Light rail is tight squeeze in north Minneapolis - Finance & Commerce
Posted: 7:50 am Fri, September 2, 2011
By Bill?Clements
Tags: Bottineau Corridor, Central Corridor, Joe Gladke, North Minneapolis, Oliver Avenue, Raymond Dehn, Theodore Wirth

On a bus tour Tuesday morning, several riders noted how narrow Oliver Avenue is and wondered how light rail transit could fit there. As a comparison, Oliver?s right-of-way width is 60 feet, while the ROW width of University Avenue, where the Central Corridor LRT line is under construction, is 120 feet. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)
Planners weigh pros, cons of? route options
As the tour bus moved gingerly down Oliver Avenue in north Minneapolis on Tuesday, several people on board wondered how a light rail transit line could ever fit on the one-way street.
It?s a good question.
And one at the heart of an issue that planners, politicians and community members are grappling with now: whether and where a potential Bottineau LRT system could wind its way through north Minneapolis ? bringing with it the redevelopment possibilities that the mostly low-income, foreclosure- and tornado-ravaged community so desperately desires.
Consider this about Oliver Avenue: Its right-of-way width (including street, gutter and sidewalk) is 60 feet. University Avenue, along which the Central Corridor LRT is under construction, is twice as wide.
?Oliver is going to be a tight fit,? said Raymond Dehn of the Northside Transportation Network. He, like most riders, was on the bus as a representative on the Bottineau policy advisory committee for Hennepin County, which is doing the planning work for this corridor.
But Dehn?s Northside Transportation Network was instrumental in getting planners to consider building the line through north Minneapolis.
?That?s why [Oliver is] proposed with no auto traffic ? it?d be impossible to make that work,? Dehn said. ?Auto traffic and trains don?t work on Oliver.?
But the Oliver route is not the only route option with issues, he added: ?All of these lines have their pluses and minuses. That?s what makes this such a hard process.?
All parking and regular traffic would be removed from Oliver under the LRT scenario that planners refer to as ?D2B,? and residents could access their houses only through the alley. The plan would make room for a 14-foot bike trail/sidewalk/emergency vehicle access space.
According to planning documents from the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority, trees would have to be removed, and there would be ?some property impacts? at LRT station areas under the D2B option.
But Joe Gladke, Hennepin County?s manager of engineering and transit planning and the main speaker during the bus tour, said planners have not yet identified how many houses and businesses might have to be removed to accommodate the LRT route along Oliver.
The other north Minneapolis street that would be primary in an LRT line is Penn Avenue, which has a right-of-way width of 66 feet. Under a scenario known as D2A, Penn would be subject to many of the same restrictions and changes as Oliver.
?The only thing that would be guaranteed,? Gladke said after the tour, is that Penn and Oliver would be very different from what they are today. ?Oliver in particular would be dramatically different.?
That?s why the Bottineau Boulevard Partnership, a public-private group advocating transit along County Road 81 (known as Bottineau Boulevard), sponsored a three-hour bus tour of the various choices for where the transit line should go.
So the question before north Minneapolis is which route they would most like to see among three possibilities ? understanding that any would require them to make sacrifices.
Another option bypasses north Minneapolis by following the BNSF railway along Highway 55 (Olson Memorial) through Theodore Wirth Park, called D1 by planners.
According to Faith Cable Kumon of Smith Partners, the Minneapolis law firm that runs the Bottineau Boulevard Partnership, a quick survey of bus tour riders revealed that twice as many riders preferred the Highway 55 option over the Oliver or Penn options in north Minneapolis.
But if the train route goes down ?D1,? through Theodore Wirth Park, Dehn said, ?the opportunities for real estate and economic and community development [in north Minneapolis] are pretty much zero.?
But if the route goes through north Minneapolis via D2, ?there are opportunities for real estate and economic and community development.?
Barb Johnson, president of the Minneapolis City Council and another north Minneapolis resident and bus tour participant, disagrees with Dehn.
?I?m a supporter of D1,? Johnson said. ?It?s the wisest expenditure of public dollars ? it?s the least disruptive to north Minneapolis.?
Johnson added that ?the accommodations that you?d need to do to make [any version of D2] worth it in north Minneapolis probably just aren?t worth it ? especially after the tornado, with the redevelopment possibilities for this neighborhood.?
?It is by no means a situation where D2 has all kinds of challenges and D1 has none,? Gladke said. ?Each has its own challenges and issues.?
D1 is in the BNSF railroad corridor, but just outside that area are floodplains and wetlands, Gladke said. ?There are some swampy conditions ? some areas are worse than others. But there are areas of not good soils where we?d have to do additional work to hold additional infrastructure.?
If all goes as planners hope, Bottineau would be the metro area?s fourth LRT system. It would extend north about 15 miles from downtown Minneapolis and end in either Maple Grove or the Target campus in Brooklyn Park.
Planners put the cost of a Bottineau light rail system at $1 billion. The D2 route that would go through north Minneapolis would cost about $50 million more than the D1 route through Theodore Wirth Park.
Gladke said the county will hold community meetings in the next month and hopes by the end of October to have picked either the Oliver or Penn route for the D2 option. Planners would then move on to the question of D1 versus D2, or Highway 55 versus the heart of north Minneapolis.
The county hopes to come to a decision in 2012, Gladke added.
?My personal opinion is that D1 can provide good connectivity for north Minneapolis ? as long as there?s a station both at Penn Avenue and at Plymouth Avenue,? said Joan Vanhala, an organizer with the Minneapolis-based Alliance for Metropolitan Stability working for the Northside Transportation Network. She was on the bus tour as well.
And Vanhala praised those working on planning the Bottineau transit corridor: ?The Bottineau staff is really listening to the community and is giving the community the time and space to really consider these issues. It?s a tough one no matter what.?
Open houses for the community to learn more about the Bottineau project are planned at the Minneapolis Urban League, 2100 Plymouth Ave. N. Dates include:
- Sept. 8, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.;
- Sept. 9, from?9 a.m. to 5 p.m.;
- Sept. 10, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Source: http://finance-commerce.com/2011/09/light-rail-is-tight-squeeze-in-north-minneapolis/
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