For weeks, Midway residents living near the planned site of a professional soccer stadium have scoffed at city forecasts that most fans will arrive at games by light rail or shuttle bus, making new parking facilities and major road improvements unnecessary.

You can add the Metropolitan Council — which runs the light rail trains — and the Minnesota Department of Transportation to the list of skeptics.

Letters to the city from Met Council and MnDOT officials raise questions about traffic congestion and “mode split,” or the different ways fans will access the 21,500-seat stadium off Snelling and University avenues. The city’s recent environmental review estimated that up to 90 percent of stadium visitors will arrive by some way other than car.

“Will people wait 40 minutes in queues of up to 3,000 to board shuttle buses?” said the Met Council, in a written reaction to the city’s environmental review of the stadium plans.

“The document should … discuss whether there are similar stadiums where 45 percent of attendees arrive in shuttles from off-site,” the Met Council said.

On Wednesday St. Paul’s City Council will vote on a 2018 site plan for the stadium, as well as a long-term master plan for the the 35-acre Snelling-Midway development site that includes both the stadium and the Midway Shopping Center. Related Articles Minnesota United FC owner Bill McGuire: It was ‘serendipity’ to end up in St. Paul

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MET COUNCIL CONCERNS

Additional comments from the Met Council run several pages deep. They highlight projections that roughly 6,000 patrons will cross University Avenue to board light rail trains at Snelling Station, a potential safety hazard.

And those trains might already be running at least partly full. “Assuming that full capacity is available for event attendees is highly questionable for weeknight evening games, which will be competing with regular commuter users,” the Met Council pointed out.

A July 5 letter from LisaBeth Barajas, a manager of local planning assistance for the metro’s regional planning organization, highlighted added worries.

“Assumptions appear to be tilted heavily to make the case that very few if any roadway improvements are needed from this massive traffic generator,” Barajas said.

MnDOT officials were expressing similar concerns to city planners as far back as April.

“Snelling Avenue and (Interstate) 94 are heavily congested during peak periods and cannot accommodate significant growth in traffic volumes without large investments,” said Sheila Kauppi, MnDOT’s north area manager, in an April 8 letter to city planner Josh Williams.

In their written responses, city officials explained that the plan is to have 50 to 60 shuttle buses making two or three trips for one hour after a game or major stadium event, or until all patrons have been served.

“For a capacity event, they will have limited other alternatives that will not already be at-capacity,” states the city’s written response to the Met Council. “Currently, event patrons wait this long for (light rail trains) at Vikings and Gopher football games.”

CITY REVIEW FORECASTS 31 PERCENT USING RAIL

The city’s environmental review of the development area — or “Alternative Urban Areawide Review” (AUAR) — forecasts that 31 percent of stadium visitors will come in on Metro Transit’s Green Line light rail and another 40 to 45 percent will use off-site park-and-ride shuttles in the area.

Up to 10 to 15 percent will walk, bike or take a public bus, and roughly 10 to 20 percent will drive to the site. The final report is available at stpaul.gov/SnellingMidwayAUAR.

When a draft first reached the public in early June, the reaction from residents living near the stadium was negative. Dozens of people at a June 7 public meeting expressed concern that crossing Snelling and University avenues is already dangerous. They called public transit projections overstated.

The AUAR was completed by Stantec, the SRF Consulting Group; Phase One Archeology; Wrightson, Johnson, Haddon & Williams; and Braslau & Associates.

Rather than adjust their estimates, city officials have sought to assure the public and other government agencies that some 3,400 private, large-lot parking stalls are within walking distance — or 3/4-mile — of the stadium, and many of them could be accessed on game nights. City planners say discussions with the owners of those lots are ongoing.

“When we get closer to game day, we expect there will be new opportunities that we couldn’t rely on today when we completed the (environmental review),” said Jonathan Sage-Martinson, the city’s planning director.

A demonstrative map of nearby parking lots recently presented to the Lexington-Hamline Community Council raised alarm.

“Even a cursory review of this map suggests serious problems,” said Lex-Ham executive director Amy Gundermann, in a July 6 letter to the St. Paul Planning Commission. “The commission has drastically over-estimated the parking available and under-estimated the number of cars that will need accommodation for events. … (Adjacent) neighborhoods will overflow with unplanned-for traffic and parking.”

Pointing to the example of Concordia University, Gundermann said the “limited parking available on campus routinely overflows into the surrounding Lexington-Hamline neighborhood for Concordia’s own, much smaller events.”

Williams, the city planner, on Monday said the map was not intended to illustrate parking that is immediately available.

“It was intended to visually represent the size of those parking lots,” he said. “It was ‘these are where those institutions are located.'”

TRAFFIC BACKUPS COULD BECOME THE NORM

Development of the 21,500-seat soccer stadium is expected to jump-start redevelopment of the Midway Shopping Center, which is home to a Rainbow Foods grocer that will be torn down to make room for the stadium itself.

While plans to convert the strip mall into hundreds of new residences, offices, retailers and a hotel could take a decade or more to come together, the combination of stadium events and new real estate could eventually lead to long lines of cars queuing onto the interstate.

Looking nearly 20 years out to full build-out, the AUAR report finds that traffic backups lasting well over an hour could become the norm, with congestion gridlocking a number of intersections such as Snelling at Concordia Avenue. For a capacity event, on-site parking along Snelling could take almost two hours to clear in 2035, the report found.

Major League Soccer fans and city officials continue to point to the experience of cities such as Seattle and Portland, where stadium visitors arrive on public transportation by the droves. Some make a ritual of it, complete with songs, cheers and a march from the street to the stands.

When a match-up of Chelsea and Milan, two popular European soccer teams, drew a sell-out crowd of 64,000 fans to U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Aug. 3, “there were 13,700 people who rode transit to and from the game,” Sage-Martinson said. “A lot of people took transit to the game. That’s a good thing.”

Sage-Martinson said Metro Transit, the Met Council, Minnesota United, the city, MnDOT and other partners plan to jointly develop a transportation plan. The plan will be adjusted over time as new real estate is constructed and parking patterns emerge. “It’s ongoing,” he said.