'An Outrage': SLP Residents Speak Out at Met Council LRT Open House

The Met Council held an open house Thursday evening at St. Louis Park High School to hear residents' input on plans to either co-locate the Southwest LRT Green Line with freight rail or to re-route freight rail lines through the city.

Hundreds of residents sweated through the evening at the high school, many sporting signs opposing the re-route option, to meet with Met Council staff, ask questions, and listen to a presentation.

See what five St. Louis Park residents had to say (below) and click through out photo gallery to see their faces (above).

Francis Schmit, Library Lane

“There are some people who don’t want the train in their backyard—namely Kenilworth—and they want to push it over on us,” he said. “Why not put the bike path over here?”

Schmit said that this issue is “as politically active as I’ve gotten” but said he’d ultimately accept a freight rail relocation decision from the Met Council.

 “You piss and moan and say ‘Goddam government,’ you ‘wawawa,’ say ‘the rich guys win, that’s life,’” he said. 

Bryan Bevell, Yosemite Avenue 

“My kids cross the tracks daily on their way to school,” he said. “It’s an outrage, a thinly veiled ruse to get freight trains out of an affluent neighborhood, and I think the whole city’s paying the price for it.”

Mike Held, “just St. Louis Park”

“I’m here so they won’t destroy my city,” he said. “The whole thing is stupid. It’s cheaper, easier to just co-locate.”

Terri Spencer, Brunswick Avenue and Lake Street

“I’m concerned about the neighborhood and the safety of the kids,” she said.

If the Met Council chooses to reroute the freight rail lines, she said, “I’d have to consider moving because I’m not going to stay and look at a big, huge wall and have trains shaking my foundations all the time.”

Sophia and Kathryn Kottke, Brunswick Avenue near Peter Hobart Elementary

“I’m not sending my kids to school near the freight lines,” Kathryn Kottke said. “The noise is going to be unbelievable.”

Kottke said she worried about the health effects of coal trains, with their arsenic and mercury emissions.

“Why would they do that to children?” she asked.