We have, acting on our behalf, planners and policy activists attempting to create a suspenseful revelation of a new transportation corridor in St. Paul that is not being clamored for. The so-called Riverview Corridor is the pipe dream of elected and unelected bureaucrats who would spend as much as $1.2 billion that does not exist for new transportation that is not needed.

Are you demanding some new means of getting from downtown St. Paul to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport?

As of the middle of last week there were six options on the table to provide new transportation along the Riverview Corridor, none of them having anything to do with a view of the river.

Only one of the options might satisfy the taxpayers who have to continually come up with the funding. Do nothing. This is the best option. Metro Transit would continue to run the route 54 bus down West Seventh Street from downtown to the Mall of America. It stops 26 times. It crosses the river at Minnesota 5. It travels 12.4 miles in 41 minutes.

Apparently that isn’t European enough, or virtuous enough. At $75 million there is a beefed-up bus line with kiosks where you pay for a ticket in advance. Right. It would stop 26 times and follow the same route as route 54 and get there two minutes quicker. No. Plain stupid to save two minutes for $75 million.

Keep in mind that St. Paul residents can already expect property tax increases because St. Paul doesn’t have the money to maintain streets.

At $1 billion we get streetcars. This doozy would even require a new bridge to replace the Minnesota 5 crossing that now exists. God help us. That would get you out there three minutes slower than the route 54 bus.

At $1.2 billion we get a streetcar line as complicated as a da Vinci drawing, as it would somehow wind around in the new Ford Plant site development, which does not yet exist. That would get you to the airport in about an hour.

There were a couple of other billion-dollar options on the table as of the middle of last week.

Let’s cut to the chase.

“My expectation is that we will make a choice in July,’’ Rafael Ortega said earlier this month. Ortega is the chairman of the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority and the Riverview Corridor’s policy committee.

“It’s not only about ridership and cost-effectiveness,’’ Ortega told the Pioneer Press this month. “There are environmental issues and social justice issues. We want to make sure we rank high nationally, and they are all important.’’

Rank high nationally in what, debt?

Ortega has not returned multiple phone calls to explain what he means by social justice issues. Absent him having the courtesy to explain himself, we can only conclude that evil white male Republican capitalists are holding hands across West Seventh Street and not allowing people of color to go to the airport.

One of the problems of our modern political life is that we are held captive to the expensive whims of the self-appointed guardians of virtue who issue their rulings from the salon. They don’t deal in reality, thus Ortega’s preposterous and careless belief that “it’s not only about ridership and cost-effectiveness.’’

Yes it is. Down here on the street where we pay the bills, that is exactly all it is about. We can’t afford another billion dollars here and a billion dollars there so that Rafael Ortega can go to some conference in San Diego or Miami and tell his soulmates that he got her done in St. Paul. Related Articles Soucheray: Defund the police! Wait, where’d the police go?

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Ortega represents District 5 on the Ramsey County Board, the neighborhoods of Capitol Heights, Dayton’s Bluff, Downtown, Highland Park, Macalester-Groveland, Railroad Island, West Seventh and West Side.

Are you willing to cough it up for Ortega? Maybe you should call him. If enough people call, somebody is bound to get a return call. After all, he works for you.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray is heard from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 1500ESP