The Southwest Light Rail Line appears likely to go years and “hundreds of millions of dollars” over schedule and budget.
…what’s happening between Park Siding and Depot Street today is construction of a half-mile tunnel that will carry the Metropolitan Council’s Southwest LRT project through a pinch point in its 15-mile path from downtown to Eden Prairie. Complexities with water, underground debris, and construction methods seem poised to push the line’s opening deep into 2025 or 2026.
Ever since word started to leak out last fall that the Kenilworth tunnel construction was stuck in a sloppy mess of water and boulders, contractors and Met Council officials have known the line could not meet its opening estimates, and that tunnel costs could blow through the project’s contingency fund. But the agency insists even today that it cannot estimate the magnitude of delay nor additional cost.
But in midwinter, in a private call with government stakeholders, the Met Council did offer some specificity, [Twin Cities Business] has learned. At the time, the project was expected to be delayed by at least two years into late 2025, say individuals on that call, including state Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-Minneapolis), who chairs the state House Transportation Committee. Hornstein is a supporter of the project who frames himself as disappointed in its current state.
“We raised questions about all these problem areas. They were waived away. Every dire prediction came true, the ones about cost overruns, the ones about the tunnel, the millions given away to railroads in negotiations,” he said in a spring interview.
Who could have possibly predicted this?
Heck – who reported on the ghastly overruns when the bill was half what they’re talking now?
There is no more effective spreader of communicable respiratory disease than mass transit.
Worst. Elites. Ever.
I just remember every time someone brought up these issues the DFL and Media just poo-poo’ed them and told us to move along.
There is no more corrupting influence in city politic than light rail. It is like sugar coated heroin to bureaucrats and politicians and Chamber of Commerce types.
It is poison to city residents, especially low income residents, because the taxes raised to pay for mass transit fall heaviest on people with low income (sales taxes and various fees for city services). And, of course, public funds spent on mass transit cannot be spent on goods and services that might help low income residents.
In 2012 the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii (the island of Oahu) began to build its 21 mile light rail project. It was supposed to cost 5.2 billion $ and be complete by 2020.
To date, it has not carried a single passenger. The new completion date is 2032 and the cost will be 11.5 billion $. That is over $10,000 for every resident of Oahu.
For years the mayors of Honolulu (all democrats) pushed for a referendum on light rail. The first time it managed to squeak ahead of 50%+1, city officials rushed to award contracts that would still be shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to
donorscontractors long after they were out of office. To give the impression that the money spent was actually accomplishing something, they built the easy, useless parts of the line first. Now the critical, most important, most expensive part of the line needs to be built, and there is no more $.Buth that’s okay because the feds are going to pick up a substantial part of the costs, right?
No so fast! When there is evidence of widespread corruption in awarding contracts, the feds have the right to withdraw their share of the “investment.” And that is what is happening on Oahu.
5 more years? This may give the Chicago Ave road construction a run for longest construction project in Minnesota.
Would it have been a MinnPost article without blaming Trump?
Bookem: they really blamed Trump? Or are you being facetious?
Besides, you “Land of Ten Thousand Lakers” are pikers compared to us in Cali. At least what they are trying to build might be used by a few people. But the brain trust here in Cali is trying to build a choo train to nowhere, up the center of the San Joaquin Valley, to the Bay area.
Big clue for the idiots behind this (lefties and unions) you can fly up there for $100.00, sometimes less, in a hour. projected cost for a 10 hour choo choo train ride: $86.00, but it will go higher.
Cost of the joke? 100 billion. Won’t be ready until 2033.
Democrats.
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