2023-24 Minnesota Legislature

[thespeedmccool]

Now that we know how the legislature will look this spring, I took a look at what priorities the House DFL included in their transportation bill last session to set a barometer for this coming session.

Rep. Frank Hornstein's Transportation Omnibus:
General appropriations

• MN's portion of the expense to run a second daily Amtrak service between St. Paul and Chicago
• Full funding for NLX, including design and construction
• $7 million state matching dollars for IIJA EV federal monies
• Met Council money for transit-priority signal planning, electric buses, fare subsidies, microtransit, and improved bus shelters
• $500,000 to begin planning for the J, K, and L Lines(!)

Policy

• Establishment of a Traffic Safety Advisory Council and the creation of an annual traffic safety report
• Establishment of a Highways for Habitat program
• Establishment of the Prince Rogers Nelson Memorial Highway on Highway 5 in Chanhassen ("to the extent feasible, the sign must include​ the symbol associated with the artist and be purple in color")
• Allowing owners of impounded cars to retrieve items from inside the car while it is impounded
• Allowing Ramsey County to set speed limits on "suburban residential roadway" to 30 MPH without a study
• Expanding the required passing width between cars and bikes from 3 feet to half the width of a lane
• Requiring that MNDOT matching funds prioritize which improve safety, improve equity, or reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Speed camera pilot program
• A task force to investigate the levying of a VMT tax
• A report from DPS on the possibility of transitioning to digital licensing

[Silophant]

I'd much prefer red-light cameras over speed cameras, if we're piloting only one. Hopefully it's written in a way that allows for those too.

Are we skipping the I Line, or is that already in process somehow?

[Trademark]

I'd much prefer red-light cameras over speed cameras, if we're piloting only one. Hopefully it's written in a way that allows for those too.

Are we skipping the I Line, or is that already in process somehow?

Usually I, and O are skipped in lettering systems as they are too similar to 1 and 0.

[Trademark]

Based off the Network Next abrt report (attached below) Johnson / Lyndale is a lock to be the J Line as it is the only near-term implementation route that doesn't currently have a letter.

After that there are 3 aBRT routes after that were identified as mid-term implementation.

Nicollet Avenue from Downtown to American Blvd (only pushed to mid-term due to the ghost of the Nicollet - Central Streetcar)

Randolph / East 7th from Highland Park to Sunray (Although they need to look at continuing its western end to either the 46th street station, or my personal option which would be south on St. Paul to Davern to connect to the future Riverview Corridor).

West Broadway / Cedar from Robbinsdale on West Broadway to Washington to Cedar and the 38th street LRT station.

I doubt they would pick West Broadway / Cedar as currently planned due to the Light Rail using that route and the duplication of service that it would provide. So my predictions would be.

J Line = Johnson / Lyndale
K Line = Nicollet
L Line = Randolph / East 7th

https://www.metrotransit.org/Data/Sites ... report.pdf (Page 29 for a map of advanced corridors)

[BigIdeasGuy]

I'd much prefer red-light cameras over speed cameras, if we're piloting only one. Hopefully it's written in a way that allows for those too.

I vaguely remember the state Supreme Court ruling red-light cameras were unconstitutional under the MN Constitution but I absolutely could be making that up/remember that incorrectly

[Bakken2016]

I'd much prefer red-light cameras over speed cameras, if we're piloting only one. Hopefully it's written in a way that allows for those too.

Are we skipping the I Line, or is that already in process somehow?

Usually I, and O are skipped in lettering systems as they are too similar to 1 and 0.

Yes, I is being skipped due to looking like a 1, even though we don't have a route 1.

[VacantLuxuries]

I vaguely remember the state Supreme Court ruling red-light cameras were unconstitutional under the MN Constitution but I absolutely could be making that up/remember that incorrectly

IIRC last word on it was they concluded that if the fine was applied to the vehicle, not the person, it's constitutional. But they took their sweet time to make that call and by the time it was made, the window where there was the political capital and will to do something was gone. But it's been a while since I looked into it as well.

[Silophant]

Looks like you're correct. Found this article, which explains that owner-liability fines are okay for any offenses that state law specifies are owner-liable. So, state law needs to change to allow speeding (and red light running) to be owner-liable.

I'd much prefer red-light cameras over speed cameras, if we're piloting only one. Hopefully it's written in a way that allows for those too. Are we skipping the I Line, or is that already in process somehow?

Usually I, and O are skipped in lettering systems as they are too similar to 1 and 0.

Yes, I is being skipped due to looking like a 1, even though we don't have a route 1.

Oh, that makes sense.

[alexschief]

I've suggested in the past that the I-Line is what we should ultimately call any kind of BRT along the I-94 downtown-downtown alignment.

I expect Nicollet will be an F Line extension, not a separate line. Same with Cedar or Bloomington, eventually I expect that will be a C Line extension. That would leave the Lyndale-Johnson as the J Line and Randolph-East 7th route as the K Line, as discussed above. My hope is that this additional funding for aBRT planning will go into the F Line extension, the J Line, the C Line extension, and then the K Line in that order of priority.

If made to choose, I'd rather have speed camera over red-light cameras, because speed is the real problem and I'd like to bolster a culture of slow driving in Minneapolis. If you ever drive in DC, you'll see that drivers have been cowed by cameras and that the driving culture there is remarkably safe.

Final note, while Rep. Hornstein's bill is very good and hits a lot of important points, I wish Minnesota was a bit more serious about the Union Pacific ROW that runs through Rosemount, Farmington, Northfield, Faribault, and Owatonna. I think that could be a strong regional rail corridor, and the tracks are straight enough to pull off decent speeds. If matched with the Canadian Pacific corridor running east-west, that could be a connection to Rochester without tearing up farmland and alarming the good people of Cannon Falls. But I guess you have to walk before you can run, and I'm very excited about potentially building the NLX.

[uptownbro]

https://www.startribune.com/minnesotas- ... 600233421/
The surplus is now expected to be 17.6 billion

[VacantLuxuries]

Sure wish we had kept studying a public version of the Zip Rail instead of falling for private company vaporware right about now. But it's not like we're hurting for ways to put a surplus like that to good use, and especially glad we aren't going to spend another year doing nothing.

[Tom H.]

Holy cow - $17.6B surplus is huge, since the full biennium spending is something like $53-$54B - more than +30%. Even if you assume $2-$3B for Walz checks, a few billion to actually account for an inflationary baseline, there is still a huge discretionary surplus available. What a time to have a trifecta.

[MNdible]

Quite a bit less than that if they were legally allowed to include inflation on the expense side of the ledger, which they absolutely should.

It probably goes without saying, but the DFL will need to be pretty careful in terms of how much is one-time spending (capital projects, tax refunds, etc.) vs. ongoing expenses that will blow up future budges.

[Trademark]

Quite a bit less than that if they were legally allowed to include inflation on the expense side of the ledger, which they absolutely should.

It probably goes without saying, but the DFL will need to be pretty careful in terms of how much is one-time spending (capital projects, tax refunds, etc.) vs. ongoing expenses that will blow up future budges.

Don't want a repeat of what California is going through now. Having a big surplus and then the next year a big deficit and having to cut right after.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/1 ... t-00068081

[Tom H.]

Does anyone know by how much an inflation-expense line-item would reduce the $17.6B? The Strib article only states that "inflation would reduce the surplus by more than $1 billion", but I see no further quantification than that.

[MNdible]

Very crude math, but if you said that the biennial budget were $54b, and applied a 5% inflation factor to it, you'd get $1.35b of additional inflation cost in the first year, and $1.42b in the second year. I think that makes sense?

[mplsjaromir]

Quite a bit less than that if they were legally allowed to include inflation on the expense side of the ledger, which they absolutely should.

It probably goes without saying, but the DFL will need to be pretty careful in terms of how much is one-time spending (capital projects, tax refunds, etc.) vs. ongoing expenses that will blow up future budges.

Don't want a repeat of what California is going through now. Having a big surplus and then the next year a big deficit and having to cut right after.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/1 ... t-00068081

California state budget is very reliant on capital gains tax collection. If the stock market doesn’t do well it’s very bad for their budget. Minnesota is not like that.

[Nick]

Other than infrastructure, a lot of the things that seem like good ideas to spend money on might not work out great in practice with 2% unemployment. Does anyone have any idea if there are a bunch of surprises in Northern Lights Express? Is it half of it through a swamp no one could have known about?

Another good idea would be renovating and reopening the state hospital in Fergus Falls.

[Anondson]

I think boosting internet connectivity through rural towns would be good.

[Tom H.]

https://www.startribune.com/u-s-bank-st ... 600233912/

Pipe dream: How about paying off the Vikings stadium, then redirecting that funding stream into a State Passenger Railway Trust Fund? How much of a dent could you make in the State Rail Plan with a ~$30M per year revenue stream?