Postby twincitizen » August 31st, 2021, 1:29 pm
The more important question is, does any unit of government formally support rail in the greenway? I don't mean "are not opposed", I mean they formally support it, are going to pay for it, and have amended Met Council's Transitway Corridor Plan to include the line, specifically as rail. The answer to that is still and always has been "NO". Sure, it got a vague mention in the recent Go.Minneapolis transportation plan, but that's far short of re-doing the Alternatives Analysis (unfortunately yes, AFAIK it would have to be done all over again).
I hate to be a wet blanket on this project (I've been a booster of it for a long time, the receipts are in this thread), but this will never be more than pure fantasy until Hennepin County fully endorses it and asks Met Council to amend the regional transportation plan to include the line. Heck, Metro Transit did a full-blown AA back in 2013, resulting in a dual-outcome of aBRT on Lake and rail in the greenway, and then MET COUNCIL DID NOT AMEND THE LONG-RANGE PLAN ACCORDINGLY, so it died a quick and quiet death. And more recently, the dramatic cost increases of Southwest and delays to Bottineau (and future inevitable cost increases), coupled with a huge drop in sales tax revenue during the pandemic, have probably added more than a decade to the most optimistic of timelines for Midtown rail. Hennepin County's half-cent sales tax is tapped out on those two LRT projects, plus whatever share of Riverview that Hennepin has committed to pay for the river crossing and new track through Fort Snelling (30% of total costs or something like that?). And then you have the legislature (sometimes bipartisanly) trying to pass the buck on LRT operation costs from the state to the counties.
Let's say, most optimistically, a new AA for Midtown rail is started in 2025-26, after Southwest is running, Bottineau is under construction, and transit ridership at-large has rebounded. At best, rail in the greenway could begin construction in the early 2030s, but I'm not holding my breath. Sadly, I don't have any hope that we'll see trains running in the greenway prior to 2035. And that's if everything goes right.