Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[twincitizen]

I'd be delighted if MPRB would just let this Southwest thing go and raise hackles about Bottineau instead.

[Anondson]

*shrug* Minnetonka feels strongly about getting another station.

http://finance-commerce.com/2014/12/in- ... -traction/

[Tcmetro]

The part of Minnetonka that the station is in is close to a lot of apartments and townhouses (on 11th Ave) and is already served by the 12 bus all day. I think it's a justifiable addition to the line.

[twincitizen]

If they can somehow pull off the political game of getting that station added, while others (CTIB, feds) will likely ask to cut the Mitchell Station, more power to 'em. I definitely support the idea of another station there - it should at least be studied. I also support the idea of dropping Mitchell Station from the initial project to bring down costs. The added infill station would obviously cost worlds less than Mitchell Station, as the latter requires nearly a mile of additional track, but the political moves to pull it off would extremely tough. I think at this point, the best Minnetonka can hope for is getting the station "roughed in" so it can be easily added in the future. That seems like something that could easily be paid for with contingency funds.

[mattaudio]

What exactly is the political weight behind Mitchell? Isn't it a big planned P&R? What's the big deal if exurban motorists on 5 or 212 have to proceed one more exit down the highway before transferring to a train? If anything, I bet most people would prefer that anyways since there are infinitely more express buses at Southwest Station -- many people will be using the LRT for one of their trips, but could use an express bus during peak hours for the other.

[twincitizen]

I'm not really sure either. Eden Prairie has 5 stations. They'll still have 4 without Mitchell. In fact, at one point earlier this year, Mitchell Station had indeed been dropped from the plan (as had 21st St in Minneapolis). They even started planning for the expansion of Southwest Station and other related concerns. It's not like Eden Prairie's support for this line somehow hinges on getting Mitchell Station. We'd have their municipal consent regardless of that station. So yeah, I don't get it either. I think CTIB might just be waiting to ask Met Council to cut it. They've said before that they want it under $1.5B, because it's going to take money away from other lines. Maybe that decision doesn't have to be made quite yet. With the budget hovering around $1.65B, sacrifices will need to be made. I don't understand how it's even an option to keep it right now. In fact, they should be looking at cutting another low-ridership station too (but roughing it in for the future). The budget for this project is going to need some serious trimming to advance, and cutting Mitchell Station is the easiest, most painless way to do that.

EDIT: Regarding Minnetonka, it sounds like the city council is moving towards paying for the design and preliminary engineering of the additional station themselves, so good for them. Met Council & FTA have made it clear that all cities along the line are free to pay for any enhancements that are not in the current plan. One thing that probably should happen, but there's no way St. Louis Park can afford on their own, is grade separation at Belt Line. I feel like that could wind up being something CTIB ends up paying to fix within a decade of the line opening.

[acs]

Does someone with a bit more knowledge of the process want to give a summary of what's going on here? From what I understand this could have a large impact on the character and success of this line:

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/2 ... y#continue

[David Greene]

That's FTA bullshit. They require a HUGE amount of contingency funds, which itself limits the budget and causes projects to be pared down. Until now, that contingency money has often been used to restore things cut from the project budget as construction proceeds and it becomes known that the contingency funds aren't needed. If FTA is going to insist on getting the contingency funding back, they ought to reduce the amount of contingency they require.

[nate]

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/01/07 ... light-rail

[mattaudio]

Wow. I'm an obvious critic of swlrt.. But wtf Dayton?

[Rich]

As rail advocates quibbled over whether to take the bird in the hand or the two in the bush, rail opponents assumed power and announced the killing of all birds. There’s a moral in there somewhere.

[RailBaronYarr]

^Don't kid yourself. The petty squabbles here on UrbanMSP and in comment sections over routing, etc etc mattered VERY little. The AA picked 3A, further studies and negotiations determined a single shallow tunnel on the southern side of the channel was all that was required. Minneapolis gave municipal consent. "Rail opponents" in the traditional, conservative, choo-choo-boondoggle sense did not kill this project (assuming the lack of support for funding in the next 2 years basically kills this for a long time), uncertainty thanks to the Park Board and a few well-connected land owners near Kenilworth did. People who support rail for the region, just not if it is literally running through their back yard.

[Anondson]

And now we enter the game of chicken phase.

[Viktor Vaughn]

A few thoughts:

- I cringe at the thought of hypocritical lake-of-the-isles-liberals getting their way on this. What an illustrative example of how government at all levels caters to the wealthy and how campaign contributions buy access and special privilege.

- Before Dayton was elected, I hoped he was in a position to be an independent-minded leader rather than a politiciany politician. He had the ability to self-fund, he bucked the DFL establishment to get the nomination, and doesn't have further political ambitions- so he had a unique opportunity to break from politics as usual. But to the contrary, he's been a finger-to-the-wind ragdoll. Nowhere has he been more opaque or inconsistent than on transportation. But, slowly a picture has emerged of someone with a through-and-through windshield perspective.

- Can't help but think of all the homes they're taking along 66th in Richfield to widen the right-of-way. Yet we couldn't have taken the few townhomes necessary to avoid this expensive tunnel?

- Can't help but think of the continual pumping of groundwater in the nearby condo development with one too many levels of underground parking. I'm not an engineer, but this tunnel just strikes me as a construction and maintenance disaster in the making.

- Southwest LRT is not the most effective use of transit dollars. Even assuming canceling the project takes Federal dollars off the table, we could arguably better improve transit with just the local match portion of SW dollars.

- Southwest LRT is not the best way to serve this corridor. Express buses will more effectively serve commuters for much less. And the technology may be light rail, but by and large it will be a commuter service. Even though rail bias is real, I think many suburban commuters will not want to give up their express buses. If it dies though, I'll shed a tear for Hopkins, which actually deserves a Metro stop.

- Right now, we have two really solid light rail lines that go places where there's something there when you get there. The next two Denver/Dallas style lines are likely to jeopardize this excellent track record. If one thing is becoming clear about the accuracy of ridership projections, it's that they're overestimated for suburban transit and underestimated for urban transit.

- This line has highlighted and exposed a broken process. It's not just messy democracy stuff, it's broken. The broken process has produced a terribly flawed result. Building it now literally encases that dysfunction in cement for the next hundred years.

Bottom line - I think we should let the considerable sunk costs sink. It may take another decade or more, but we can and must do better. Even for 3a critics it would be a loss, but I’m mostly convinced canceling this project will be the best result in the long run.

[mattaudio]

If this dies, and we reclaim much of our work so far on a line to Hopkins, and either a more affordable Kenilworth or a different urban alignment, this would be better in the long run. Your comments were 100% spot on. In a way, I'm disappointed that this may die on the vine, not because it was a good project, but because it means we can't even do transit when it's doing all the wrong things for the wrong political reasons. If we can't do that, just imagine how tough it would be to build legitimately effective and efficient transit.

[Rich]

Democratic power - and therefore transit advocacy - is shrinking at the federal level as well. How likely are we in the future to gain access to increasingly scarce federal funds after we’ve set a precedent of dithering about how to spend it?

[acs]

Wow, so this is how light rail dies, and with it the last best hope for public transportation in MN. It's not like we couldn't see this coming, we've known we wanted to build this line along this route since the 1980's, but we urbanists and public transit loving democrats walked smack into the GOP's trap. While Minneapolis was squabbling over the past two years about the route and throwing lawsuits all over the place, the price has only grown and the completion date pushed farther and farther back. Meanwhile the GOP went to the exurbs and outstate saying "hey, do you hate potholes in your road? This choo choo is why they are so bad!" and boom they got elected. Now the GOP house can skewer the Democrats over transportation funding, making them defend a project they don't particularly like out of principal while risking further dividing their base and solidifying the GOP's. It looks like Dayton isn't going to play ball, but its surprising the senate is willing to considering they are up for election next.

[mattaudio]

The biggest change wouldn't be democratic power / transit advocacy. It would be Republicans (and Democrats) finally figuring out that road advocacy is AWFULLY financially irresponsible (GOP) and anti-progressive (DFL). Being #nonewroad should be a model of bipartisanship, and then a land use that naturally supports bike/walk/transit will rise up organically and incrementally, just as it did for thousands of years before we screwed it all up.

[kirby96]

With no obvious champion & plenty of opponents, this seems likely to drift into a coma. Maybe not actually 'die', but certainly doesn't have a bright prognosis at this point.

...sure glad we spent $80 million building Target Field Station next to, ...errr, Target Field Station.

[HiawathaGuy]

I'm always amazed at how human nature is to inherently turn negative on things.
Perhaps I'm just an eternal optimist, but I think Dayton's words were far more to get things in alignment than to kill this. I think everyone on here forgets how many steps this process has already passed and how much political will it actually does have. The GOP controlled House certainly doesn't mean the line will be unfunded - hell, the Central Corridor was funded during the Pawlenty administration. If that can survive (though multiple lawsuits), I cannot imagine the Southwest extension just falling into a coma and/or dying.

Political posturing is why I couldn't ever be a politician. But it's the way things go. Dayton is going to have the largest transit project killed on his watch. It's not a very jubilant scar to have, regardless if he has no further political ambitions.

I think it's important to take a deep breath and see where things head over the coming weeks/months in the legislature.
I may be wrong, but I'd like to have hope that this extension isn't going to be placed on life support, simply to have someone "pull the plug".