December 18, 2002

To the Editor of the Star Tribune:

The editorial regarding the Southwest LRT on December 11, 2002 is a good example of the newspaper promoting the position of a government that does not want to be confused by the facts.  The title alone suggests a “fact” that is loosely derived from a poll that did not provide respondents any context about light rail transit nor did it ask enough questions to arrive at a true sense of the community’s views.  There were several findings from the survey, including the conclusion that actual ridership would be extremely low.  That conclusion and other significant results from the survey were conspicuously absent from your editorial.  And to imply that it is “Pawlenty voters” that support LRT is a reach when no questions from the poll even asked for whom the respondent voted.  This is a thinly disguised attack on Governor-Elect Pawlenty, who is known to oppose LRT, and thus is an opponent of the County Commissioners’ position on LRT.

The Hennepin County Commissioners have been working hard lately to conduct and complete a study that validates what they have wanted from the start – namely, a light rail line to or from anywhere that can connect to their Hiawatha line – all in an effort, a costly effort at that, to justify the Hiawatha decision.  And, by the way, they also want to establish their personal legacies along the way, all at taxpayer’s expense.  The poll they commissioned was a contrived attempt to sway public opinion rather than to gauge it.  Their minds are made up on LRT and they were successful in leading your newspaper to report it as “the people have spoken” on LRT. 

The Southwest Corridor is the term the Commissioners (and their staff and consultants) generically use to describe the southwest quadrant being studied for light rail.  While the current study includes a variety of alignments,  one alignment is the real goal – that is the hiking/biking trail that runs through the residential suburbs.  The reason they are so focused on this trail is that the County already owns the property and, as such, it will result in the least capital costs to gain acceptance by the Federal Government.  Other  alignments may be a better investment in the long run (if any LRT line can be truly feasible).   Specifically, the alignment along Highways 169 and 212 has been endorsed by the city officials of Eden Prairie and SouthWest Metro Transit.  That alignment, however, would most likely entail larger capital costs, and the Commissioners are smart enough to know that a smaller capital budgeted project is more likely to be approved than a larger one.  And they have been publicly selling this position since the study started.

If the Hiawatha line is any indication of capital costs, the Southwest line will cost well in excess of $1 billion just to build (the Southwest line contemplated may likely be twice as long as the Hiawatha line currently in construction).  While there is no history of the operating costs that will be borne by local taxpayers, the experience of other US cities suggests that it will be considerably in excess of bus transit systems.  When asked about the costs alone, the response of the Commissioners is that much of the capital costs are paid for by the Federal Government as part of the New Start Program – monies that the State of Minnesota would not otherwise receive for roadways or other forms of transit – implying a sense of free money.  Two problems: 1) this ignores the state and local tax dollars that would have to be allocated to capital and operating costs and, 2) the last we looked, nearly all of us pay Federal income and other taxes.  This is all our money as well!  

But back to the survey on which you reported.  One obscure sentence in your article did state that the surveyors did not ask about a “half-cent sales tax increase to finance highways and transit”.  There were a whole lot more questions that the Hennepin County commissioned pollsters left out of their survey, such as:

• Are you willing to have your governments allocate over $1 billion dollars of your current tax dollars to build LRT to serve less than five percent of the population?
• Would you be in support of LRT if it costs you an additional $500 per year in your property taxes and/or other taxes to operate?
• Are you willing to have high-speed trains travel through your residential neighborhoods in an effort to reduce your traffic congestion by some number like two percent?
• Are you willing to give up natural amenities, such as your peaceful hiking/biking trails as they currently exist, to co-exist with high-speed trains just a few feet away from you?

And the list goes on.

If the County Commissioners truly wanted to gauge public opinion about the level of support for LRT, they would have waited until enough substantiated facts were known from the study and then conducted a comprehensive, objective survey.  I am   convinced that they did not want to do that because there would be a high risk that the results would have been reversed.  If truly informed taxpayers who understand the full financial, environmental and community impacts of LRT (including projects foregone as a result of building LRT) were asked if they were in support of it, the results of the survey would have likely been a severe blow to the Hennepin County Commissioners desire to build LRT at any cost.   

Shame on the County Commissioners for their close-minded approach to using our tax dollars to build their legacies.  And shame on you for aligning with them to unduly influence your readers with their so-called “facts”.  My only hope is that your readership is smart enough to take the time to learn the real facts before deriving their own opinions.