GOP move to swap Blue Line extension for buses

Republican legislators and Northside business leaders are lining up against the planned Blue Line light‑rail extension from Target Field to Brooklyn Park, arguing it will bulldoze through a predominantly Black business district on West Broadway, wipe out parking and displace hundreds of homes and minority‑owned shops. At a Capitol briefing and House Transportation Committee hearing this week, Rep. Jon Koznick compared the project’s potential impact to the I‑94 construction that destroyed St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood in the 1950s and said North Minneapolis through Brooklyn Park residents "do not want" the rail line in its current form. Koznick is pushing a bill to divert state money away from the extension and into a rapid bus alternative he says would be cheaper, more flexible and less disruptive to the corridor. Hennepin County Commissioner Marion Greene hit back, telling lawmakers that half of projected Blue Line riders come from households without reliable cars and that light rail has the highest ridership and lowest subsidy per rider of any transit mode, with the existing Blue and Green lines already carrying a third of all metro transit trips. The fight puts North Minneapolis and northwest suburbs at the center of a familiar Twin Cities question: whose mobility and whose land get prioritized when big transit dollars are on the table, and what lessons—if any—the region has learned from Rondo‑style "progress."