Admit it, you’re starting to miss construction delays. It seems like forever ago since our fair bridge collapsed into the Mississippi. It was getting too easy. Enter the expansion of the Light Rail.

Change is never easy, particularly when it involves factoring a massive construction effort into your daily commute for the next three years. Such are growing pains, and the Twin Cities are certainly growing—by a half million residents in the metro area over the past fifteen years, actually.

Let’s be sure to properly categorize Light Rail detractors into their two camps: on the right are those who categorically reject public transit on principle—people like the head of the MN House committee on transportation, Representative Mike Beard–who get elected with cute one-liners like stopping the Southwest Corridor Light Rail project “dead in its tracks;” on the left are those who support alternative transit, probably even the Central Corridor (CCLRT) itself, whose concerns directly or indirectly come down to NIMBY, or not-in-my-back-yard.

Minneapolis and St. Paul used to be connected by a series of rail cars until they were paved over in 1953—a victim, like in many other American cities, of automobile based urban renewal efforts. Like many of its spatially endowed Midwest counterparts, the Twin Cities was built for sprawl, evolving into an economy comprised of a miniature central business sector reliant upon the suburban nodes dotted along its over-sized highway system.

Metro Transit now ranks seventh among eleven peer cities in transit investment per capita, with most of that money going to airports or roadway infrastructure (hard to believe given the condition of city roads). The Minnesota Department of Transportation just came out with figures placing our freeway’s congestion rate at the same rate it was when 35W was closed, while a recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute ranked our traffic congestion as some of the highest in the nation. According to their study, the average driver here spends 43 hours and burns 37 gallons of fuel in traffic jams annually. At $3.50 a gallon, that’s serious money evaporating in the waiting line.

In a future of declining liquid fuels—a fact now supported by a long overdue admission from the US Department of Energy—simply expanding our roadway infrastructure isn’t just short-sighted planning, it’s economic suicide. Not even the best public fleet of gas guzzling buses can change the fate of roadway transportation. There is already an imperative for investment in an electrically powered transportation infrastructure, to mention nothing of that whole climate change/carbon emission problem.

In light of a sizable influx of federal money to support the movement towards electrically powered transportation, some pretty undisputed numbers regarding overall economic benefit to the state, plus the fact that the CCLRT is barely shy of complete funding and approval, protests from the NIMBY crowd tend to ring hallow; the halfhearted lawsuits from the University of Minnesota and MPR merely sought to establish leverage with which to bargain for future compensation. The same could said of the lawsuit brought forth by the St. Paul NAACP’s coalition of concerned neighbors, the difference being that they will receive special attention through grants and government commissions dedicated specifically to help mitigate housing displacement or lost business revenues.

Aspects of gentrification associated with the CCLRT are unavoidable—that’s why the same people suing the project are simultaneously begging for a stop near their restaurant. Would business have been disrupted by some other, less socially beneficially construction effort? Yes, such are the hazards of building along a major road. Would losing 85 percent of parking spaces in one of the most parking-lot dense sectors of the metro be an overwhelmingly better use of space? Yes.

For students, the light at the end of the tunnel is a car-free Washington Ave, the way the Board of Regents recommended it be a century ago; that’s three stops on campus, plus a B-line to St. Paul. Nationwide, ridership on electric rails, including our own Hiawatha Light Rail, have exceeded expectations. Minnesota faces a long game of catch up and there’s not a moment to lose. CCLRT is a key victory for advocates of the 21st century infrastructure, currently under fire by politicians like Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker; completion of the CCLRT will be crucial to the funding of its suburban extensions and this context must not be overlooked.

Minnesota has a prided history of effective citizen participation and this sort of discourse and dissent should generally be encouraged; there is a point, however, when frivolous lawsuits, obstructionism and party fictionalization undercut the long-term well-being of our state.

More information on the Light Rail construction at www.stpaul.gov or ww.hamlinemidwaycoalition.org

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