METRO Green Line Extension (Southwest LRT)

Alignment

The Green Line Extension, long known as Southwest LRT, continues the METRO Green Line about 14.5 miles southwest from Target Field station in downtown Minneapolis to SouthWest Station in Eden Prairie, with 16 new stations. Leaving downtown, the line passes Royalston Avenue/Farmers Market, Bassett Creek Valley, and Bryn Mawr stations, then turns south into the Kenilworth Corridor, a narrow freight right-of-way between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles. There the light rail runs in a roughly half-mile shallow tunnel beside the active freight tracks. It surfaces to serve West Lake Street, then follows the freight and trail corridor west through St. Louis Park (Beltline Boulevard, Wooddale Avenue, Louisiana Avenue) and Hopkins (Blake Road, Downtown Hopkins, Shady Oak). It then turns south through Minnetonka and Eden Prairie (Opus, City West, Golden Triangle, Eden Prairie Town Center) to the SouthWest Station terminus.

West of Target Field, a crash-protection wall roughly a mile long separates the light rail from the adjacent freight line. The scheduled trip from SouthWest Station to Target Field is about 32 minutes, and trains continue through downtown Minneapolis to St. Paul on the existing Green Line. The FTA projects 29,000 weekday riders by 2035.

Updates

2026-09 — Opening date set for June 12, 2027

Met Council Chair Robin Hutcheson announced that passenger service will begin June 12, 2027, nearly 15 years after the project was approved and after almost seven years of construction. The current cost is $2.86 billion, compared with an original estimate of $1.25 billion. The project has had 622 change orders totaling $225 million, including the Eden Prairie Town Center station and the freight crash-protection wall. Metro Transit is proposing bus changes at 9 of the 16 stations.

2025-10 — Train testing begins

With construction 95% complete, light rail vehicles began running on the extension for track, signal, and systems testing, which was expected to continue through 2026.

2024-01 — Cost rises to $2.86 billion

The estimated cost rose again, to $2.86 billion, and the Met Council and Hennepin County agreed to cover the remaining gap.

2023-03 — Legislative auditor criticizes project management

The Office of the Legislative Auditor found that the Met Council obligated funds it did not have, solicited bids with incomplete specifications, and lacked a contingency plan. A 2023 legislative report said these problems “contributed significantly to delays and increased costs.”

2022-01 — Opening slips to 2027; Kenilworth work paused

The Met Council said the project would cost up to about $2.75 billion and open in 2027, rather than 2023. The same month, tunnel work near the Cedar Isles Condominium in the Kenilworth Corridor was halted after residents reported damage. It resumed in April 2022, after an engineering assessment attributed most of the damage to seasonal temperature effects rather than construction.

2021-07 — Kenilworth tunnel problems drive overruns

Sheet-pile walls for the half-mile Kenilworth tunnel separated underground because of boulders and debris, and crews had to reseal them below the water table. A drilled concrete secant wall had to be added to protect the nearby Calhoun Isles condos. With contaminated soils and a BNSF-required separation wall (about $93 million) also adding costs, the $2 billion project’s main $203 million contingency was nearly used up. The 2023 opening was no longer achievable.

2018-11 — Construction contract awarded and groundbreaking

The Met Council accepted an $800 million civil construction bid from Lunda Construction and C.S. McCrossan, after rejecting earlier bids in 2017 as too costly, and broke ground on November 30, 2018.