Ramsey County Reallocates Riverview Corridor Funding Away from West 7th

The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners reallocated nearly a billion dollars, almost three-quarters of which was originally earmarked for Riverview Corridor, on June 10. In a unanimous vote, the Board funded several road and interchange projects, corridor wide improvements, updates to Union Depot and railroad projects, items they deemed “transformative and innovative” and “other” projects, which include the Purple Line transit corridor, trail extensions and all projects included in the 2024-28 Ramsey County Transportation Improvement plan.

Noticeably absent from the list of funded projects were improvements along West 7th, including the proposed plan for Bus Rapid Transit along the corridor.

Proposed projects

In total, the County has allocated $961 million of their Transportation Sales and Use tax funding, which is made up of a .5 percent sales tax and a $20 vehicle excise tax on each vehicle sold by dealers in the county, to a number of projects throughout Ramsey county. About $730 million of that funding was previously allocated to the Riverview Project. 

Some of the major investments in the proposed plan include: 

• $250 million for interchange improvements at Lexington & I-94, Snelling and I-94, Snelling and Highway 36, Edgerton and Highway 36, White Bear Ave. and I-94 and Long Lake Road and I-694
• $200 for corridor improvements to Larpenteur Ave., White Bear Ave., Lexington Ave., Transfer Road/Pierce Butler, Maryland Ave., County Road B2, County Road B, Edgerton St., McKnight Rd. and County Road 96
• $150 million in Downtown Investments, including potential funding for River’s Edge and multi-modal improvements
• $100 million to increase multimodal transportation staffing and facilities
• $80 million for improvements to Union Depot
• $75 million allocated to a grant program to fund local multimodal projects 
• $35 million to build a connection between County Roads 96 and H through Rice Creek Commons

According to County Documents, in December 2024, after the dissolution of the Riverview Corridor study, the Ramsey County Board directed staff to develop a transit and transportation investment plan to reallocate the funding previously earmarked for Riverview.

Country staff then help internal conversations to compose a list of projects to propose to the Board by March of this year, the final list of which was not publicly available until early June.

In addition to the dissolution of the Riverview project, the County cited needing to update their transportation plan and priorities, which still included Green and Gold line operations since taken over by Metro Transit.

Public Pushback

In March of this year, just as County staff were wrapping up their proposed list of projects, the City of St. Paul rolled out their plan for a proposed transit project along West 7th, picking up where the Riverview project left off. That project was conspicuously left off the list of proposed projects in the County’s plan, leaving members of the community and City staff to advocate for its inclusion in the funding proposal.

In a joint letter to the County Board, Mayor Melvin Carter, Metropolitan Council Chair Charlie Zelle and MnDOT Metro District Engineer Khani Sahebjam asked the County Board to reconsider and include the West 7th project in the list of projects.

“Achieving this transformative vision for the West 7th corridor will depend on the financial commitments and advocacy of each of our agencies, including Ramsey County,” the letter read, in part. 

On June 3, the Ramsey County Board hosted a public hearing on the proposed reallocation of the funds, which was overwhelmingly met with resistance from the community. In all, the Board received 29 letters in opposition to the plan as proposed. Additionally, nine people spoke against the proposal during the public hearing, largely advocating specifically for investment in the proposed transit project along the West 7th corridor.

“West 7th has been holding its breath for two decades waiting for the River view project. Investment has been delayed, building projects abandoned and the future has been on pause. And that sucks,” Said Tom Basgen, Legislative Aid to Ward 3 Council Member Saura Jost. “But there’s good news, we are picking up the torch with the new West 7th project being led by the City with partnership from Met Council and MnDOT. We’re just missing one last partner to invest. That’s you – Ramsey County.”

“The Riverview project began with a study in 1998. Since then, it’s consumed over $11.7 million in public funds and created decades of delay. We lost out on earlier transit investment $28 million in 2014 alone because of it. Our mill and overlay project was put off until 2022, then 2024 and now 2028 or 2029 to align supposedly with the Riverview corridor construction,” said Julia McColley, Executive Director of the West 7th/Foart Roade Federation. “Whether or not you supported the streetcar plan, canceling the whole project without supporting an alternative leaves our neighborhood behind once again. The decision hurts real people who depend on transit, walkable streets and public infrastructure,” she added.

While much of the testimony centered specifically on West 7th transit, additional concerns with the plan and process were brought up as well.

“I want to express my concern that the significant policy action, setting a framework for the investment of nearly three-quarters of $1 billion in sales tax revenue is being taken with very little opportunity for public input,” said St. Paul resident John Levine. “The document that we’re commenting on today was released, I think, last Thursday. So just two working days to to respond, which really isn’t very much time.”

“This document reads mostly like a plan to rebuild a bunch of county roads, not like a plan to systematically improve multimodal travel,” Levine later added.

Ultimately, despite opposition, the County Board opted to exclude the West 7th project from inclusion in the funding proposals.

What’s next for West 7th BRT?

While the exclusion of the West 7th transit corridor from county transportation sales tax funding is a significant blow to the project, it is unclear what the immediate impacts of moving forward with the project are.

County Commissioners and staff also seemed unclear on that question at times during their June 10 meeting in advance of their vote to reallocate the funding.

“Could this board decide to do some different things based on the configuration of the project? It certainly has the purview to do that,” said Ramsey County Public Works Director Brian Issacson during his June 10 testimony to the Ramsey County Board. “But typically these are things that the County doesn’t have a role in.”

However, in her closing statement in support of the proposal, County Commissioner Mai Chong Xiong said that funding the Purple Line, another BRT transit project, albeit one mostly contained to streets owned by Ramsey County, was a necessity of reallocating these funds.

“I just really want to make it clear to our residents that right now we don’t have a federal project for Purple Line at Ramsey County,” she said. “It is because of us that we are literally keeping this plan and project alive. This is a way for us to pivot and to continue to invest in our roads and our infrastructure so that we can increase and partner with Met Council or Metro Transit to get more bus service and or build out, both arterial BRT as well as BRT.”