Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[Bakken2016]

https://www.startribune.com/crew-remove ... 600255793/

I'm glad this ended up being a relatively easy fix.

[VacantLuxuries]

Good thing the loud anti-transit voices in the media reacted like this was another billion dollar problem immediately after this was reported. I can't wait to see their subsequent articles and pieces on the subject now that we have more information.

[TroyGBiv]

It is just incredible tome how freaked out some voices are about cost over runs… it is never great to have them… but public works projects are always at risk of unforeseen issues to emerge and are often unavoidable.

[Mdcastle]

Yeah, $1.5 Billion dollars is nothing to be freaked out about. It's not like we're talking real money here, they can probably find under the couch cushions in the lounge at the government center. It's not like it has to come from hard-working taxpayers or anything.

[Korh]

To be fair I'm sure there where a few people who when first head about the problem, thought it was just one more reason on the long list why we should of gone with the alternative routes.

[DanPatchToget]

Yeah, $1.5 Billion dollars is nothing to be freaked out about. It's not like we're talking real money here, they can probably find under the couch cushions in the lounge at the government center. It's not like it has to come from hard-working taxpayers or anything.

If only people had this mindset about MnDOT's years-long road projects that always fail to relieve traffic congestion. And, on a nationwide scale, I can think of many things that I wish the public had this mindset about, but that's far beyond off-topic for this thread.

[VacantLuxuries]

Hand wringing over budget overruns is pointless since the two options are either to pay them or pay billions more to undo the entire project. Hard working taxpayers probably would prefer 1.5 billion to 3-4 billion in FTA grant repayments and remediation if they're not entirely blinded by their anti-transit partisanship.

[Mdcastle]

Yeah, at this point there's nothing to do but go forward. But that doesn't mean we don't have every right to be outraged at a $1.5 billion cost overrrun. And more importantly, some assurance it will never happen again if we ever do another light rail project.

When's the last time a MnDOT project for badly needed highway expansion or bridge replacement came out more than double the projected cost?

[Bakken2016]

Yeah, at this point there's nothing to do but go forward. But that doesn't mean we don't have every right to be outraged at a $1.5 billion cost overrrun. And more importantly, some assurance it will never happen again if we ever do another light rail project.

When's the last time a MnDOT project for badly needed highway expansion or bridge replacement came out more than double the projected cost?

Alright, so before shovel went in the ground it was projected to be $2 billion, and now is projected to be $2.75 billion, 750,000 over is not $1.5 billion, and using the original $1.5 billion estimate is a fallacy, because that was if it had been in revenue service by 2017, and we all know that with the delays due to lawsuits that is just not the case. Be outraged, but don't allow your outrage to skew the numbers.

[DanPatchToget]

When's the last time a MnDOT project for badly needed highway expansion or bridge replacement came out more than double the projected cost?

Probably never, but we're still paying billions to try to pave our way out of traffic congestion. We could build something like a double-decker freeway and it could stay within budget, but it doesn't mean it's a good use of taxpayer money.

[Silophant]

Citation needed that any of the recent freeway expansions have been "badly needed".

[VacantLuxuries]

When's the last time a MnDOT project for badly needed highway expansion or bridge replacement came out more than double the projected cost?

When's the last time a highway expansion project had funding delayed and obstructed by the legislature to pointlessly drag out the project timeline and add inflationary pressure to the budget? Because it seems like that only happens to transit.

[TroyGBiv]

My point isn’t that 2 B to 2.75 B isn’t a lot of money.. just that large scale public works frequently run into cost overruns and due to scale they can add up to a large amount. The issue is that so many out there use these scenarios to suggest that all transit is bad, all infrastructure is bad, that only the old ways work etc… many don’t want to see the metro grow… but if we don’t expand we will decline. I will likely be paying off the new Vikings stadium until in dead… but hey, it got built and some people are happy for the metro and for the Vikings…

[Tyler]

"Outraged" is such a funny word to use. Like this honestly outrages you? Man, good luck with everything.

[Mdcastle]

Honesty doesn't outrage me. Cost overruns of that magnitude with taxpayer dollars do. People are acting like this is under the couch cushion and insiide the car ashtray levels of money.

If we had an idea what this would cost starting out, maybe we'd still consider it worthwile to do, but we could have least have had an honest conversation about it and whether knowing what it will cost, if other routes or extents made sense or if we should have just condemned and bulldozed the townhouses.

[StandishGuy]

It is pretty frustrating that this project has gone so far over budget and behind schedule. The region is sorely in need of faster and reliable transit that serves the most people possible. The extreme cost relative to the ridiculous route through a park is pretty outrageous. If only the line served dense areas of Minneapolis south of downtown. Or, if a small portion of the cost overrun could be spent to speed up the painfully slow Green Line. Or, maybe we could run buses more than once an hour through the heart of the central cities. Yeah. It is outrageous.

Also, the "Can of Worms" project to untangle I35 and I535 in Duluth is now well over $500 million- all for a freeway interchange and about a mile of freeway. I believe the original cost was around $300 million.

[Oreos&Milk]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but the entire issue is JUST between The North side of the channel just south of the Burnham Rd. bridge and
north of West Lake St. crossing and the challenge of fitting in the bike trail back in once the LRT lines are constructed correct?

Knowing what we know now.. it would have been much better idea to simply just divert the trail to the Midtown Greenway to Dean Parkway to Grand Rounds Senic Bywy to W lake of the isles pkwy to either Keniworth PL or Burnham Rd to then connect back to the trail.

Of course some improvements would have to be made to make such a route more bikeable but that would have avoided the entire tunnel project right?

I'm not in favor of making biking more inconvenient but if that allowed freeing up funds to make other biking improvements it would have been something to consider. I wonder if that would have saved what? 300 Million off the price tag?

[VacantLuxuries]

That would have been a logical solution, but I don't think that was politically tenable. The opponents of bike trail removal/relocation were pushing for a tunnel through the entire Kennilworth corridor.

I think the actual users of the trail would have been fine with staying on the Greenway for a bit longer and reconnecting further north, but the wealthy property owners pretending to be a grassroots environmental movement were the loudest voices in the room IIRC.

[alexschief]

Yeah, I do sometimes think that the talk about this project misses how localized the biggest problems are. The three things that caused the price to increase were: adding Eden Prairie Town Center back in (after it was removed to cut costs), adding the crash wall (irritating), and the revisions to the tunnel construction and design. Of the three, the tunnel is by far the most responsible for the delay.

I think that there were many mistakes made in planning this route, but we should be clear that had a different route with even more tunneling been chosen, there is no guarantee that it would've turned out better, even if we know a bit more about soil quality underneath Nicollet than we did between the lakes. Tunnels are the most expensive part of any project that carries them. They provide huge benefits (although in this project, their benefits have arguably never been worth the cost, even before delays) and incur huge costs. But most of all, they expose you to big risks.

The SWLRT project has unfortunately had a Murphy's Law experience with the one spot where they decided to build a tunnel, but that fiasco shouldn't really alter your opinion of the other 95% of the project length.

[fehler]

I remember 20 years ago when the Hiawatha Line opened before the airport tunnel was complete. Good times.