Although not intended as a summer blockbuster with a Hans Zimmer film score and a title that leaps off any screen, “Drone Tour of the Green Line Extension Alignment” does showcase remarkable views of the project’s progress.
The Met Council’s 32-minute, 41-second aerial video of the 14.8-mile light rail project had its YouTube premiere on Wednesday, July 17. Footage recorded by high-definition drone cameras flew over the entire route in May. Multiple video takes were edited together to form what seems like a single flight.
Cars, vans, and trucks scurry alongside, over, and under the LRT tracks along Flying Cloud Drive from Technology Drive to Interstate 494 and Valley View Road. A stretch in St. Louis Park captures a Twin Cities & Western freight train headed toward Eden Prairie. It also shows the completed railroad track realignments and bridges near the Louisiana Avenue Station.
A progressive tour map shows the exact location of the drone flight throughout the video. View the YouTube presentation here.
The video begins over the eastern parking ramp at SouthWest Station and the Elevate Apartments and follows the curved span over Prairie Center Drive. Eight minutes and 40 seconds later, the drone flies over Minnetonka. It shows not only the LRT tracks and Eden Prairie’s three other stations, passenger drop-offs, parking lots, traction power systems, cross switches, and traffic signals, but also project-associated street improvements, scores of new businesses, residential projects, and landscaping.
In late 2018, the clearing of brush along the alignment of what was then branded Southwest Light Rail (SWLRT), began the largest public works project in Minnesota’s history. It has certainly been the single largest construction project of any kind in Eden Prairie. During the pandemic in September 2020, EP Public Works Director Robert Ellis noted that 28 construction cranes had been operated that year to build the city’s three LRT bridges, four stations, an additional parking ramp at SouthWest Station and a train tunnel.
The Metro Green Line Extension is slated to carry passengers in 2027. They will likely find the Eden Prairie-Minnetonka stretch to be the line’s most scenic. It crosses over the project’s longest bridges with striking views of highways, forested hills, Nine Mile Creek, ponds, wetlands, and residential neighborhoods.
The new video is not a quick-paced, digital animation of a decade-old envisioned plan. It is a slower, “real-time” document of what the project looked like this spring. It also provides flyovers of completed LRT work in Hopkins and St. Louis Park, as well as the troubled Kenilworth Corridor and tunnel in Minneapolis.
The challenging work of snaking light rail infrastructure through a downtown landscape of freeways, local streets, freight rail lines, factories, parks, and regional bike and hike trails is nearly complete. The seldom-mentioned outdoor amphitheater and grassy plaza named “The Great Lawn” at Target Field Station are perhaps the surprise ending of the new release.
The surprise for future rail passengers headed to SouthWest Station is Purgatory Creek Lake and its array of trail loops.
Editor’s note: Writer Jeff Strate is a founding member of the Eden Prairie Local News (EPLN) Board and served on the Community Advisory Committee of the SWLRT project.
More information on the Metro Green Line Extension project can be read here.
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