After a year of waiting, project planners have answered some of their questions in a 2,800-page document they published on June 14. The document, which is required by federal law, finds building the extension in Minneapolis, Robbinsdale, Crystal, and Brooklyn Park would require:
- Closing and realigning around 20 intersections
- Increasing traffic congestion at over nine intersections
- Removing over 1,400 parking spaces
- Acquiring 48 buildings with 36 of those occupants relocated
- Affecting just over 60 acres of significant ecological areas where threatened species thrive
- Exposing potentially-contaminated soils at 433 locations
- Building over poorly-drained soils and rock susceptible to sinkholes
- Generating “severe” noise and vibration affecting around 200 households
The project team previously finalized an environmental review of the project in 2016. But that review was for an old alignment they abandoned in 2020 because they could not negotiate with a railroad company to use some of their space. As they finalized realigning the project through north Minneapolis and onto Bottineau Boulevard last September, the project team needed to conduct a supplemental environmental review to determine any new impacts the project would have.
The document, including its technical appendices, can be reviewed online. Print copies of the main document sans technical appendices are also available at the North Regional, Brooklyn Park and Rockford Road libraries, as well as the Blue Line Extension project office in St. Louis Park.
The agencies are accepting comments on the document by email, web form, or voicemail until Aug. 6. They will also solicit comments in person through office hours and two public hearings. They will then review and plan to incorporate comments into a final version of the document to be released early next year.
“Comments are an important part of the process, because they provide real-world feedback on the impacts listed in the (Supplemental Draft EIS), they provide an important basis for how we design the mitigations,” said Met Council spokesperson John Schadl. “When the (Supplemental Final EIS) is ultimately published it will include those benefits and mitigations.”
Here are six things you need to know about the report and what it says about how the project will affect the Northside and the northwest suburbs.
Expanding light rail may enhance bike and transit infrastructure
Met Council and Hennepin County say in the report that building the Blue Line Extension is important because it will reduce pollution and satiate the region’s needs for transit that is as fast as driving as the population grows, ages, diversifies, and changes in ability. This is in spite of the pandemic, which resulted in people working from home more often, as well as ridership being spread out more during the day.
Using a ridership prediction model that accounts for pre-pandemic and pandemic-induced ridership patterns, planners believe 6,400 people will start taking transit because of the Blue Line Extension by 2045. They believe this would decrease 62,000 vehicle miles traveled per day, or about 22.6 million vehicle miles traveled annually.
Planners also say the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 8,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2045, helping achieve local, regional, and state goals in reducing transportation pollution. At 25%, transportation emissions is the No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Brooklyn Center resident Kamal Ouhmed says he is looking forward to the light rail project because he would no longer have to rely on expensive ride hail services to get around. “It’s gonna be great, it’s better than using transportation cars like Uber and Lyft because it’s expensive. It costs $35 to go to the airport using Uber and Lyft,” Ouhmed said while out on a walk on Bass Lake Road in Crystal on a hot Sunday.
The project would also create bikeways similar to that on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, on 7th Street and Oak Lake Avenue, as well as two-way bikeways on 10th and 21st avenues in Minneapolis.
Expanded light rail may reduce parking and pedestrian access while increasing traffic
The report also says the light rail project would require planners to remove parking and traffic lanes, as well as close off intersections to people driving, biking, and walking. This has West Broadway businesses and residents concerned about the loss of parking, loading, and business access, as well as northwest metro residents concerned about traffic congestion.
The report shows seven intersections would “exceed capacity” during the afternoon rush hour if the project were built, mostly in Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park. Two intersections in Brooklyn Park, at 85th and 93rd avenues, would “exceed capacity” regardless of whether the project would be built (the project would also widen West Broadway). Planners predict intersections in Robbinsdale and Crystal would remain “under capacity,” though two intersections in Crystal — Bass Lake Road and Wilshire Boulevard — would be “at capacity” if the agency opted not to elevate Bottineau Boulevard over Bass Lake Road.
Met Council and Hennepin County staff determined capacity by using a metric called Level of Service, which measures how long people driving private automobiles would have to wait before being able to cross an intersection. Intersections that “exceed capacity” means each driver would have to wait more than 50 seconds to cross an unsignalized intersection, or more than 80 seconds to cross a signalized intersection. The report and its technical appendices, however, does not specify in seconds how long drivers would actually have to wait in 2045 compared to today.
Ann Tranvik, a Robbinsdale resident who organizes with the group Stop Light Rail on 81, remains concerned about traffic and questions whether people will actually stop driving and start taking the light rail when it is built. The group wants Hennepin County and the Met Council to either study bus rapid transit or to run it on the BNSF railroad corridor, and plan to host a rally at the lower level of the Wicked Wort Brewery in Robbinsdale at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“Everybody assumes that will reduce car traffic. Not as many people go down to Minneapolis to work anymore. So that group of people isn’t moving in their vehicles to go to work. They’re crossing back and forth, going east and west, to random places that have nothing to do with light rail, because you can’t move around in this really widely developed city,” Tranvik said.
Meanwhile, in north Minneapolis, residents and business owners are concerned about the loss of parking and loading spaces. Planners would remove up to 1,461 spaces along the project corridor, with 828 of those spaces coming from Minneapolis.
KB Brown, a Northside resident who owns Wolfpack Promotionals on West Broadway, previously told MinnPost that he needs parking in front of his shop so people can make deliveries. With plans to reduce traffic lanes to one in each direction, Brown is concerned about delivery vehicles blocking traffic. “When I have deliveries and stuff, where are they gonna stop at? Because if they stop in front of my shop to deliver, they’re stopping all traffic,” Brown said.
Project planners plan to build around 1,500 parking spaces spread across four park-and-ride facilities in Robbinsdale, Crystal, and Brooklyn Park. In Minneapolis, they plan to refine the project design around Penn and West Broadway to preserve as much parking as possible, as well as conduct studies on how the parking is being used to determine where they should keep parking. The report also says the city of Minneapolis has a plan to attain 60% of citywide travel by modes other than car by 2030.
They also plan to close around 20 intersections to people driving, biking, and walking. The report cites a number of reasons for doing so, such as to create space for light rail tracks and stations, as well as to “reduce traffic conflicts.” The closures include around 50 marked and unmarked pedestrian crossings in Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park, mostly along Washington, 21st, and West Broadway avenues, according to rollplots that were released in March.
Dean Rose, the owner of the Broadway Liquor Outlet at West Broadway and Penn, is worried the closures would make it harder to revitalize West Broadway and make it safe for people to enjoy themselves. “This bifurcation that they will create, and the monstrosity of infrastructure that they’re going to put in, is going to destroy that feel, just like it did on University Avenue,” Rose said in an interview.
The Jordan Area Community Council and the West Broadway Business Coalition sent a letter to project planners last year, asking them to evaluate running light rail above-ground or underground to minimize impacts to people driving, walking, and biking. Neither of these alternatives, along with bus rapid transit alternatives, appeared to be evaluated in the report. The community council also asked the agency to clarify how the light rail project is compatible with the 2007 West Broadway Alive plan, which called for a streetcar line.
The report is also unsure of how the project will affect crashes. They plan to provide an analysis in the final report.
Some property will be taken and people displaced
Hennepin County and the Met Council anticipate purchasing 37 properties, displacing occupants from 36 of them. They also plan to partially take an additional 303 properties. In Minneapolis, 34 buildings would be taken, with 27 occupants needing relocation.
Federal law requires the agencies displacing people provide relocation assistance, which includes advisory services, reimbursements for moving and resettlement expenses, and a minimum of 90 days written notice to vacate. The state Legislature also appropriated $10 million for anti-displacement and created a group to dole out that money.
As planners deliberate whether or not to move forward with the project, Davrashawn Johnson is frustrated. Johnson is working with her father, Thomas Johnson III, the son of the first Black doctor in Minnesota, in renovating a two-story building home to an invite-only bottle club called the Old Timers Club, formerly the All-American Negro Club, at West Broadway just north of 26th Avenue.
After having the ceilings, walls, and bathrooms removed, she paused the renovation as soon as she heard about the proposals earlier this year. Planners are considering demolishing the building, and she is having trouble securing loans to finish the project. “Lenders right here in the city do not want to touch it,” said Johnson in an interview. Lenders have previously withdrawn funding from Black developers along the corridor because of this project.
But planners argue in the impact report that the project would result in increased earnings and tax revenue. They believe the project would connect people to jobs, including jobs to design, build, and operate the extension. The spending money the workers earn, the report says, would create demand for more jobs. It may also spur development and increase property values, which planners caution could increase property taxes and potentially displace current residents and business owners.
Building the project could affect historic resources, aggravate polluted sites
The report also identified 433 sites along the corridor that may be polluted, including 152 that have “high potential for contamination,” which are defined by the Minnesota Department of Transportation as superfund sites, dump sites, leak sites, dry cleaners, gas stations, as well as sites that may have used chemicals such as darkrooms, plating facilities, dental practices, and drug labs. Disturbing those soils during construction could threaten human health.
Planners believe such high-risk sites include the Dragon Star Supermarket and the proposed operations and maintenance facility site in Brooklyn Park, the Crystal Airport, Robbinsdale Town Center, the Redwell apartments in North Loop, as well as the northside Cub, Shiloh Temple International Ministries, and the Capri Theater, all in north Minneapolis. They plan to collect and analyze soils and report their findings, along with associated mitigation measures, in the final supplemental environmental document.
Finally, environmental documents identified as many as 31 neighborhoods and buildings considered historic or potentially historic by federal law that could be affected by light rail stations and noise. They include the Jordan neighborhood, the West Broadway residential district in Robbinsdale, the Grand Rounds bike trail network, as well as the North Community YMCA, which they believe helped redevelop the West Broadway corridor in the 1970s as the Northside reeled from economic disinvestment and racial unrest.
A technical memo suggests impacts to historic landmarks could be mitigated with education, noise monitoring efforts during construction, as well as construction mitigation efforts.
Noise and vibration impacts will be different for Minneapolis, suburbs
The light rail extension project could make the suburbs quieter and Minneapolis a lot noisier. The wheels of the trains, which will comprise three light rail cars, will create noise and vibration as they roll on the tracks. The noise can be louder depending on how the track is laid. Planners expect trains to generate additional noise, such as warning bells, as they cross an intersection or enter and exit a station. Depending on where one lives, it could make their surrounding environment louder.
The report finds 173 households, all in Minneapolis, will be “severely” affected by increased noise generated from trains running on the Blue Line Extension. The federal definition of “severe” noise impacts ranges from 55 decibels in an area intended for quiet, such as a place where people sleep, to 80 decibels in places such as schools, libraries, theaters, and churches. Existing noise levels vary, from 54 to 70 dB.
About two-thirds of those households are located in the North Loop neighborhood, and 31 households are located along 21st Avenue in north Minneapolis. In those zones, people are living very close to trains as they travel as fast as 40 miles per hour. Other areas where the train is operating at slower speeds or are farther away from the tracks will experience a smaller increase — and in some cases, a decrease — in sound.
Meanwhile, about 28 households in north Minneapolis will be “severely” affected by vibration. A federal definition of “severe” vibrations is if 72 vibration-decibels occur more than 70 times per day from the same source near a place where people sleep.
The report says they can reduce noise from light rail trains by installing dampers on the wheels and tracks, or installing noise absorbers under the light rail trains. The agency also currently covers the wheels on its existing light rail trains. They can also build walls and berms — just not in Minneapolis — or provide sound insulation for surrounding buildings. As for vibration, they are considering placing a concrete-mounted rubber layer under ballast or concrete on 10th and 21st avenues.
The Blue Line Extension would be built over an area where sinkholes could form and threatened species thrive
Planners find the project would be built in areas where less than 50 feet of glacial sand, gravel, or sandy soils (called loam) separate the surface from limestone. These areas, which include downtown and parts of north Minneapolis, including parts of the West Broadway corridor, are considered active karst areas. The karst area may have underground springs, as well as caverns and sinkholes which are formed over millions of years by erosion.
But because project staff don’t know where the karst features are, save for two of them in downtown Minneapolis, they believe any discoveries of such features during construction could require them to change how the light rail project is designed, built, and operated. For example, one need not look far to the Southwest light rail project, where engineers had to orchestrate a $500-million, three-year change in building the Kenilworth tunnel after they found boulders while trying to drive steel sheets into the ground to support tunnel wall construction.
Planners are also concerned with groundwater contamination while building over an active karst area. To reduce the risk of groundwater contamination, they plan to pump water out while working in trenches around areas of high groundwater, as well as on steep slopes or “other topographic extremes.”
The report also finds the location of their proposed operations and maintenance facility would require building through poorly-drained soils, as well as destroy forest and prairie habitats for threatened species such as the monarch butterfly and the Northern long-eared bat. The tracks themselves could also trap the state-threatened Blanding’s turtle.
The project team plans to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to minimize impacts to those species as much as possible. And, to account for poor soils, engineers plan to dig more than they need to, replacing some of the fill with compacted or lightweight fill.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a new deadline for comments and more context from the Metropolitan Council on how public comments will be used.
