Green Line Extension - Southwest LRT

[seanrichardryan]

Dun dun dun. 'Southwest Corridor light-rail line now faces drop-dead date for route approval'

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/246353131.html

[lordmoke]

On the plus side, the money will just switch over to Bottineau instead of going away forever.

If this actually happens. Should be entertaining no matter what.

[Anondson]

Unusually I have this day off. I'm tempted to go to both, but it feels like it would just be ... Anger inducing.

[Silophant]

Dun dun dun. 'Southwest Corridor light-rail line now faces drop-dead date for route approval'

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/246353131.html

Glad to see that the money won't be lost even if this project is stalemated into oblivion. Yeah, like lordmoke says, this'll be entertaining.

Also: "The line was to be a critical piece of the Twin Cities transit puzzle, connecting downtown to the Central Corridor into St. Paul and the Hiawatha Line to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America."

Apparently, if the line doesn't go through, they'll be cutting the current LRT tracks off at the Metrodome. Sad.

Edit: That article has now been updated. Looks like the railroad has, predictably, rejected the new reroute. Honestly, now that we know the funding would move on to the Bottineau LRT, I'd rather scrap this project and move on than dig tunnels underneath a park.

Or, we could just move the damn bike path and have done with it.

[sad panda]

Unusually I have this day off. I'm tempted to go to both, but it feels like it would just be ... Anger inducing.

If I can get out of work early I'm going to the CMC meeting. Especially now that TC&W has said they don't approve of the new reroute concept. I'm curious what Wagenius and McLaughlin will say. http://www.startribune.com/local/west/246353131.html

Also, TC&W's consultants report can be found here.

[Ubermoose]

Hodges and Mclaughlin have their minds made up I guess. It doesn't seem to matter that the railroad company that plans on using the track has the same concerns about this re-route plan as it has had with all of the others. The risk for derailment is a real concern with the curves and the length of train they would run near the school and surrounding neighborhood.

[twincitizen]

Betsy Hodges ran on equity. Doing Bottineau* first seems perfectly in line with that.



*Not the full line to Target North, of course. Any extension past 85th is far from prime time.

[Archiapolis]

Bottineau! Bottineau! Bottineau!

[MNdible]

Oh, come on. In no world is Bottineau a better route than Southwest.

Not in ridership, not in jobs served, not in residents served, not in benefit to downtown Minneapolis, not in benefit to the greater region.

[ECtransplant]

I'd rather scrap this project and move on than dig tunnels underneath a park.

Or, we could just move the damn bike path and have done with it.

Or we could route the tunnels where they make sense, like through uptown

[Silophant]

Oh, for sure, but that's apparently not even within the realm of possibility, because... reasons.

[ECtransplant]

Assume the various players here don't get their shit together in time and funding gets shifted to Bottinuea. At that point, how viable will it be to get 3C or other uptown route back up for actual consideration to get back in the queue? And what will funding from SWLRT moving to Bottineau do to plans for the midtown corridor?

[Silophant]

Well, currently Bottineau is scheduled to start no sooner than 2018, I believe, so Southwest would probably get pushed back at least that far. I would think, since the original projections would be 10 years out of date by that point, that it would make sense to redo the various ridership studies, but I don't know.

For Midtown, I feel like it would make sense to do the Hennepin-Hiawatha segment even without SWLRT, but it probably wouldn't be worth it to extend it to West Lake.

Not that my gut feelings have anything to do with what would actually happen.

[Anondson]

I did go to both as it turns out. My wife says I earned the Leslie Knope award for civic responsibility for attending these meetings on a vacation day.

Quick take: McLaughlin was right that the two meetings were night and day different. First was celebrating the awesome things that will come to each community. The second was angst-filled hand wringing over how much it was going to burden each city.

Second note: the mayor of Minnetonka mentioned that United Healthcare told him that the SWLRT will affect their global recruitment of talent. The SWLRT is seen as vital to their company's growth in the Twin Cities. United Healthcare really wants to see it happen as they see it as a huge boon to attract top talent.

[ECtransplant]

United Healthcare could move downtown if it sees transit as so important to recruitment

[mattaudio]

Or heck, if they want to be the big dog in town and get cheaper rent, they could move to St. Paul and still be connected to LRT. Not sure why we're stuck on bringing LRT to suburban UHG and TGT campuses. A nice to have, not a necessity.

[Silophant]

United Healthcare could move downtown if it sees transit as so important to recruitment

Or heck, if they want to be the big dog in town and get cheaper rent, they could move to St. Paul and still be connected to LRT. Not sure why we're stuck on bringing LRT to suburban UHG and TGT campuses. A nice to have, not a necessity.

QFT.

If they want to be close to transit, they can move somewhere the transit is. Doesn't even have to be one of the downtowns, if they don't think they can afford downtown prices. They could have built somewhere along Hiawatha or University.

[mattaudio]

Maybe these companies are just starting to figure things out, realizing that their top young talent is increasingly urban and freeway-commute-averse... so they want the government to step in and bail them out by building LRT to their suburban campuses.

[MNdible]

Hey, I think it would be great if UHG was downtown. But they're not.

They're also not building out in the cornfields. They're building in a location that has been identified to receive an LRT line going back at the very least 10 years, in an area that also has a lot of other jobs. That's not so crazy.

[twincitizen]

Is anyone else amused* at the fact that the decision is now entirely a political one, rather than a technical one?

The best* part is that the choice is now between shallow tunnels and ________?

If you're keeping score, options including moving the bike trail, acquisition of a few townhomes, or single-track LRT are all either off the table or were never on it to begin with.






*both terms used in the colloquial "you've got to be f***ing kidding me" sense.