Rail Authority Approves $9.3M for Southwest LRT

Hennepin County’s Regional Rail Authority approved an agreement with the Metropolitan Council on Tuesday that paves the way for $9.3 million in preliminary engineering on the Southwest Light Rail Transit line.

Rail supporters celebrated Sept. 2 after the Federal Transit Administration notified the Met Council that it had . That announcement meant the Southwest project was competing with only about a dozen projects instead of the 100 or so other projects it had been earlier.

Tuesday’s agreement allows that preliminary engineering process to get underway.

“Just as we were for Central (Corridor), we’re now in the elite group for Southwest (Corridor), and we'll be marching forward to do the engineering work that’s necessary and, ultimately, to construct this,” Commissioner Peter McLaughlin said.

Preliminary engineering on the 15-mile line between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie—running through and —includes costs related to risk assessment, legal, right-of-way, audit services, studies, ridership modeling, staff costs, project administration and other services.

The agreement also allows the county to start gaining credit for its contributions to the project, McLaughlin noted. The federal government will fund half the project, the Counties Transit Improvement Board will fund 30 percent, the state will fund 10 percent and Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority will fun 10 percent.

In all, the preliminary engineering and environmental impact statement phases are estimated to cost $93 million and take two years to complete.

The Regional Rail Authority, a body composed of the same people as the Hennepin County Board, also approved $450,000 in additional money for preparing the draft environmental impact statement, a key document in LRT project development.

The RRA made the changes because the Federal Transit Administration required the impact statement analyze additional impacts and possible alternatives as a condition of entry into preliminary engineering.

One proposal to receive further analysis is the relocation of the Twin Cities & Western freight line, which currently operates on a planned segment of the Southwest LRT. St.Louis Park argued that the reroute would have significant impacts on the community, especially due to increased freight traffic near . The city filed an appeal to the state's original decision to not pursue an environmental impact statement for the proposed rerouting.

The FTA also mandated that the document examine impacts and mitigation of an alternative that would “co-locate” freight rail, the Southwest LRT and the commuter bike trail from Louisiana Avenue in St. Louis Park to Penn Avenue in Minneapolis.

St. Louis Park officials have been pushing for such an option, saying that it could prevent the freight reroute from happening. However, skepticism over whether co-location would be feasible has surfaced.

“My assumption is that it’s a good exercise to go through,” Commissioner Gail Dorfman said. “I think it will actually highlight—by doing even more intensive work looking at that—the difficulty of co-locating and the impacts of co-locating. We’ll see.”

The FTA further required the document to analyze a so-called “flyover” in which Canadian Pacific Railroad freight tracks will be elevated over the planned Southwest LRT route. The current plan shows “sharp curvature, steep grades and insufficient clearances,” staff noted.

The additional work on the draft environmental impact statement should take six to nine months.