In an article posted online Monday, Red Wing Republican Eagle's Michael Brun reports in County Board adopts Comprehensive Plan update that the Goodhue County Board has signaled that the North American High Speed Rail Group need to know what every frisky college student learns during freshman orientation: silence doesn't mean yes.
Brun reports in his lede:
Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an update to the Goodhue County Comprehensive Plan, the first substantial revision in 12 years to the document that outlines the county’s vision for land use and future growth. Among the changes is a paragraph clarifying that land uses not mentioned in the plan should not be assumed to have the county’s support.
“So say a group advocating for, oh I don’t know, a Zip Rail project decided to say that, ‘Well, since Goodhue County does not explicitly take a stand against it, then we’re assuming that they’re for it,’” Board Chair Dan Rechtzigel said. “They can no longer make that statement.”
The plan also has a line requiring that new or proposed rail systems must provide a benefit to the county.
While Wendy Meadley has tried to make the case that a privately-funded rail line is freed from regulatory review and data practices requests, Adam Platt reported in Can a high-speed rail line from Rochester to the Twin Cities be built without any public money?:
Assuming NAHSR moves forward and can raise sufficient capital, it still faces hurdles, say observers. The lack of public funding makes capital acquisition simpler; the same may not necessarily be true for capital deployment, however.
Opponents will be relieved to learn the Rochester train will face the same onerous, time-consuming, and lawsuit-inducing environmental reviews as a public project. “The environmental review is based on scope of the project, not who’s doing it,” says University of Minnesota law professor Alexandra Klass. (The U.S. Surface Transportation Board recently said it would take three years to complete environmental study of a proposed freight railroad bypass around Chicago.)
Fly-over counties aren't getting anymore friendly, either.
Image: The zombie ziprail project never seems to die.
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