Amid all the criticism of Dublin’s new LUAS system, it turns out that a US city built a light rail system of about the same size, for about the same price. But was it worth it? The economist seems to think it might be.
In Minneapolis a light rail was opened on June 26th, it runs for 12 miles, and cost $715m. St.Louis introduced light rail in 1993, the number of passengers was three times the projections, the same was true of Denver, Portland, Dallas, San Diego and Salt Lake City.
Minneapolis council predicts that the light rail will spur the development of 7000 housing units and 19 million square feet of office space.