In his December column “BRT or BAS,” Ken Avidor cites the Bottineau Boulevard Northwest Corridor Busway’s recent abandonment of highway median alignment as an example of what I would call “SOV (Single Occupancy Vehicle)” creep. Here is a funded busway project that has literally been kicked off the road by highway engineers trained in a culture of robotic allegiance to SOV expansion in place of multimodal corridor planning. It's time to change this project to rail.

Running a busway alongside an existing rail track that itself has almost no rail traffic is the height of ideological blindness to transportation opportunity. Like the Highway 10 corridor north of the Mississippi, the I-94 corridor south of the Mississippi is experiencing exponential growth. And like the support for Northstar Commuter Rail along Highway 10, commuter rail along I-94 will create a lot more excitement than a busway ever could. Unlike the Northstar Commuter Rail service, Bottineau Commuter Rail would occupy a rail line that at present is only a spur to one or two shippers. There would be no need for the elaborate scheduling and operations negotiations that have been required for Northstar to operate along one of BNSF’s transcontinental trunk lines.

Bottineau Commuter Rail should be built and operated as a cross-river companion to Northstar, since it would serve the same corridor but on the other side of the Mississippi and would prevent future road congestion on Mississippi bridges. Commuters using either line would never have to cross the Mississippi to get to their stations, avoiding bridge bottlenecks that could otherwise arise as highway trip volume increases.

Anti-rail extremists will no doubt scream the usual list of misleading statistics and scare scenarios. But we as a region have grown past that. Hiawatha has been the best light rail roll-out the U.S. has seen in years. There is no genuine debate about whether the Metro wants more rail transit. The question is how fast can we get it, and in how many corridors?

The Legislature this session should require a reconception of the Bottineau (Northwest) Busway project as a commuter rail line, and should provide money to conduct the planning required to obtain federal matching funds.