The City of Eden Prairie has been talking about our city’s potential involvement in a new Light Rail Transit (LRT) line for a couple of years now. The discussion is being managed by the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority. Consultants and staff to the Regional Rail Authority gave the City Council an update on the status of the LRT proposal at last week’s City Council Workshop. City staff have been working with the Regional Rail Authority on the LRT project. It is our recommendation to the Council that the City begin to assume a more favorable and active role in supporting the proposed LRT project. If we don’t, the County will have no reason to extend the rail out to Eden Prairie. We believe the LRT line would be good for Eden Prairie’s future.
There are several options for the LRT line that are still under consideration. I have inserted thumbnail photos of the maps of the two basic options. You can click on either of the maps and follow the routes from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie.
There are two primary differences between these two maps. One is the section of the line in Minneapolis. This is shown in the LRT-A option and the LRT-C option. LRT-A takes the line to downtown Minneapolis through the Kenwood neighborhood. LRT-C takes the line to downtown Minneapolis through Uptown.
The other primary difference between the two maps is how the line might serve Eden Prairie. The maps show three different options once you get to the proposed Shady Oak Station on the boarder of Hopkins and Minnetonka. The LRT-1 option takes the current SWLRT Bike Trail corridor through Minnetonka and Eden Prairie. LRT-2 goes into Minnetonka and Eden Prairie along I-494. The final option, LRT-3, comes into Minnetonka’s Opus Industrial Park and then down into our Golden Triangle Industrial Area and then into our future Town Center area just west of the Eden Prairie Center mall.
City staff strongly favor a version of the LRT-3 route. We favor this route because it provides a greater level of service to the employers and the employees in the Golden Triangle; provides greater access to downtown for our Town Center Area; and connects the LRT to the bus system at SouthWest Station. We do not, at this point, have an opinion about the LRT route through Minneapolis. This decision will be made, as all decisions are made in Minneapolis, by a long and arduous political process. It’s probably best for those of us in the suburbs to keep our collective nose out of Minneapolis’s neighborhood politics for now. They’ll reach a resolution and then the project can move ahead.
There are other options being studied right now too. One if for an expansion of the bus system. Another, called LRT-4, dead-ends the LRT in Hopkins. Hopkins doesn’t like that one.
There is a group of technical experts from the Rail Authority and effected cities participating on an advisory committee called the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). The TAC for this project met last week and agreed on the following recommendation:
TAC RECOMMENDATION:
a.) LRT 1A 2A, 3A, and 4A meet Tier 1 goals and are therefore recommended for further evaluation.
b.) Under Tier 2 goals, LRT 2A is not recommended for further evaluation because it has higher capital and operating costs than LRT 1, but does not provide the economic development benefits of LRT 3. LRT 2A also has the highest estimated CEI of the A alternatives. Because other A alternatives better achieve Tier 1 and Tier 2 goals, LRT 2 A is not recommended to carry forward.
c.) LRT 4A is already encompassed in the full-length A alternatives. A shortened version of the preferred alignment(s) may be identified as a future minimum operating segment (MOS) if required in the future. In the event an MOS is required as the initial phase of staged implementation of the full alternative selected, detailed analysis of impacts and mitigation required to serve as an interim route terminus will be undertaken.
d.) LRT 1A and 3A are recommended to carry forward.
e.) Of the C alternatives, LRT 3C is the only alternative meeting both Tier 1 and Tier 2 goals and is therefore recommended to carry forward.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
The TAC also approved two other recommendations to forward to the PAC:
- That the Southwest Transitway PAC request that the Metropolitan Council move the
to a Tier 1 corridor when updating the Transportation Policy Plan.
- That the Southwest Transitway PAC request that the HCRRA proceed into the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for the
.
The TAC’s recommendation will now move on to an advisory committee of elected and appointed officials from local governments along the proposed LRT corridor called the Policy Advisory Committee (PAC). The PAC will review the TAC recommendation and then make its own recommendation to the Rail Authority later this year. The purpose the recommendation at this point is to thin down the number of options that will move to the next phase of the analysis. Right now, LRT-3A and LRT-3C (our favorites) have made the cut to move to the next step. City staff believe that either of these two options will provide Eden Prairie with excellent LRT access to Minneapolis in the future. Maybe the near future.
