Blue Line Extension - Bottineau LRT

[mattaudio]

More reason state and local governments should just build things on their own, because federal dollars create risk for delay and come with strings attached.

[Tom H.]

Maybe we just start holding back some of our $100bn+ federal tax receipts to reimburse us for the "unpaid invoices" from the federal government.

(I know, I know - that's not how federal taxes work in practice.)

[mattaudio]

jack nicholson grin nod dot gif

Yes. Devolution of power back to state and local government is exactly what allows progressives and conservatives to both get the future they want, in different places.

[HiawathaGuy]

A good canary project would be the Utah FrontRunner 2X project. FTA’s annual report documents anticipate awarding the grant in August 2026. If that doesn’t happen, or there’s an unexplained delay, that could be a bad sign.

Utah FrontRunner double-track project advances to engineering phase

The Federal Transit Administration has given approval for Utah Transit Authority’s FrontRunner 2X program to enter the engineering phase of development, moving the double-tracking project close to receiving $1.28 billion in federal funding.

https://www.trains.com/pro/passenger/co ... ing-phase/

[nils]

Has the idea of waiting 12 months to see how SWLRT ridership compares with expectations been seriously floated by anyone in state gov?

After decades of delays, a ~12-month wait doesn’t seem unreasonable, especially when we’re talking about better assessing the assumptions behind a 100-year investment.

If SWLRT performs well, that could strengthen the case for putting more funding into the system, potentially adding designated right of way in key areas. Or, if it underperforms, we’d at least have another real-world data point to better inform a multi-billion-dollar investment and make whatever adjustments are necessary.

[angrysuburbanite]

SWLRT is such a different project that I don't think 12 months of it in operation would be worth anything in regards to "proving" that Bottineau LRT is worthy of more infrastructure. As much as I support SWLRT, I highly doubt that it will perform well enough to drum up more support for LRT for many years after operations begin, nor do I think its underperformance should prevent projects like BLRT from getting off the ground.

The biggest hitch is that 30 million dollars of the state's contributions to the project funds expire next year, leaving the project with an even larger gap to deal with funding wise. Right now Hennepin County is in a stalemate with the Met Council to fill the existing funding gap, and delaying another year means the FFGA application and various other steps would need to be redone. If you wanted to re-engineer things to have different infrastructure the delay would almost certainly stretch out for many more years beyond that 12 months. They're already tight on money for the current version of the project, I can't imagine a version with more grade separation would be able to find enough money either.

Frustratingly, according to the slides from the last meeting, Hennepin County has 358 million dollars committed for future cost overruns (even though the project already has a 32.5% contingency) that could be used to immediately fill the existing gap (224 million), but they seem a bit hesitant to use it, instead requesting for the Met Council to use their own funding (which isn't possible due to post-SWLRT legislation and various other policies) to fill the gap. Ultimately, the FTA grant is probably the bigger question mark, which is why it is probably more important than anything to submit a FFGA application ASAP before the project gets more expensive or we have to redo an environmental analysis or risk analysis or something.

https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetin ... pdate.aspx

[Bakken2016]

I do believe Hennepin County hasn’t refused to use the cost-overage money, that was just proposed by the Met Council this past Wednesday as a solution to filling the gap.


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