Light rail along West Seventh Street remains viable for the Riverview Corridor, despite reportedly strong neighborhood opposition.
Members of the Riverview Corridor Policy Advisory Committee left the possibility on the table recently when they voted to approve the final mix of modes and routes for future study as it continues to hunt for a way to connect downtown St. Paul and the airport via public transit.
Those that made the cut?
Bus rapid transit, the streetcar, light rail and a multiple-unit train powered by diesel rounded out the list of possible modes.
West Seventh Street and the Old Pacific Railway spur are the two main routes advancing. The spur line runs parallel to West Seventh, partially through a residential area.
Opposition to dedicated lane
Meanwhile, last month, the West Seventh Street/Fort Road Federation voted to formally oppose any transit option that would run in its own dedicated lane along West Seventh — such as light rail — or prevent left-hand turns.
Among those in opposition to a dedicated lane is Dave Thune, the former St. Paul City Council member who lives in the West Seventh area.
“Something that basically has no stops along it and destroys most of the parking is worse than any kind of nightmare I can imagine… There’s just no room for it… It flushes away all (West Seventh’s) assets into the toilet,” Thune said.
A dedicated transit lane tends to take up about 30 feet, too much for a street that is only about 80 feet wide, opponents have said. By comparison, University Avenue, home to the Green Line, is about 120 feet wide.
Thune added that a dedicated guide-way would effectively cut West Seventh in two, a key concern listed in the Ford Road Federation’s recently adopted resolution.
“It’s ridiculous to me to even keep that option open…. There is virtually no support for it,” Thune added. “It would be a bees’ nest of opposition that would make parking meters look pale (in comparison).”
Diane Gerth, a former president of the Fort Road Federation, and Erik Hare, secretary of the group, also said there is widespread concern among neighborhood residents about choosing an option with a dedicated guide-way.
The Federation also voted against using the portion of the spur line that runs through a residential area as a possible route.
The neighborhood does support increased transit in the corridor, Thune, Gerth and Hare said. Generally, anything that doesn’t need a dedicated guide-way, such as a streetcar or increased busing, would be favored.
The policy advisory committee’s recent vote came after a roughly two-month public comment period on the final route and mode contenders.
Some 140 comments were received and staff connected with about 750 community members throughout the corridor in person, said Mike Rogers, transit project manager for the Ramsey County Regional Rail Authority.
The corridor spills well beyond the West Seventh neighborhood. Its boundaries are defined by the Mississippi River on the south, Interstate 35E and Ford Parkway on the north, St. Paul’s Lowertown on the east and the airport and Mall of America on the west.
Feedback mixed
Feedback among participants was mixed, even when it came to running light rail within a dedicated lane on West Seventh, Rogers said. He added that further study is needed before it can be known whether a dedicated guide-way along the busy street is even viable.
“People who don’t want it are quite vocal, but when you talk to others who aren’t as much in the public realm it is much more mixed,” Rogers said. “And there are a fair amount of people at meetings saying we would at least like to study it… It is definitely not like everyone loves it or everyone hates it.”
He added that the big changes that have taken place since light rail was last studied on West Seventh in 2000 — including development in the Riverview Corridor and transit technology improvements — warrant taking another look at the option.
“Yes in some ways it’s the same, but in some ways it’s different,” Rogers said. “(Light rail) vehicles can be smaller and narrower now.. There is no hard and fast… definition about what light rail has to be or what bus rapid transit has to be… Other regions have built (systems) where you can go from running in mixed traffic to (running in) dedicated guide-ways and back and forth to get through tighter areas.”
He added that attitudes toward transit have also evolved.
“As people become more familiar with transit… they are more willing to look for solutions,” Rogers said. “Maybe we don’t need as much space for parking or turn lanes as we (used to think we did)… Maybe (there is room to give) where we weren’t willing to in the past.”
The bottom line? More study is needed before any of the remaining modes and routes should be ruled out, Rogers said.
The entire budget for the research and analysis phase of the project, which has been ongoing for months, is about $1.9 million.
So what’s next in the process?
Engineers and other technical experts will spend the next four months conducting deeper analysis of the remaining routes and modes, including river crossings and ways to loop the Ford site into the corridor. They will flesh out capital and operating costs for each option, ridership estimates, impacts to local areas and other details, Rogers said.
Findings will be brought back to the Riverview Policy Advisory Committee in June, when the committee is expected to select a draft locally preferred alternative for the corridor. That will then be shopped around to the public for a few months for feedback before circling back to the committee for a final vote in late summer or early fall.
Assuming the committee comes to a decision, the locally preferred alternative will need to go before the affected city governments for approval, including St. Paul, Bloomington, Ramsey County and Hennepin County.
If it passes all those stops, the Met Council would be asked to adopt the alternative into its long term regional plan.
Environmental review of the option would then begin in 2017.
The last locally preferred alternative identified for the Riverview Corridor – bus rapid transit — lost steam shortly after entering the environmental review stage.
Go here to learn more about the Riverview Corridor study, or to view past reports.