OPINION | One small step for modern transit

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A conservative-dominated Legislature could still block the way, but the Twin Cites’ prospects for job growth brightened considerably when the long-planned Southwest Corridor light-rail line won a preliminary federal go-ahead last week.Local government and business leaders hailed the decision to start the project on the road to a timeline six or seven years ahead when riders can board a train in Eden Prairie and take it 26 miles to downtown St. Paul without traffic worries. Along the way are job- and attraction-rich destinations such as Minnetonka’s Opus/Golden Triangle; Target Field, Target Center and the rest of downtown Minneapolis, plus the University of Minnesota’s main campus.”Having Southwest LRT make the cut is incredibly important to our future economic development,” said Todd Klingel of the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce.The project moved ahead of dozens of other transit proposals around the country to enter what’s called preliminary engineering, during which the Metropolitan Council will firm up plans for a maintenance facility, safety features and relocation of freight railroad tracks. The council says this will take about two years and complete 30 percent of the total design work.When finished, the line should have 15.8 miles of double track, 17 new stations, 15 park-and-ride lots with space for 3,500 cars and 26 new light-rail vehicles. Nearly 30,000 weekday riders are projected by 2030, comparable with the popular Hiawatha LRT, which drew 10.5 million passengers last year.With an estimated price tag of $1.25 billion, the Southwest LRT would overtake the $977 million Central Corridor light-rail line as Minnesota’s most expensive public works project ever. Continue Reading

OPINION | Mileage fees: Great promise, steep hurdles

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As reported on this site for years, our state and national system of fuel taxes to finance roads and bridges is profoundly dysfunctional.It raises less than 60 percent of the money needed to maintain what we have, much less to improve it. It’s highly unpopular, leaving practically no political will to increase it for inflation or fast-advancing fuel efficiency. It even allows drivers of electric cars to use the roads without paying a cent for their construction and upkeep.It does nothing to ease congestion and, at the low per-gallon rates in Minnesota, very little to reduce tailpipe pollution. And it contributes zilch to the costs of most local streets and roads, leaving them reliant on billions of dollars in non-user property taxes.By contrast, mileage-based user fees (MBUFs) could solve nearly all these problems. Long a subject of academic, think tank and government-funded research—including a $5 million study now underway in Minnesota—tolling by the mile instead of the gallon is often touted as a wave of the future in transportation finance.A new University of Minnesota report confirms most of this rosy outlook, finding that mileage fees would beat or match fuel taxes for efficiency, equity, revenue adequacy and environmental sustainability.There’s just one hitch. Despite all the advantages of a mileage charge and all the drawbacks of the fuel tax, the latter has a huge edge in feasibility. Continue Reading

$2 gas? Be careful what you wish for

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When Minnesota’s lone remaining presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, proclaimed again that if elected she would return gasoline prices to under $2 a gallon, most folks probably scoffed. Fellow Republican Jon Huntsman, for example, dismissed Bachmann’s vow as “completely unrealistic” and “not founded in reality.”

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Twin Cities and Ford: Era ends as a whimper

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Around the end of the 1920s, my late father-in-law, Clayton Basye, joined a crew of farmhands trucked to St. Paul to pick up Model A’s at the Ford plant and drive them to a St. Peter, Minn., dealership. When he got back, Clayton told me years later, the dealer refused delivery and said: “That car’s for you. You can pay me when your crops come in.”Just short of a century of car and truck building in the Twin Cities, Ford Motor Company is expected to shut down manufacturing forever at its St. Continue Reading