The BRT option did not have a fully private right-of-way.
Please take a look at some of the project documents before making such bold statements.
Transit (and transportation in general) is not just about getting from point A to point B. There's a community-building aspect you're completely dismissing.
What makes rail better for community-building than buses? How would a transit line that did a terrible job getting people from A to B be successful at building community? I'll add that because I actually use transit to get from A to B, I'm particularly focused on that goal, so I acknowledge that personal bias.
I can't think of any good reason staff would risk losing their jobs or imprisonment for fraud to get a *transit* study to come out a certain way.
This could probably get a thread of its own, but trust me, I read enough planning documents to know that fudging is a way of life. No one will ever be prosecuted for assuming that 70% of Kenwood residents will board at the 21st St station every day, but there it is in the DEIS. Most studies are done by consultants, not staff, so if they come up with a result that matches the worldview of the people who hired them, there is a better chance they'll get hired again. Very broadly speaking. In the case of Bottineau, if you ever actually get around to reading any project documents, you'll see that 90 pages of the AA report consists of quantitatively comparing different alternatives, and then the 1 or 2 page conclusion magically transforms those numbers into circles of varying shadings. If you can explain that magic trick to me, please do.
However, those tunnels go down to about 70 feet below the surface, which would really not be practical for CCLRT or most other urban areas (unless maybe there was already something higher up).
I think that's a fairly typical depth for deep bore tunneling. If you ever take the metro in pretty much any
eastern european country, you spend a lot of time on the elevator. Also true in Atlanta and DC. Again, though, I'll emphasize that I don't necessarily think it would be cost-effective to tunnel, I'm saying it would have been worthwhile to study thanks to the simple facts that (a) tunneling would have best accomplished the access and mobility objectives of the line, and (b) the Twin Cities have experience in cost-effective urban tunneling.
Washington Ave. is a closer fit and we couldn't do it there.
No it's not and yes we could have. The decision to nix the Washington tunnel was entirely political.