Gov. Mark Dayton's administration is on course to spar with Republican lawmakers this year -- and maybe some DFLers, at least behind the scenes -- over a raft of proposed taxes and fees to cover road repair and public transit. There's more on that brewing transportation debacle here.
The outcome of those free-for-alls negotiations will have a big impact on Ramsey County's vision for an interconnected web of light rail, streetcar, commuter rail and bus rapid transit corridors, not to mention a hefty backlog of road reconstruction projects.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation put two posters on display during a Jan. 26, 2015 open house at Hamline University focusing on the Snelling Avenue resurfacing project.
Ramsey County Commissioner Rafael Ortega on Monday repeated his call for equal funding for transit and road repair in the east metro.
Ortega said without the county’s annual $10 wheelage tax on motor vehicles, two county road repair projects underway in his St. Paul-based district might not have gotten off the ground, despite being in need of work for more than a decade.
The Randolph Street and Ford Parkway reconstructions are the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to pent-up street repair. “The list is a long list, as it is throughout the state,” said Ortega, who chairs the county’s Regional Railroad Authority.
Ortega said state lawmakers and the Metropolitan Council should spread transit investment beyond the proposed Southwest Line and Bottineau Lines in the west metro, and keep in mind the Gateway, Rush Line, Robert Street and Riverview transit corridors in the east metro.
“We need balanced investment in the east metro area, regardless of what eventually is the outcome of the legislative session,” Ortega said.
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