Met Council: “Promises Are For Peasants”
By Mitch Berg
You’re hearing a lot of “right on time” happy-talk from the Met Council on the Central Corridor’s building schedule.
And it is a fact that the project seems to be on time in terms of getting track laid.
But carrying off a major rail construction project in the middle of a busy (work with me here) city is like creating and then raising a baby to adulthood; getting laid is the easy part; it’s the details afterward that’ll kill you.
And so it seems to be with the Central Corridor, according to an excellent piece in the PiPress from Frederick Melo earlier this week:
The front of Jack McCann’s University Avenue office buildings east of Raymond Avenue has been torn up since April. That’s when Central Corridor light-rail line work crews dug up his yard to get at water lines.
McCann said it was understood the crews would return to repair the broken sprinkler pipes now sticking out of the ground. But they haven’t.
“They didn’t come back and restore it,” McCann said. “It’s shoddy work.”
Instead, work crews installing the new transit line are focusing on meeting a Metropolitan Council deadline for reopening a three-mile stretch of University Avenue between Hamline Avenue in St. Paul and Emerald Street in Minneapolis.
By Nov. 30, they’re required to open two traffic lanes in each direction, or face penalties of $10,000 per day.
Will Walsh Construction reach the goal? Some business owners doubt they’ll get the four lanes open and complete related projects by that date.
And it’s looking more and more like if they meet it at all, they’ll meet the “letter of the law” – getting the streets more or less open – rather than tying up all the loose ends….
…which are killing business up and down University.
I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.
October 18th, 2011 at 1:47 pm
This is very maddening, to say the least! To say the most, this fiasco just supports the argument for disbanding this worthless, money sucking department of no accountability. I was over in that area last week and I did not the flag of the Republic of Vietnam flying in it’s usual spot. Granted, it was really windy, but I didn’t see it proudly waving above the business. Thanks to how screwed up they had traffic that day, I couldn’t figure out how to get to the shop to see if he was still there. I hope that he survived!
October 18th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
So if “businesses are being killed up and down University”, it’s more important to repair a sprinkler system (just in time for the crucial October growing season) or open up a 3 mile stretch of road?
October 18th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
I saw this aritcle yesterday, as well as the one about an investigation that led to the disqualification of a minority-owned contractor hired to be a supplier to the Central Corridor that turned out to be little more than drop box address with a few cans of paint and shingles sitting around and a about half a million dollars in tax dollars running through its sticky fingers: http://www.startribune.com/local/131957398.html
We might not be getting what we paid for, but it’s nice some people are getting paid.
October 19th, 2011 at 7:55 am
Mackbee gets it: the most important thing is not that people are losing their jobs and their life’s savings as businesses are killed by a vanity boondoggle.
The most important thing is that The Train Will Run On Time.
October 19th, 2011 at 9:47 am
And Nate hits the high hanging change-up into the gap for a triple.
October 20th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
Your right Mitch, Nate nailed it into the gap for a triple. Of course, his comment raised an issue entirely different and unrelated issue. So congrats on that triple Nate, unfortunately, the rest of us were playing football.