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Whether It’s Rail or Roads, We Have to Pay for Right-of-Way
My former Star Tribune colleague Pat Doyle reported this week on how lawyered-up property owners are extracting higher payments for parcels of land needed for the Central Corridor light rail project. Pat's a terrific reporter and his article cast useful light on the complications involved in assembling right-of-way for transportation infrastructure. But it may have left a wrong, or incomplete, impression on some readers.
"The whole damn thing's a waste of taxpayers' money," KSTP owner Stanley Hubbard was quoted about the Central Corridor. Now, you could take that as rich irony coming from someone who used hardball tactics to collect nearly $16,000 more than the government's initial offer for a narrow strip of KSTP land along University Avenue. Or you could take it at face value, yet more proof of the "folly" of rail transit.
In fact, it's not at all unusual for landowners to drive the hardest bargain they can on property for public facilities of all kinds, including roads. To be sure, in the crowded commercial corridor where the Central tracks are being laid, land commands a higher price than that needed for new or widened roads in the suburbs and beyond. Plus, there may be no alternative routes to bypass a recalcitrant owner's property. And with more money at stake, bargaining can be tougher. About 75 percent of land acquisitions for highways settle before condemnation is filed, compared with 60 percent for the Central, said Robert Brown, director of land management for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
"We use the same process to acquire right-of-way for both roads and light rail," Bryan Dodds, a MnDOT official quoted in the Strib article, told me in a telephone interview. "And I don't know if people do better or worse with an attorney."
But our strong system of property rights, including a requirement that public agencies pay the landowner's legal and appraisal fees if a court awards 20 percent more than was offered, certainly encourages people to hire one and hold out for more. Even folks like Stanley Hubbard, who stands to reap a wonderful win-win: a bigger chunk of taxpayers' money for a bit of land up front, and more valuable remaining property when the trains start running past KSTP's door. As the Soviet-born comedian Yakov Smirnoff said, "What a country!"
Photo credit: Dan Hendricks, creative commons
Posted in Transportation | Related Topics: Central Corridor Light Rail Roads & Highways Transportation Funding