A Month into Delay, Southwest Light-Rail Review Sees Few New Developments

Its been more than a month since Gov. Mark Dayton stepped in and asked the Met Council to delay a decision on the Southwest light-rail line by two to three months.

Dayton held his fourth meeting last Friday with metro leaders including outgoing Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Louis Park city council member Anne Mavity.

But despite Met Council staff's re-examination of a number of options to re-route freight rail away from the Kenilworth neighborhood, there have been no major breakthroughs in the dispute between Minneapolis and St. Louis Park.

Minneapolis residents have complained that keeping freight rail in the Kenilworth neighborhood would be noisy, increase traffic and cause damage to the hydrology of the lake system. And St. Louis Park residents remain firmly opposed to moving freight rail into the city.

Mavity told CBS Minnesota that "we need to make sure there is absolutely no impact on the chain of lakes," but she maintained that routing freight rail through St. Louis Park would be unacceptable. 

"None of the freight options are workable for our community and, frankly, for the region," she said.

Plans to return freight rail to the Midtown Greenway corridor or to route it through Golden Valley are under consideration, but would also be unpopular, the Star Tribune reported.

“I don’t hold out much hope on the potential reroute options," Edina Mayor Jim Hovland, who has been involved in discussions, told the paper. "The probabilities are we’ll be back where we are right now.”