Blue Line Light Rail Extension Faces $224M Funding Gap

The Blue Line Light Rail Extension project has been in the planning stages for more than a decade.

But as designers look to finish the blueprints, there’s still a significant budget shortfall for the 13.4 mile line from Minneapolis to Brooklyn Park. The project cost is expected to top $3.3 billion.

According to officials with the Metropolitan Council, who spoke with a committee of elected officials and stakeholders on Aug. 6, there’s a projected $224 million funding gap for the project.

That’s assuming the project receives about $750 million from the Federal Transit Administration full funding grant agreement. However, officials can’t apply for those funds until the local funding gap is closed.

Project officials are now looking for ways to reduce costs and boost revenue.

That has some local elected officials feeling frustrated.

“Treat us like you did Green Line people,” Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Lunde said, referring to the $2.8 billion Southwest Green Line LRT Extension. “You stepped in, you found additional revenue, and you found savings. And if not, then tell the community — who finally get a meeting after nine months — and tell them that they’re not worth the same amount as the people on the Green Line, because that’s what you’re saying.”

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Park Mayor Hollies Winston asked for a quick solution to the funding issues.

“To me it is, let’s get to cutting stuff or finding sources of income, right? And it needs to be an urgency, a fierce urgency,” he said, invoking Martin Luther King Jr.’s “fierce urgency of now” quote.

Metropolitan Council Chair Robin Hutcheson said she will “bang down every door that is possible for us to bang down to get a full funding grant application into the FTA as quickly as possible.”

“We believe in this project,” she said. “We want to build this project. We want to invest in this transit project as it is proposed today. It’s worth saying.”

If budget issues get sorted out soon, the earliest rider service could start is in 2033.

Related Met Council: Blue Line Extension Cost Jumps To $3.5B

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