Park Board lawsuit on light-rail tunnel not worth the risks

It's not often that labor, business, and community organizations all agree — but they agree that the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is making a mistake in marching toward a lawsuit against Southwest light rail.

Last week, the Park Board approved its 2015 budget, cutting recreation center hours across the city. Just weeks before, Park Board President Liz Wielinski explained in these pages why the board is spending a quarter-million dollars on a precursor study to a lawsuit, which could lead to hundreds of thousands in additional spending if the lawsuit is filed ("Southwest light rail needs more tunnel, less bridge," Oct. 31).

The Park Board seeks a tunnel under the Kenilworth Channel, it says, because the proposed bridge widening over the channel is "simply incompatible" with the parklike setting.

This objection leaves out some important context. Pre-construction, the man-made channel is currently crossed by a bike path and freight-rail bridge. Post-construction, the man-made channel will be crossed by a bike path and a light- and freight-rail bridge. The change will be 28 feet in additional bridge width (from 45 feet currently to 73 feet, separated into two bridges with a 9-foot gap).

To put this in perspective, the channel on the other side of Lake of the Isles is crossed by a multiuse trail, West Lake of the Isles Parkway and six lanes of Lake Street traffic, but still thousands happily use these passages every year. Voting with their feet and their paddles, the public already agrees that bridges are compatible with park use.

If the Green Line extension is not built, southwest Minneapolis and the southwest metro will remain dependent entirely on roads and motor vehicles. Anyone who drives this area at rush hour knows what that means: an environment of frequent, serious gridlock; polluted air, and endless pressure for more and more parking. This would be a tragedy of regional proportions.

Losing the light-rail project is a real risk if the Park Board moves forward with its lawsuit. Wielinski misrepresents the additional cost of the tunnel at $30 million to $50 million. The Metropolitan Council actually estimates that the tunnel would add $75 million in capital costs, and $45 million to $50 million in inflation cost due to an extra year of construction — or $120 million to $125 million in additional cost.

There is also a real danger that the Park Board's suit could result in the loss of more than half a billion dollars in federal funding. In today's political climate, federal transit funding is neither patient nor plentiful. It will go elsewhere if project development is delayed too long. Wielinski and the Park Board claim to support this project, but their recent actions threaten to prove that untrue.

A larger, permanent cost of tunneling under the channel could be the loss of the 21st Street Station and the connectivity to communities of color and low-income residents along Franklin Avenue. Losing the 21st Street Station would mean transit trips in this corridor would remain impractical for thousands of potential users in a key target demographic: those who could access economic opportunity in the southwest metro.

A Park Board lawsuit would arrive just when the board is cutting back on recreation center hours and has reached, according to Superintendent Jayne Miller, a "critical juncture requiring significant attention to address the gap between available resources and the demand on and needs of the park system." Given the many other important priorities facing the Park Board, we believe this lawsuit is not a responsible use of taxpayer funds.

New infrastructure investments are never easy. But we have to ask: Is 28 feet of bridge width over a man-made channel worth $120 million to $125 million in scarce transit funding? Is it worth risking a project that will bring significant economic development? Is it worth risking important equity achievements, including a 32 percent minority hiring goal and a $330 million payroll? Is it worth denying 21st Street light-rail access to thousands of working families? Is it worth locking in a failed paradigm of gridlock and pollution for the southwest metro?

The answer, we believe, is clearly "No."