Neighbors Rally Against Rail on West 7th

The Save West 7th Rally was hosted by Citizen Advocates for Regional Transit (CART) on August 12 at Bad Weather Brewing. The event featured business owners, residents and advocates speaking against either of the two rail options currently being presented by Ramsey County for the Riverview Corridor Project, a long-simmering transit improvement project along West 7th.

In February of this year, the Riverview Corridor Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) voted to bring three options forward to the public for comment on the project. The first two options are variations of rail, with one version having center running, dedicated track and a second, “Modern Streetcar,” option sharing lanes with traffic for a portion of the route. The third bus option, called an Arterial Bus Rapid Transit (ABRT) route, calls for improvements to stops and boarding times.

Outreach on the three transit options was conducted over the spring and summer, and now the PAC is poised to make its recommendation for which option to move forward at their October 3 meeting.

“It’s a crucial vote because we’re going to vote on what goes,” said Pat Mancini, owner of Mancini’s Char House and a member of the PAC. 

Mancini said he’s been a member of the PAC for 14 years and feels membership is not representative of West 7th.

“You can look at all the other members on the PAC committee, and you will see that a lot of politicians, a lot of bureaucrats, a lot of commissioners, a lot of council people – no neighborhood and one business guy, one business person. So I’m your advocate.”

“There is nobody on this committee that lives in this neighborhood. Nobody,”said Joe Landsberger, a member of CART. “We have no representative resident on this committee. Think of it, a decision being made.” 

“We as residents are not invited to participate. So we’re going to demand our participation,” he added.

“Our group has has determined that ABRT is the least worst option,” said Greg Struve, a member of CART. “But we determined that these are all alternatives that have no practical benefits to the community.”

Struve said that CART is concerned about several issues, including cost, end-to-end transportation times, loss of parking and reduced traffic flow on the Highway 5 Bridge over the Mississippi.

“Since Ramsey County feels the need to do something after ten plus years of study, we feel the only alternative is to get them to only consider the ABRT,” he said.

Business owners along West 7th shared many of CART’s concerns, but were especially wary of both short-term and long-term impacts from construction and implementation of passenger rail along the corridor.

Ashley Weed, Owner of Jandrich Floral, said that loss of parking is a major concern for her business.

“It will 100% close my business if I lose access to my driveway,” Ashley Weed, owner of Jandrich Floral, told the crowd.

She said that this access is not just because of customer access, but also deliveries.

“I don’t know if you know, but when it’s negative two or three temperatures in the middle of winter flowers don’t last long outside,” she said.

Tony Bonfe, who co-owns Bonfe’s Auto Repair Shop along with his brother, said one of his major concerns is space on West 7th, especially in the winter.

“West seventh Street gets shorter by at least four-to-six feet, which means no room for U-turns,” Bonfe said. “It goes from two lanes each direction down to one lane, because it’s become so narrow to where people are parking, they start going into the second lane.”

Residents, too, had a chance to express their doubts on the rail options for the project.

Becky Yust, a former Board Chair of the West 7th/Fort Road Federation said that, while the Federation hasn’t made a recommendation either way, they did develop a set of guiding principles about what the neighborhood values to aid in decision making for all kinds of issues.

“The bicycle and pedestrian experience, the historic preservation and neighborhood uniqueness, small, locally owned businesses as we just heard from, affordable housing, parking, current public transit options, such as we have now and then, trees, parks and green space,” Yust listed as some of the values the Federation recently codified. “But we thought, ‘these we can fight for.’” 

Yust said she hopes these values provide a beneficial lens in analyzing the options for the Riverview Corridor.

During the Q&A portion of the event, multiple people expressed concern over the safety of the existing transit system and whether building new options would solve issues the neighborhood is already facing.

“How are they going to protect us?” one resident asked.

CART is advocating public participation by reaching out to their elected officials and showing up to the October 3 PAC meeting to testify.

“I encourage everybody here to go. That would be very intimidating for them,” said Landsberger.

Learn more: Riverviewcorridor.com.   

Riverview Corridor Policy Advisory Committee

October 3. 9:00-11:00 a.m.

Union Depot. Red Cap Room