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Published Thursday, January 15, 1998
© Copyright 1998 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Getting There: Former opponent now on board in favor of light rail

Laurie Blake / Star Tribune

Rail advocates take heart. Curt Johnson has come over to your side.

After more than two decades of fighting the construction of light-rail transit in the Twin Cities area, Johnson has changed his mind.

Formerly director of the anti-rail Citizens League, Gov. Arne Carlson's former chief of staff and now Carlson' appointee as chairman of the Metropolitan Council, Johnson has emerged as a supporter of the construction of light rail on Hiawatha Avenue between downtown Minneapolis, the airport and the Mall of America.

He even plans to join the upcoming lobbying effort to persuade legislators to spend $100 million to help get it built.

This is remarkable because for years Johnson was the voice of anti-rail sentiment in the Twin Cities. As the Citizens League director, he wrote and spoke against rail every chance he got, insisting that the area lacked the density to justify investment in light rail.

His earlier skepticism about rail "stemmed from a sense that we had a lot of other things that we could do and should do in the '80s to increase our mobility and sustain it," Johnson said. "And I was also representing the policy position of the organization that I was working for."

Now, he says, he is "acknowledging different circumstances in the late '90s."

Johnson's shift is a triumph for metro-area rail enthusiasts. It's a special vindication for Phyllis McQuaid, who tirelessly argued for light rail during the same period that Johnson argued so successfully against it.

As the mayor of St. Louis Park in the 1970s and as a state senator from the western suburbs in the 1980s, McQuaid fought to include light rail in the design for Interstate Hwy. 394 west of Minneapolis. Johnson, her chief opponent, endorsed the car-pool/bus lanes that were built down the middle of the road.

Seeing the lukewarm public reception to these lanes and the increasing traffic congestion, Johnson now says:"We've got to do something dramatic to reach the public about the seriousness of the [congestion] situation and to demonstrate that we intend to dramatically improve transit in this region."

What to do?

What he recommends is light rail on Hiawatha and a larger connecting system of traffic-free lanes that could be used at first by buses and later upgraded to light rail if affordable and warranted by ridership.

"I'd like to see us get so serious about this that we develop the backbone of the system in three to five years instead of 20," he said in an interview this week. "If the state were willing to bond, or in good times to say here is $100 million or $200 million, we could get very aggressive on this stuff. I'm very concerned that if we don't adopt an attitude of impatience that we won't find the corridors in time to capture them," he said.

Once one or two corridors are in place and residents see their benefits, Johnson said, there will be political competition for more.

'Unspeakable congestion'

Johnson said politics, policies and the metro area's population forecast have brought him to his current position.

There has been resistance for more than a decade to raising the gas tax to build more roads, and now there is increasing concern about the social and environmental drawbacks of roadway expansion, he said. As a result, the Met Council and state Department of Transportation have agreed on a 20-year policy to emphasize road maintenance over expansion.

That means that although population is expected to grow more in the next 20 years than in the previous two decades, the road system will not expand.

At the same time, the area's two car-pool lanes have had only modest success, and commuters reacted negatively to the idea of congestion pricing.

Seeing all of this, Johnson said: "I've come to believe that we are going to experience -- by Minnesota standards at least -- unspeakable congestion.

"We are going to have, in the foreseeable future, the level of congestion we've always had the privilege of associating with other places, and we wondered why people would choose to live there.

"Under those conditions I think we need to explore every possible dimension of a transit alternative. We should build everything we can get support for and find the money to do."

That includes pedestrian-oriented development, more and better bikeways and busways, light rail and commuter rail, Johnson said.

Furthermore, he said, "if we don't take these steps to build this transit infrastructure, we have no hope, absolutely zero, of containing sprawl. The pressures to build out in the green spaces will be too great for anybody to resist."

Comments such as these should catch attention at the Capitol.

And if he argues them as persuasively as he once argued against light rail -- modern trolley cars may yet make it to the Twin Cities.

-- Comments and questions are welcome. Call: 673-9016; fax: 673-4359;e-mail: Gettingthere@startribune.com

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