrote. “The court’s task here, however, is not to consider the wisdom of the council’s decisions and deals, but rather, is limited to deciding whether the council violated federal law.”
It didn’t, he concluded.
“When faced with financial pressures and the project not obtaining municipal consent, the council was willing to change the proposed route to advance their funding and municipal-consent goals,” Tunheim wrote. “With respect to funding, the council modified the route, in part, due to budget pressures.”
At the time of Tunheim’s ruling, the project had an estimated cost of $1.858 billion and was to be completed in 2023. It is now $2.74 billion with completion hoped for in 2027.
In calling the tunnel “the gnarliest segment” late last year, Zelle said, “It’s not just the tight, narrow corridor, but the soil conditions, and the building practices of working during work hours to not disrupt the neighborhood has been really challenging. And I think that is driving in part the delay, and time is money. So, it’s more cost and more time.”
This thing will be $4.0 Billion before it is done. Who wins here and who is held accountable?
St. Louis Park wisely waited until the State had paid to remediate the pollution at the Golden Auto site – which was started to create a site for the freight re-route after it was evicted from the midtown greenway corridor – before firmly objecting to the re-route, and claiming the site for a commercial development that generates tax revenue. There is some re-casting this trade off as “there was no commitment” but that’s disputed. what is not disputed is that SLP was poised to share in the “burden” of regional development, and ended up getting only the benefit side – cleaned up environmental site, light rail stations, and no real downside. Meanwhile the tunnel saga continues.
The old Golden Auto was part of a old superfund clean-up in the area (part of which was the old creosote plant) long before SWLRT came along, and would have been renovated in any event. By the time the “new” route requiring multiple demolitions and 20 foot berms was unveiled that sight had already been developed. The original plan for more traffic on existing tracks didn’t effect the the GA site, THAT was the plan that had tacit but no contractual approval.
In the co-location option, there were *multiple options* presented to co-locate. The tunnel was one.
One option was to elevate the trail over the rail through the narrow stretch, budgeted at $50M. One government vetoed the elevated trail… the Minneapolis Parks and Rec.
Let’s not forget that, too.
Exactly. The fact is that we chose the tunnel because the vocal cycling advocates refused–I mean REFUSED–the idea that they should have to move the bike trail out of the rail corridor and onto the little used side streets. I recall comments in the Star Tribune by people who claimed that this former rail yard was the last bit of pristine wilderness in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the NIMBYs who didn’t want the line at all supported them, figuring it was the best chance of sinking the line completely.
So the reality is that we’re spending an extra billion dollars and years of delays to preserve a couple miles of bicycle lanes.
The only thing that puzzles me is Callaghan’s perspective that this is all hindsight of some kind? There is absolutely nothing new here, or anything that wasn’t discussed or recognized at the time.
Before we get into another re-enactment of the mass transit/choo choo vs. cars debate, let’s recognize something that Callaghan fails to clarify. What’s missing is the clear identification of the role that private sector freight carriers played in blowing the original plan up and forcing the line into a tunnel. Freight carriers blew up the plan in two ways:
First, they decided that the trains to be re-routed through St. Louis Park had to be twice as long as the trains they were currently running. This blew up the plan because it required a 20 foot berm and 30+ of demolished houses and other building, as well as a re-route through the existing High School football field, and a new bridge over HWY 7. Prior to this announcement, the tacit deal had always been more trains on the same exact tracks currently used in SLP. The entire discussion in SLP had always been about how much train traffic would increase on existing tracks, then suddenly a plan to demolish buildings and build a 20 foot berm was unveiled literally at the last minute without any prior notification. Since no one in SLP had EVER agreed to anything remotely like that, it was rejected, and those lines were forced into co-location. There was no enforceable agreement that could have forced that redesigned line through SLP.
The obvious question there was why didn’t anyone simply tell the freight company that doubling the length of it’s trains and radically modifying the tracks in SLP wasn’t an option? Why did the freight line have the power to dictate that outcome?
The second freight line demand was the “safety” wall, and the most obvious question regarding that is, why is SWLRT paying for it? If the freight line wants it, why aren’t they building it and paying for it?
So yeah, the tunnels expensive… duh. But we had to put line in the tunnel because the freight line tossed a new demand into the project and for some reason (I’ve never seen anyone anywhere explain this) they simply have the right or the power to make these demands and changes without paying any costs. And yeah… that wall turns out to be really expensive, but there again, since it wasn’t in the original plan, SWLRT engineers must not have considered it necessary, so why does the freight get to decide that it IS necessary and dictate it’s construction… again without paying anything for it?
Yet another question is: Since taxpayers spent hundreds of millions of dollars for the co-location that let’s the freight line double the length of it’s train (this has already happened, anyone who’s had to wait for these trains can tell you that), why is the fright company paying anything for that advantage?
Finally, we should ever discuss the issue of the Kenwood Neighborhood and it’s lawsuits without remembering that one of their objectives was to force the entire line into a tunnel three or four times as long that would have run UNDER the Cedar-Lake Of the Isles channel. If they gotten their way, can you imagine how much more THAT tunnel would have cost?
In the end I suspect that if you REALLY want to understand how this budget blew up you’d have to study and explore longstanding powers, entitlements, and privileges that long since were gifted to private sector rail companies by the federal government, some of which have recently been revealed with the strike that was narrowly avoided.
Running the route right near a lake, whether is was above or below ground was a lousy idea. Also I believe parts of the train tracks also went through neighborhoods that did not want it(including areas that have no current train running through the area) and then there was the issue of bike paths/nature trails that they originally wanted to use.
It was clear from the start, that some politicians, business interests and the Met Council were dead set on having light rail go thru these areas(note, it is not an express route) vs having light rail in already high density areas that needed more transit options for lower income riders. The southwest area could have simply increased their current bus service. The only positive out of the SWLRT fiasco, is it gives some of us who will be a mile or less from it, time to move.
The Kennelworth area was major rail and industrial corridor for a 100 years, and there WAS a functioning track in place there. The notion that these residents had some kind of natural or pristine parkland of sorts in their back yards was always a false notion. If you actually walked around back there you would literally stumble over old foundations and abandoned pavement. And it’s worth reminding people that the channel between the lakes is NOT a natural feature, it was built by the MPLS Park Board a century ago. None of this ever represented any legitimate threat to the lakes, which is why those law suits were dismissed.
The bike trails and other features will remain. Park Board recently finalized a new plan for the Lake of the Isles/Cedar Lake area that will expand and enhance access and features. For instance a pedestrian pathway along the channel will be built among other improvements.
The economic and transportation advantages of the light rail development are beyond dispute. You can move away if you want but you’ll be moving away from increased property values. All along the corridor massive transit related development is under way. Thousand of units of housing, and new commercial developments are being built. Not only will this provide affordable and efficient transit in and out of downtown, but it will connect thousands of workers to new jobs. Only someone who never takes a bus in this city would suggest that busses could have accomplished the same result.
Thank you fir yet again proving my point. This area us not some pristine wilderness, move the trails .
So now you want to keep the tunnel but remove the bike trail?
Very true about the legal powers of railroads. They have become very adept at playing the timing to their advantage by waiting to take a clear position until the public sector projects like SWLRT are well along in development. They can then require almost anything (projecting a possible future need for double length trains is but one example) and the public project folks are forced to do whatever the railroad wants or engage in a protracted, uncertain legal battle that will likely add huge inflation costs to the project.
Good article.
Just as an aside, the power of the freight lines is one of the principal reasons for delays on Amtrak: the freight trains have absolute priority, even if what they are carrying is non-perishable.
This report is informative and revealing, but also misleading in that it doesn’t go far enough to explain in more detail why St Louis Park interests objected to the freight relocation scheme that would have had mile-long ethanol and grain trains running through working class neighborhoods and then the middle of the St Louis Park high school campus. Those objections were based on understandable safety concerns on the part of SLP community interest, not just the mere politics of moving those smoke-belching, noisy and ugly freight trains out of the swanky Kenilworth neighborhood and foisting them onto less powerful SLP constituencies. Hornstein should know better. How do you think the Kenilworth crowd would react if those freights were to somehow run through the Kenwood elementary playground?
The report also skips two very obvious, efficient and easy on-site alternatives to the shallow tunnel that were never seriously considered, alternatives that, if implemented, would have SWLRT up and running today, saving hundreds of $millions. The first such option would have been to simply single track the light rail system through the half mile bottleneck area. That would have freed up about 20 right of way feet, or enough to accommodate a bike/hike trail, leaving the remaining forty feet for a freight rail track and the single LRT track – a tight fit to be sure, but doable. This has worked elsewhere, most notably in north San Diego County, where their Sprinter light rail system operates over two such two mile single track segments at 15 minute intervals between trains, which is the SWLRT operating plan. Those single track sections in San Diego were constructed to preserve delicate coastal wetlands. You would have thought the lakes in Kenilworth would have warranted like-minded respect and consideration from Met Council and the Kenilworth crowd.
The second, more mainstream alternative would have been to buy out and remove about six townhouse structures adjacent to the west side of the right of way in question. Those townhomes should never have been built on that site, an old rail freight switching yard, which instead would have provided an easy sub grade support structure for either the freight track or that second light rail track. There would have been plenty of room for related infrastructure to include stations and higher density trackside development. So, not doing this standard eminent domain action was pure politics, to the point where a reporter might have asked Mr. Hornstein “why?”
The legislative audit, then, might want to go a bit further and ask why these obvious alternatives weren’t explored. And so might the next investigative report into this fiasco. If for any other reason, the blunders here have imposed a chilling effect into the application of light rail into future transit decisions, even where the light rail alternative makes sense. That is the real tragedy here. After all, would you want this chapter of our local/regional Transit Industrial Complex to take on leadership of anything remotely as complex as SWLRT, given their “track” record here?
Am I missing something? Did we just pay 500 mil to avoid moving half a mile of bike trail?
It was paid to avoid the condemnation of six townhome structures that would have provided plenty of right-of-way room for two transit tracks, a freight track, and separate bike and mile trails. Condemnation back then would have cost the public less than $5 million, with construction of the transit or freight tracks being unusually cheap on land that had been a freight car storage yard back in the day.
Either way, incredibly pour design
And yes pour design as in dumping money down a rat hole
So the Cedar Lake Shores townhomes sit on the “site [of] an old rail freight switching yard”? You’re dead wrong. Prove it –– direct us to the old maps, available online through Hennepin County Library’s Special Collections, showing tracks on the stretch of land now occupied by the townhouses.
“… the condemnation of six townhome structures that would have provided plenty of right-of-way room for two transit tracks, a freight track, and separate bike and mile trails.” You’re dead wrong. Southwest Project Office planners around about 2014 drew a sketch showing what the removal of about 35 of the 57 townhomes would accomplish, but that was a nonstarter. Condemnation of only six townhomes? Prove it.
First, I’ve been around long enough to have personally observed freight car marshaling and storage activities conducted by the Minneapolis & St Louis Railway at that site circa early ’60’s. The M&SL was merged back about then into the Chicago & Northwestern RR, which had its own marshaling yard about a mile north in the vicinity of 21st Street, making the M&SL site redundant when the grain elevator, this is now the notorious condo structure, was closed. You might also do an internet search using “Minneapolis Historic Grain elevators” as key words. There is a photo circa 1920’s showing the site with the fully functioning concrete grain elevator, one of the very first of its type, and the M&SL marshaling yard in all its splendor.
Regarding those townhomes, I stated “townhome structures.” As I recall, there are about three or four townhomes per townhome structure. Removal of townhome structures sufficient to allow transit, freight and recreational applications would still allow about half the structures to remain.
Yes, you’re missing the entire story. This was never about saving bike trails.
The tunnel is being squeezed into a narrow corridor… to accommodate thee transportation systems…
And along with the graphic, it appears yes indeed moving the trail along with single tracking the LRT might have been wiser
The corridor will retain the bike and pedestrian path, but the co-location of the LR and the freight rail dictated the tunnel construction. The bike path would have remained with or without the tunnel whereas the freight tracks would have been removed according to the original plan without the tunnel. This is all clear if you read the story.
Although the delay is regrettable, the cost per mile of SWLRT is LESS than similar projects in Seattle, Portland, LA, Houston (Zeno Center for Transportation).
Agree that taking the townhomes to widen the right of way would have been smart if opposition from well-connected owners could have been overcome. I don’t think TC &W RR ever really considered relocating to a windy route through Golden Valley and Wirth Golf Course; governments have almost no power over RRs thanks to a bunch of 19th century laws.
Bottom line: these projects are almost impossible to build because every stakeholder fights for their self-interest, as they should. The political process, always messy, worked it out in this case. In 100 years we’ll be glad we have this transportation corridor.
We will be extinct in 10 years
Why wasn’t the line built with a stop in Uptown? Why did it have to go through this area at all? Using part of the Greenway, going under Hennepin Avenue for a bit (if it had to go underground anywhere), would have avoided a LOT of these problems, saved money, and resulted in increased ridership.
There are several stops downtown, this line is an extension of the Green Line.
Ooops, sorry Daniel, I misread “Uptown” for “Downtown”.
At the time there were several reasons for locating the line in Kennelworth instead of Uptown. First, running the line down Lyndale to a Greenway connection wasn’t as cheap and easy as you might imagine, although it would certainly be cheaper than the tunnel. But you have to remember, when this route decision was made, the tunnel wasn’t in the plan. Also, running the line through an existing rail corridor that was already publicly owned made more sense than a lot of people want to admit. In addition to all that it’s important to remember that this is light rail, not inner city transit, it’s function isn’t to connect urban neighborhoods. Uptown already has an extensive transit network of busses connecting it to downtown. And finally, there were/are several connector options, not to mention a Nicollet street car plan on the drawing boards to improve the urban/inner city connections. I’ve even seen plans for a automated people mover along the greenway.
Suffice to say that there have always been those who thought Uptown routes as some kind were no-brainers, but Kennilworth route actually made more sense than some people want to admit.
Yes, the basic “bones’ of SWLRT have, miraculously, remained intact., thanks to its dedicated, unimpaired, right of way enabling train velocities much higher than light rail applications down street medians like the Green Line in St. Paul. Mobility improves dramatically for SWLRT users, especially those walking to stations or able to exploit efficient transfer to/from the improving inner-city bus network. It explains much of the private sector development going on near SWLRT stations.
It’s good to live in the suburbs (Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Hopkins, Edina, St. Louis Park) and get everything you want from your (pre-pandemic) commuter LRT (don’t forget sports, theater, dinner, access to hipness) into the city core. Rich, city-dwelling Kenwood residents – they’re the selfish ones in this situation.
Howard, all those people in the suburbs will use light rail into MPLS, and workers in MPLS will use it to get out into jobs in the burbs. The idea that a major transit system connecting MPLS to it’s surrounding burbs can ONLY benefit the burbs is ridiculous. And meanwhile… what of the hundreds of millions we spent to for transit within the cities… how is THAT not selfish urbanism?
Also Mr. Howard, it’s good to live the city have and have almost all of your transit and LR lines paid for by the suburbs. MPLS get all of it’s benefits from the SWLR without putting a dime into the project.
I’m not sure what this comment means. How is SLP contributing to this project, while Minneapolis is not?
I wish the people who had legitimate concerns before they broke ground were taken seriously. The DFL and the Met Council were so hell bent on starting this project that anyone who had concerns were belittled or ignored.
Sad.
The funny thing to me is they blame “the tunnel” for delays and over costs, what was the issue on the other 12 projects that came in over budget and over time? They have never had a project come in on or under budget, forget about on time! In a private business, not subsidized by tax dollars, they would be out of business ASAP! The tax dollars just keep on coming in and Minnesotans get this…… Whatever this is….
I was one of those folks at the public hearings who were belittled or ignored. Those of us who lived in the neighborhood for any significant period of time (for me, 40 years) knew what kind of soil conditions and other issues they’d run into in the corridor. But, nobody listened, beginning from the late 1970’s until now. And, watch the story on Channel 4 from Wednesday night about damage to other properties near the corridor. The lawsuits are just beginning on other damage issues.
Gary, you opposed the route and the tunnel but there’s simply no way you could have “known” what soil conditions would be found 30 feet below the surface and what else was buried there during 100 of industrial use. Claims of damage to adjacent properties will be litigated in due course but those claims have not been substantiated as of yet. There’s a limit to how much hindsight you get claim, and just because you didn’t get your way at the time doesn’t mean you weren’t listened to.
Never buy a home at or near the end of the bus line and now near the democrat choo choo. An obsolete 18th century form of transportation that is now and will forever be under utilized or maybe some of the cars can be made into diners and sell hot dogs at the fair for 15-20 days a year. All paid for by tax dollars and made millionaires out of a chosen few.
This is really bad real estate advice. In fact several studies have shown that property close to transit stations and hubs rivals that of beachfront property in terms of value. The results might be a little more mixed for a dozen or so really high end homes along the Kennelworth line, but value’s won’t drop dramatically and several thousand people along the rest of the line will see increases in value not to mention entirely new development.
Research shows higher values along rail lines—if you live more than two blocks from the rail lines. And those townhomes and condos—people have had a hard time selling them the last few years (before interest rates went up). The effect on real estate values is more mixed, except for developers.
Still talking in circles trying to convince yourself and others of the value of this boondoggle.
First of all, passenger trains are *19th* century technology (as are cars), and the U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries whose trains are even 20th century technology. The UK is another country whose rail system is stuck in the 20th century, and it is said to be the worst in Europe–and I had a particularly irksome time one day during my 2019 trip– but even the British rail system is ahead of Amtrak in frequency and coverage.
Most other nations in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia are moving into 21st century technology for trains and transit. Today’s best train and transit systems are as much like 19th century trains and transit as today’s cars are like 19th century cars.
Tell ya what… the actual tunnel is way deeper than the drawing here represents. The infill above the actual tunnel is at least three times as deep as that drawing makes it look like. The drawing makes it look like maybe 5 or 6 feet, but it’s closer to 15 -20 feet- look at the photo. I ride over the tunnel on my bike several times a week and I finally asked a worker what is the deal? It almost looks like a double stacked tunnel. He told me I was looking at the roof of the train tunnel and all the rest of that was going to be filled in. I don’t know why they went so much deeper but THAT had to cost a pretty penny as well. I would have thought a shallower tunnel would be easier and cheaper, but what do I know?
The trains are running through 30’ square tunnels, 150’ long. They will be sitting in something like 8’ of groundwater.
I think history needs to be remembered. First, the blue and green lines came in under budget and broke all ridership records years before the projections. This debacle does not mean all light rail projects are bad. Second, I-94 & I-35E mess around St Paul was also due to a political move like the SWA decision. This also means that not all Eisenhower freeway projects are bad. Finally, I saw the political involvement with green line adding more stops & moving it around capitol from political groups who thought it was a bus. Those additional stations/route changes add time and costs to running that route. I think I see a pattern here.
I personally see a value in connecting people with mass transit like light rail, buses, passenger trains, and airplanes. I do not know the details of this project except that I like that it connects with the system and other transit systems. When we look at costs one can’t help but think of the enormous costs of the freeway system in MSP- just look at the bridges at 100 & 169, bridges in Duluth, or the massive movement of dirt in St Paul for I-94. All transportation systems demand front end money- I think we need to keep that in mind and that no transportation system in the world makes money. All are subsidized. On a lighter note, I do not receive any direct cash flow from the road in front of my house. 🙂
I charge ten cents a pop to drive by my house. So far no one has paid and my administrative costs are skyrocketing.
I agree with Jerry on his point of the cost of roads.
The term “freeway” is one of the biggest misnomers around. Yet fiscal conservatives keep using it as some gold standard and trying to convince others that it is indeed free.
If not rail transit, then what? More roads? How many lanes can we continue to add to 35W south out of downtown Minneapolis? How many times can we rebuild the 35W/Crosstown commons before diminishing returns overwhelm the costs? Or 94 west from downtown.
PRT – still looks to be a dream. Someday, however not today or this year even.
And several posters commented on train length. ALL corporations look for increased profits through efficiency. This is free enterprise as these corporations see it. Railroads run 5000-foot trains in the Sea-Tac area.
And of tank cars of ethanol moving through neighborhoods. Not through your neighborhood? If not your neighborhood, where?
Trade one tank car for about three or four semis of tankers. A one hundred, sixty car tank train would equal around six to seven hundred semis. Or even better, tandem tank semis here in winter. Think of the road damage not to mention the chance for more accidents even if held to a 494-694 route. And the increased cost of labor even if drivers can be found. Better yet, get rid of ethanol all together, but that is another thread.
Of the line itself – once operating, it is still the most (other than bicycling or walking) ecologically efficient mode of transit. And the one most able to handle increased capacity without changes to its infrastructure in the future. Say what you will about work at home – rush hours on the roads have reappeared, sadly.
SWLRT began as an excuse to get federal money. Now, a generation later, it is no longer considered a “transportation” project but a “jobs” project. Recently a political pundit suggested SWLRT become “the most expensive bike trial ever.”
Smart money would pause “the most expensive public works in Minnesota history” rather than continue the financial hemorrhage that Hennepin County will try to “share” with other government authorities that can’t refuse in time.
Meanwhile the unelected Metropolitan Council has approved each and every SWLRT vote for route change and added expense.