"Now Everyone Wants a Train"

However, the Metropolitan Council found that revenues from the motor vehicle sales tax would be much less than expected, due mostly to a drop in car sales. The result was a hole in the regional public-transit budget—which includes Metro Transit buses, suburban providers such as the Southwest Transit bus lines, the Hiawatha light-rail trains, and Metro Mobility—of $23.2 million for the 2008–2009 biennium. Pawlenty’s proposed budget would plug that hole by dedicating revenue from the sales tax on leased vehicles (which weren’t covered in the transportation amendment) to highways and public transit, with 38 percent going to metro-area transit. That would gradually generate as much as $90 million per year by 2010.

Many public-transit advocates want the Metropolitan Council’s 2030 blueprint for regional transit (including the Southwest light-rail line) enacted by 2020 to meet growing needs. But that would require an estimated $276 million in additional annual funding. To help generate it and provide a less volatile revenue stream than vehicle sales taxes, Senator Steve Murphy (DFL–Red Wing) and Representative Ron Erhardt (R-Edina) proposed this year a half-cent sales tax increase for the seven-county metro area to finance new rail and bus lines as part of a larger transportation-funding package. Proponents say it would generate about $226 million in its first year, 2008. If passed by the legislature, the measure will go before Minnesota voters this fall—that is, if it overcomes the governor’s veto, which wasn’t likely as of early May.

There’s also a business constituency whose objections must be overcome. In a recent message to members, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce President David Olson noted that his organization opposes the half-cent regional sales-tax boost for public transit (though it does support a five cent per gallon increase in the gas tax for more roads). Olson wrote: “The sales tax alone, if imposed only in the metro counties, is projected to generate up to $345 million this biennium. The significance? Business pays 45 percent of all sales taxes.”

Long-term solutions cost money now, but their visible benefits are typically far in the future. That’s where the political polarities regarding funding collide. And in that sense, perhaps not everything changed when the Hiawatha line opened for business.

McLaughlin believes there will be some kind of productive resolution, and the basis for his optimism is the success of the Hiawatha line, which itself took so long to get built.

“We’ve had a great history here of investing in infrastructure—that’s one of the reasons I think we’ve outperformed the national economy on average,” he says. “But it’s time for another generation of investment in transportation infrastructure. I think Hiawatha has proven light rail can work here.” He chuckles: “Even here!”