Main Street, at least southwest of Ensemble/HCC Station, seems to be 80' ROW and a very pleasant pedestrian environment, even with a large landscaped median of station-width between the tracks for the entire stretch and in some places some really excessive sidewalk planting.
I apologize for the confusion, I guess that neighborhood is called Midtown, and not Downtown.
Ah, there I see it. That design to me looks pretty questionable for a major arterial road, and those sidewalks are still below standards for a commercial corridor, but that is a demonstration that it is technically possible.
A more local (and probably more directly relevant) example is Washington Ave through part of Stadium Village, which is also 80'. I don't think the cross-section there works very well for anyone, but YMMV.
For the suburban portion of the route, one thing that seems inevitable no matter what route is chosen is the use of Bottineau Ave ROW instead of the rail corridor. What does everyone think about side-running vs. center running? South of Hwy. 100, I'd probably want it to be in the center of the street, like the Green Line. North of 100 doesn't matter as much because it's not walkable period. By the point you reach Bass Lake Road (the first station north of 100), the RR tracks are tight on the west side of Bottineau Blvd. It probably makes sense to put the LRT tracks on the west side of the road as well, so you don't have a roadway between two sets of tracks.
The roadway (with a bit of sidewalk buffer) on the west side goes right up to the edge of the railroad ROW, so I don't think you could construct it there without reconstructing the entirety of Bottineau to shift it east.
There's probably enough space on Bottineau Blvd for two traffic lanes each direction as well as light rail, assuming we remove the frontage roads, but it's too bad we didn't do this before we completely reconstructed the entire roadway with no provision for light rail.
I may be too cynical, but this factor makes me skeptical that HCPW would ever accept Bottineau as the routing.