The Southwest Light Rail project moved one step closer to final approval Tuesday, when the Hennepin County Board voted 6-1 to officially give their consent to the portion of the project located in Minneapolis.
This leaves the Minneapolis as the only community along the route that has not yet voted to approve the project. The Minneapolis City Council is scheduled to vote on the project on August 29.
As part of their approval, the Hennepin County Board also agreed to public ownership of the freight tracks in the Kenilworth Corridor, which was part of an agreement worked out between the City of Minneapolis and the Metropolitan Council earlier this summer. The public ownership will limit the number of railroads that will have access to the tracks, but it does not limit the number of trains on those tracks in a given day — or what materials those trains will be transporting.
“We can’t keep shippers on the line from shipping more,” said Howard Orenstein, of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, prior to the vote. “W can’t control what is shipped or the volume of what is shipped.”
“It’s very difficult to restrict freight rail rights; freight rail shippers have a lot of rights under federal law,” Orenstein said. “Although we own the property, they have a right to be there.”
Currently, only the Twin Cities and Western Railroad and Canadian Pacific Railroad have access to the tracks in the Kenilworth Corridor, part of an agreement reached 17 years ago that, at the time, was called a “temporary” reroute of the freights lines.
Earlier plans for SWLRT called for the freight lines to be re-located to St. Louis Park, but that plan was opposed by both residents and the railroads, which called the option unsafe. Further efforts to find a route acceptable to the railroads failed. Minneapolis was opposed to locating both freight and light rail in the Kenilworth Corridor, even as that became the only viable option to move forward with the project.
As part of the county’s approval, the board also agreed to officially commit to its share of the funding for the project, $165.3 million, which would be part of the application submitted to the Federal Transportation Authority by the Metropolitan Council.
“This doesn’t send any money, this doesn’t send a check,” said Commissioner Peter McLaughlin. “But it does commit us in way that is recognized by the federal government as fulfilling the budgetary needs for 10 percent of the capital cost of the project.”
The total cost of the project is estimated at $1.66 billion. Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota are each expected to pick up $165.3 million, with another $495 million from a coalition of five metro-area counties called the Counties Transit Improvement Board. That Board represents a taxing district that collects a sales tax of .025 percent in Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, Washington and Dakota counties.
Four communities along the nearly 16-mile route from Eden Prairie to downtown Minneapolis have already granted the municipal consent for the project, as required by state law: Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Hopkins and St. Louis Park. Hennepin County has also consented to the route, and has now added its approval for the route through Minneapolis.
“I am not supportative of this, which doesn’t surprise anyone,” said Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, who cast the only vote against the project and who is the Republican candidate for governor against Mark Dayton. “I have been asking for years for a cost-benefit analysis for this as to how it will relieve congestion in comparison to its cost. I’ve never seen that, because it’s not going to relieve congestion.”
The other possible player in the project could be the Lakes and Parks Alliance, a group of mostly Minneapolis residents concerned about the environmental impact of light rail lines and freight both moving through the narrow Kenilworth Corridor between Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake.
Tom Johnson, an attorney for the Lakes and Parks Alliance, said his members will decide their next step following the August 29 vote by the Minneapolis City Council. “There is a whole host of (possible) lawsuits,” said Johnson when asked about the group’s options.
Jeff Johnson
Mr. Johnson could show us the courage of his fiscal conservative convictions by resigning his Hennepin County Commissioner’s job so he can spend all his time running for Governor. Oh, I forgot, he is spending all of his time running for Governor. We’re just paying him $97,080 per year to do it.
Southwest Light Rail
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be amusing to see the activity under the toxic plume from the Minneapolis garbage burner. Train stations, ballpark, and Sharing Caring Hands expansion, all oblivious to the poisoned air.
People coming and going under the plume from the burner is as insane as it gets and no one seems to care but me. I don’t get it.
Leslie Davis, President
Fighting for people’s health and the environment since 1983.
http://www.EarthProtector.org
SW-LRT
So: St. Louis Park rejects the trains because they would endanger the lives and safety of their residents. They say the trains should be in a Minneapolis neighborhood instead. The rest of the suburbs agree. Minneapolis seems to be about to take them.
I live in Minneapolis, about a block from the planned route. What am I — chopped liver? Actually, the better metaphor would be charred hamburger.
This isn’t amusing. It is the use of Minneapolis as a dumping ground. A suburban utility.
It is both patently unfair to Minneapolis, but also bad for the region, because every metro area needs a strong central core to survive and prosper.
Safety
While some people have indeed raised the issue of safety, for St. Louis Park the primary concern is that the freight re-route would demolish a lot more homes, businesses, and a ball field than it would in Minneapolis.
The LRT won’t add any new freight to the corridor, so I’m curious if the traffic was also a concern when you moved into your place. Hopefully you’re a home owner and not a renter. Being as close as you are to the line, you’re likely to see home values and rents increase substantially do to the project.
This line does indeed strengthen the core cities rather than treat it as a dumping ground. After all, the rail goes to Minneapolis, not just from.
The simple fact is the Kenilworth LPA, documented in many places, had always explicitly entailed the reroute of freight. That is what the City of Minneapolis and residents were told.
Minneapolis did not want this alignment but agreed to it on the condition the freight be moved.
Rerouting of freight was fundamental in SWLRT planning to the City of Mpls. Rybak et al knew their City and the bare minimum needed for urban livability. Minneapolis had the right to determine the bare minimum required for itself as much as the suburbs and exurbs on the route had that right. Again, Mpls did not want this alignment, but rather a route that served urban density and thus the serious transit needs of the City.
What do public promise matter, after all?
Hennepin County utterly failed in its due diligence to make sure the freight could actually be rerouted as promised. Hennepin County failed in its planning for freight- politically, technically, and budgetarily. As Dayton said in April,. the problems with the freight reroute were “easily foreseen 5 if not !0 years ago.” In any other profession, this level of incompetence and failure would rise to malpractice. Remember the names of those in charge.
Minneapolis is not responsible to make up the difference for this failure in planning. The massive moral and political pressure on Minneapolis to do so is wrong and unconscionable.
Everyone now knows that Minneapolis was last on the list when it came to thoughtful and fair SWLRT planning or expenditure. The amount that is now being haggled over, “negotiated,” is a fraction of the amount spent on the SWLRT alignment in Eden Prairie and Minnetonka. In 2009, Hennepin County agreed not to use any of Eden Prairie and Minnetonka’s recreational trail and green space for SWLRT. That decision increased the cost of the project by $300 million, improving the alignment for those exurbs; and over $200 million more has been added for the Eden Prairie alignment and other suburban improvements since the Met Council took over in January 2013.
Simple facts?
“The simple fact is the Kenilworth LPA, documented in many places, had always explicitly entailed the reroute of freight. That is what the City of Minneapolis and residents were told. ”
The simple facts are that no one in MPLS was ever able to produce a copy of this so-called agreement they keep referring to. Yet another simple fact is that the residents of St. Louis Park were told that they would simply be getting more trains on existing tracks. There was never any mention of demolishing 50+ properties an putting the a huge section of track on a two story berm until last summer.
Jeff Johnson
Some should tell Johnson the the function of public transit is to move people, not reduce congestion. Transit gets a certain number, maybe even a big number of people out of cars, but that won’t necessarily relieve congestion. The world doesn’t revolve around people sitting in their cars.