Minnesota GOP Legislators Petition Chao to Deny SWLRT Funds

On March 17th, 2017 the Minnesota State GOP caucuses in the House and Senate sent a 14 page letter to US Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asking her to deny the full funding agreement to the infamous Southwest Light Rail line here in the Twin Cities.

It undoubtedly comes as a surprise to many people that the unaccountable Met Council, which plans and operates the transit system,  has been barreling along spending tens of millions of dollars on SWLRT without any certainty as to how the rail line's capital expenses would be funded, much less ongoing operating costs. But that's in fact the case, as the Federal Government has yet to approve $895 million in capital funds of the line.

The excellent letter from GOP legislators points out that the Met Council has circumvented the legislature in order to get the rail line project this far, violated its commitment to not use the obscure funding mechanism known as Certificates of Participation,  and it appears that the Met Council is in violation of US code that prevents the cannibalization of bus service in order to fund new light rail. 

The business case case against SWLRT is even more stark, as the Met Council's own projections show that they expect to generate only 6,500 new-to-transit riders per day as a result of the nearly $2 billion in capital spending!

Southwest Light Rail is a boondoggle project crafted by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, led by the only board in the country that is completely filled by patronage positions.  

Let you legislators know that you support their efforts to bring fiscal sanity to transportation and transit planning in Minnesota.

Stop The Train!