A federal judge declined to rule on a request by Southwest light-rail line opponents to halt the $1.74 billion project because it has allegedly violated federal and state laws.
Still, the legal battle over the 14½-mile line continues, and U.S. District Judge John Tunheim on Tuesday had some harsh words for the Metropolitan Council's handling of what would be the state's most expensive transit project.
"Through much of this process, the Met Council has had a clear favorite route for [Southwest light rail]" — at the expense of other alternatives, Tunheim wrote. And, by reaching a deal regarding freight traffic along the line, "the Met Council has come dangerously close to impermissibly prejudicing the ongoing environmental review process," he noted.
Still, Tunheim ruled against the Lakes and Parks Alliance's request for summary judgment, which would have been an immediate victory for the Minneapolis nonprofit group, noting the Alliance has not shown that the Met Council had "irreversibly and irretrievably" committed to a specific Southwest route.
The Alliance filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Met Council last September, claiming the regional planning body violated federal environmental laws in selecting the current route for the project, which links Minneapolis to Eden Prairie.
The group also charged that the Met Council violated a Minnesota law that calls for the five cities along the line to consent to the project, following a series of public hearings. Its members contend the "municipal consent" hearings occurred before the completion of environmental studies assessing the impact of tunnels in the Kenilworth corridor, a 1.5-mile strip of land between the Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake in Minneapolis.
The current plan calls for Southwest trains traveling north to travel through two tunnels in the Kenilworth corridor, emerging to pass over the channel connecting the two lakes on a new bridge.
The Alliance claims the tunnels and bridges would compromise an environmentally sensitive area, and alleges that the Met Council refused to consider alternatives to reroute the project away from the corridor, a popular pedestrian and bicycling area.