No Rail for West 7th, but what’s next?

On September 6, West 7th/Fort Road Federation Board Chair Meg Duhr found out via an email from Ramsey County that they were no longer moving forward with the Riverview Corridor transit study, their decade-long project to decide if West 7th should have rail or enhanced transit between downtown and the airport.

“I was very,very angry,” Duhr said. “Not so much that we weren’t getting streetcar or BRT [Bus Rapid Transit], I was frankly underwhelmed by all three options, but I wanted something.”

Duhr was not alone in her frustration.

“I was frustrated by what happened,” said Rebecca Noecker, the Ward 2 City councilmember in St. Paul, which covers downtown and parts of West 7th. “Better transit, bike and pedestrian experiences came in conflict with the planning process.”

“In the end it is too bad because West 7th sat stagnant for 10 years,” said Pat Mancini, the owner of Mancini’s Char House. “The project delayed development waiting for a decision.”

Ramsey County abruptly ended the the Riverview study on September 6, about a month before a key vote of members of the Riverview Corridor Policy Advisory Committee (PAC), where the group was poised to choose one of three options, two rail options along with enhanced bus services, for connecting downtown to the airport via West 7th. 

In a statement, the County said that they were ending the project based on feedback they’ve received through their engagement process.

“The county appreciates and takes community and partner feedback very seriously and thanks everyone for sharing their input,” the statement said.  

The County’s abandonment of the study came about a week after several members of the Metropolitan Airports Commision (MAC) publicly voiced concerns about the project during a commission meeting and West 7th community members hosted a rally to oppose rail on West 7th.

In July, the Highland District Council passed a resolution supporting ABRT and opposing streetcar through the neighborhood.

For Joe Landsberger, a longtime resident of West 7th and member of Citizen Advocates for Regional Transit (CART), this pressure, along with a recent meeting between Ramsey County staff and West 7th business owners, pushed the County into making this decision.

“The thing that brought it to a head were all of the emails from the community, both residents and businesses,” he said.

“When the airport came out with their assessment of the three choices, I said, ‘this is done,’” said Mancini, who has served on the PAC since its inception. “”I was surprised the meeting didn’t get canceled sooner.”

What Comes Next?

By ending the Riverview planning process, the County has left the community with the status-quo, a prospect that has many people concerned about the future of the area.

Last month, the West  7th/fort Road Federation published “We Live Here,” a report of community priorities for the neighborhood. In it, it called for streetscape and infrastructure improvements like trees and attractive boulevards, wide, maintained sidewalks with accessible, marked crossings, traffic calming measures and easy access to our businesses via walking, biking, driving and transit, among other things.

“Now, without Riverview Corridor, they aren’t going to get any of it,” said West 7th resident and member of the Riverview Citizen Advisory Committee Paul Hardt. “The issues of West 7th are being kicked down the road.”

“For decades, West 7th has been starving for serious infrastructure projects,” said Duhr, citing several missed opportunities like the originally proposed Metro Transit B Line that was scrapped in 2014 and delayed mill and overlay along West 7th.

“We won’t tolerate another decade of disinvestment,” she said.

Policy makers within the City of St. Paul recognize the challenges, not only of the dissolution of the Riverview project, but of the need for upgrades to West 7th.

“Universally, people want an improved West 7th,” said Russ Stark, the City’s Chief Resilience Officer.  “We’re going to move with some urgency.”

“What’s most important is we have better transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure on West 7th,” said Noecker. “It shouldn’t take decades, it should take years and have tangible progress.” 

Both Stark and Noecker said they are interested in pursuing BRT for West 7th, coming to that conclusion independently, but working together, along with public works and Councilmember Saura Jost’s office, to explore what options are available to the city to move forward.

Complicating matters is that, while the City has a great deal of say in what they want, West 7th is a state highway owned by MnDOT and the Metropolitan Council controls regional transit project planning and operation.

With that understanding, City leaders sound undaunted.

“We need to find a path forward to reconstructing West 7th, including transit improvements and pedestrian safety at the same time,” Stark said. “There’s no time like the present to do that.”

“It’s been a 30 year conversation,” he said. “We’re hoping to expedite that.”

He said the City’s plan is to start driving the conversation with partners to begin the process of seeing what their options are for moving quickly to make improvements to the streetscape. That includes using much of the technical work that has already been done through the Riverview process.

While members of the community have also said they want rapid improvements to the street, many remain skeptical of another planning process led by government agencies.

Mancini said that, while improvements are imperative to West 7th, he would like to see a process that is community led.

“It’s our street,” he said. “People live there, businesses thrive there, and we need to lead the way.”

“That’s how we got into trouble with the stakeholders in the first place, it was a top-down sort of thing,” said Landsberger. “Any process needs to include residents and business owners in the conversation.”

For Duhr, there were additional practical matters to consider.

“City leaders are saying the right things,” she said. “Who is going to spearhead it? Where is the funding going to come from?”

Both Stark and Noecker acknowledged the need to balance community concerns with their desire to move quickly to improve the street.

“The most important thing is not the what, it’s the how,” said Noecker. “Government messed up here. The way we move forward is to engage people. We need to own the mistakes.”

Noecker said that, while the Riverview process has been hard, one of her takeaways is that the modes of transportation matter less than what the community needs to be successful.

“It is less about the mode, that’s not the most important part of the conversation” Noecker said. “It’s a vehicle for how we get there.”