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Curtis Gilbert
St. Paul, Minn.

Met Council's light rail tunnel plans are mixed up, Minneapolis says

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The City of Minneapolis is raising new concerns about a proposal to bury part of the planned Southwest light rail line.

Minneapolis officials say the engineering drawings they've received from the Metropolitan Council don't match the plans discussed during a lengthy public process that's played out over the last six months.

In the drawings, one of the two tunnels, the north tunnel, isn't buried all the way below the current ground level. Instead, the earth around it is built up in what city attorney Susan Segal described as a 10 to 12 foot high "berm."

"This design is inconsistent with previous representations made by the Metropolitan Council," Segal wrote in a statement to MPR News.

Met Council staff, she wrote, indicated the "new design is intended to keep the (light rail) enclosure above the water table. This is also inconsistent with previous representations."

Met Council chair Sue Haigh said project staff submitted the wrong plans to Minneapolis this week.

"I regret this error and I have directed staff to rescind and replace the plans on Monday with the version recommended by the Corridor Management Committee and adopted by the Metropolitan Council," Haigh said in a statement. "We look forward to working with the City of Minneapolis to advance this project in the coming weeks."

A spokesperson for the city said no one from the Met Council had directly notified city staff that the wrong plans had been sent.

• Related: Choo Choo Bob explains the Southwest light rail line conundrum