The first rule of holes

The old saying goes -- if you're in a hole, stop digging. Of course, if you're the Met Council, digging is the next option:

Planners of the embattled Southwest Corridor light-rail line unveiled a new strategy Wednesday for digging a tunnel under a water channel to win over Minneapolis critics and end an impasse that threatens to scuttle the largest transit project in the Twin Cities.

The latest option could keep light-rail trains out of sight in the popular Kenilworth recreation corridor but add as much as $85 million to the cost of the project and bring it to over $1.6 billion.

The Metropolitan Council, the agency overseeing the light-rail project, disclosed the new tunnel option Wednesday to a group of metro leaders without endorsing it. Met Council Chairwoman Susan Haigh issued a statement saying her agency considered the option last year but rejected it as “a less desirable alternative” than other plans.

So we're up to $1.6 billion for this thing now. Great. And of course, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges isn't sure she likes it, either:

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, who wasn’t at the meeting, issued a statement calling the latest option “a brand new, and therefore, unstudied idea that is being put on the table three weeks before I’m supposed to vote” on the light-rail project. She questioned whether the tunnel would harm the channel, Lake of the Isles or Cedar Lake.

Or her political prospects. Onward:

Tunneling under the channel was proposed last summer at a rally of about 100 people on the shore of Cedar Lake in Kenilworth corridor, an affluent area that includes influential DFLers. Some of the leaders have back yards facing the Kenilworth corridor bike and pedestrian trails.

At the time homeowners embraced a channel option that would have contributed $330 million to the cost of the project. When metro leaders shot it down as too expensive, some residents asked the Met Council staff to investigate a cheaper way to tunnel under the channel. The agency said at the time that it considered but wasn’t pursuing the idea.

After all, spending $330 million to avoid the ire of "influential DFLers" is money well spent. And of course we'll all benefit when we can take the Southwest Rail line to places like Roseville and Woodbury. Wait, you mean we can't do that?

Time for another poll:

What should the Met Council do about the Southwest LRT Line? (Multiple answers allowed)
	Build it where it makes sense and screw the "influential DFLers"
	Not build it and disband immediately
	Get back to building sewers in New Market, or something
	Build it so there's a stop in Betsy Hodges's breakfast nook
	Use rapidly emerging Star Trek technology so that trains magically appear in St. Louis Park
	Screw it and get started on the boffo Bottineau Line!
	Fund it all with e-pulltabs
	Pound sand
	Reallocate the money so that every suburb has its own convention center
	Spend the money on something more productive, like hookers and blow
	Dig tunnels in all proposed locations and turn the unused tunnels into a "Hogan's Heroes" theme park
pollcode.com free polls

Operators are standing by.