Statement on the Hennepin County Board's $2.254 Billion Funding Commitment to the METRO Blue Line Extension

Today, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners voted to increase the county's funding commitment to the METRO Blue Line Extension to a not-to-exceed amount of $1.896 billion. That commitment will be met entirely through the county's 0.5% transportation sales and use tax and associated financings. Acting as the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority, we committed an additional $358 million, the maximum contribution allowed under state law. Together, that is $2.254 billion.

The Blue Line Extension was first raised in the 1980s (literally), and having lived in my North Minneapolis home since 2006, this project was the first community meeting I attended 20 years ago. 

I am very proud to vote in favor of the largest single investment in public transit in Minnesota, especially during a time of compressed resources and compounding needs, because we will not shrink our way into the future our kids deserve and our elders have earned. 

Hennepin County is 22% of the state's population and over 40% of the social safety net. With today's action, Hennepin's contribution has formally increased from the $530.1 million committed in 2017 to 63% of the total project budget in 2026 — which will address climate action, expand regional transit, grow the tax base, and connect people to education, jobs, health, and more.

This is an essential Hennepin County action in order for the Metropolitan Council to submit its Full Funding Grant Agreement application to the Federal Transit Administration for $752 million later this year. Federal law requires local partners to prove their commitment first. Today we proved ours.

I enthusiastically voted yes.

Who this train is for

The Blue Line Extension is a 13-mile Light Rail line connecting downtown Minneapolis to North Minneapolis, Robbinsdale, Crystal, and Brooklyn Park. I live in North Minneapolis and have called Northside home for most of my adult life, so I have watched these communities wait for this service as a neighbor and not only as a commissioner.

This line will serve 83,000 residents living within a half mile of its stations. 60% of them are residents of color. 37% are low-income. Half of the people expected to ride this line come from households with zero cars. They rely on transit to get to work, to see a doctor, and to get their family where they need to go, and our current options are either not taking them far enough or taking far too long. Once this line opens, riders will reach one-third of all jobs in the region with a single transfer to a high-frequency route, 23,000 more jobs than these communities can reach by transit today, and commute times to the University of Minnesota will be twice as fast.

The people this serves are specific: a night-shift health care worker traveling home safely, an elder reliably getting to a health appointment, a mother with grocery bags and a toddler getting home efficiently, a family catching a Lynx game or a show downtown without worrying about parking or a ride home, and new customers finding their way to the businesses along West Broadway.

Who rides tells us everything about who has been waiting. The communities along this corridor are among the most racially diverse and economically disinvested in our state, and they have endured the consequences of redlining and a century of transit planning that prioritized commuters who could choose transit over neighbors who need transit. That is not an accident. We have a duty to address it.

Why Light Rail

Transit is a public good, like roads, parks, and 911.

I am a regular bus rider, and this corridor needs all modes: local buses, Bus Rapid Transit, and Light Rail. Bus Rapid Transit brings some investment, but only about a quarter of what Light Rail does. Land near Light Rail generates about 27 times more property tax per acre than an average parcel, roughly $156,000 per acre compared to about $6,000 for the regional average.

Riders in this corridor also need speed, reliability through a Minnesota winter, and the certainty that the train will be there. Light Rail delivers that. A bus in mixed traffic does not. Rail is also permanent in a way a bus route is not, because a route can be cut or rerouted while a rail line changes how a community builds for the long term.

The investment Light Rail brings will change the trajectory of this corridor for generations to come.

What this investment returns

Rail doesn't just move people. It attracts people and investment, grows the tax base, and creates economic opportunity that lasts for decades.

More than $14 billion has been invested near Twin Cities light rail lines. $10.9 billion of that is within Hennepin County, generating $186 million in property tax revenue every year for cities, schools, and the county. Across the 52 existing miles of Light Rail in this region, we have seen $14 billion in development, and the Green Line Extension has generated more than $3 billion before carrying a single rider.

That matters to homeowners who will never board this train. New development puts more shoulders under the same load, so an individual portion can shrink, or hold steady even when levies increase, while that same growth generates more resources for schools, parks, and community services. Around Prospect Park Station on the Green Line, redeveloped land increased total property tax contributions nearly fifteen times over 17 years, while existing homes in that same neighborhood saw their taxes grow at half the regional pace. The new development did not burden neighbors. It relieved them.

The reverse is visible right now in downtown Minneapolis, where commercial values have fallen almost 35% since 2022. When a tax base shrinks, someone else covers the difference, and the homeowner portion of taxes in Minneapolis has jumped from 47% to 56% in five years. Building a new and bigger tax base along this corridor is how we push back.

A levy is not a number on a spreadsheet. Levies fund teachers, snowplow drivers, and social workers. Levies fund essential services, libraries, and emergency response. When we grow what we have to work with, we can give our neighbors what they have asked for without asking stretched families to give even more.

That is what a public good does.

Who this investment protects

Large-scale investments have historically pushed people out, so we built protections in from the start. The Blue Line Extension is the first transit project in the nation to incorporate anti-displacement directly into the project itself. In partnership with the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, a community-led work group met for 18 months and produced 17 policy recommendations for cities, the county, and the Metropolitan Council to act on, from tenant protections to cultural placemaking to direct supports for residents and businesses.

The Minnesota Legislature then created the Anti-Displacement Community Prosperity Program in state law, and Hennepin County has administered $2 million in the corridor through it, governed by the residents and business owners with the most at stake. Over the past decade we have invested nearly $24 million in affordable rental projects across 32 developments in these communities.

Current residents and businesses will experience the benefits of this investment rather than being pushed out by it. A public good means nothing if the people it was built for are displaced before they can use it.

About the cost

The Blue Line Extension remains the most affordable federal Light Rail project of its kind, per mile, in the entire country. That has not changed.

In early 2024, when the project was 30% designed, the estimate was $3.24 billion. Today, at 90% design, the official budget is $3.58 billion. That is $336 million more, and we have already identified funds to close the majority of that gap. This number has been through rigorous federal review. It is the most accurate and thoroughly vetted budget this project has ever had, and it carries a 32% built-in contingency.

The project budget increased from initial estimates because we listened to residents. Cities and communities along this corridor formally asked us for real changes that will make the project stronger, and we made them: a new station at Washington and West Broadway, a stop designed for North Memorial hospital and enhanced park amenities, better road connections in the North Loop, and a construction schedule built around minimizing impact to homes and businesses rather than around speed. None of that was in the original plan. All of it came from genuine engagement with the people this project is supposed to serve.

Today's action commits $1.896 billion in county transportation sales tax toward that budget, 52.9% of the total. The Regional Railroad Authority commits an additional $358 million, its statutory maximum. The Metropolitan Council will seek $752 million from the Federal Transit Administration. The county has already budgeted $326 million toward this project and spent $132.8 million.

Work remains to close the balance, and this Board directed staff to keep at it: MnDOT participation, light rail vehicle strategies, contingency reductions, available federal sources, and a legislative push for a sales tax exemption on construction materials for this project. The Metropolitan Council has also committed $56 million in savings from the Green Line Extension.

Over the past few years this project has gotten better, more real, and more accountable to the people it's for. The Blue Line is being built the right way.

Thirty years of not quitting

For decades the plan was to run the line along the BNSF Railway corridor, and after 30 years the railroad said no. We were disheartened. We were also determined to keep this project alive. Over 18 months, Hennepin County and the Metropolitan Council held nearly 18,000 recorded conversations with residents along the corridor. A new route emerged from those conversations, and we made it stronger than the option we lost: the old alignment bypassed neighborhoods that are now prioritized, and Light Rail will take you to the heart of North Minneapolis rather than past it.

In 2022, the new route was accepted. In 2023, Hennepin County unanimously approved $75 million to keep work moving. In 2024, every city on the corridor voted yes: Minneapolis, Crystal, Robbinsdale, and Brooklyn Park. In 2025, the federal government signed off on our final environmental review. This June, the project completed its federal rating application and risk assessment, establishing our official budget of $3.58 billion. And today, the Hennepin County Board committed $2.254 billion to the project.

Thirty years and more than 46,000 conversations since 2020 have brought us here. This is a once-in-a-generation project built by extraordinary community persistence, and I have been proud to fight for it.

What comes next

When I committed to this new alignment in 2020, I said this Light Rail line is more than just a project to advance. It is a commitment to the residents and communities along the corridor for robust engagement and economic investment for years and decades to come. Today's vote funds that commitment.

What comes next is the Full Funding Grant Agreement. The Metropolitan Council submits the federal application, and that agreement secures the federal commitment. Today's vote is the local partner doing what the federal government requires before it will consider us.

The riders alone justify this train, but everyone will benefit. Because while money flowed out of these communities for a hundred years, building this train will make it flow back in. Our obligation now is to build it on time, on budget, and to make sure the same communities who fought for this trajectory-changing project, get to use it.