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Inquiring minds want to know ...
There are a lot of questions about this project that remain unanswered.
STRIDE hopes that curious neighbors, enterprising reporters, and
honest politicians consider the following set of questions (and
try to find answers to them):
1 - Who is Smith-Parker? why are they involved in just about every
single transportation project in South Minneapolis? Why are they,
a law firm, project managers for a transportation project? aren't
they also legal
counsel to the same corporations that stand to benefit the most
from their project recommendations?
2 - Who made the decision to continue with OSM Consultants when
the privately funded Abbott
Northwestern Transportation Study (of 1997) somehow morphed
into the Phillips Partnership's Access Project? After Smith-Parker
and other project lobbyists secured federal funding - was there
any public bidding process for design services or was the project
simply given to OSM? what about when OSM went out of business and
some of their staff went to work for SEH - was the project then
simply handed over to SEH? - was there any public bidding process
then?
3 - Who decided that this should be an auto-focused transportation
project?
4 - How come the 28th Street flyover is still part of the project?
has any neighborhood requested the construction of a NEW
highway off-ramp to 28th Street?
5 - Why was the PAC forced
to vote in December 2001 to accept Mn/DOT's ultimatum of HOV lane
additions to the project? wasn't that the same thing that Mn/DOT
had tried to ram down the neighborhoods' throats just a few years
earlier? Smith-Parker representatives at the meeting assured PAC
members that the vote would help secure funding, but as of yet,
Mn/DOT has no money to pay for the $97 million that will be their
share of the $150 million project (and which includes $40 million
to "accommodate" those two additional lanes) - and Hennepin
County has had to offer to provide up-front funding to keep the
project alive - can they even do that?
6 - Why are we spending $45 million to "accommodate"
additional lanes on 35W before citizens have a chance to express
their opinion on this matter? (Mn/DOT says that they won't even
consider building the lanes before 2010) - is it so that ten years
down the road, when neighbors mobilize to oppose the construction
(paving) of these new lanes Mn/DOT can tell them that $45 million
was already spent, and that it would be irresponsible to not make
use of this "investment" and pave the lanes?
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