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St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie all are making plans for new housing and businesses to take root around light-rail stations that have already been sited in their towns.

From Four Suburbs are Betting Big on Light Rail

Great news – but again, it would be a lot better to be planning and building a number of lines in tandem. Where are the lines to the north and east?

Article today in the Star Tribune — What route is best for Southwest LRT

The basic arguments come down to: What’s fastest for suburban commuters, who’s backyard will it run through, and which neighborhoods are we going to connect.

My gut reaction in looking at the alignments is that it would be best to curve through uptown, connecting uptown, eat street, and downtown.

But perhaps there are further plans on the drawing board… maybe a streetcar line starting around calhoun, and then tracking uptown/eat street/downtown? Then you can have the LRT line run a more direct route, and serve the dense populations of uptown/downtown with streetcars.

It’s hard to say without knowing what the larger system looks like, and this is the fundamental flaw in looking at each of these proposed lines in isolation. It doesn’t seem like we’re focused on making a system for the Twin Cities.

I know that plans are out there for successive lines and how it all fits together, but the discussion of this particular alignment needs to take into account the larger vision, otherwise I can just imagine that the public hearing will come down to a lot of bickering.

It is good to see that we’re moving forward with additional lines though!