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Stransky is working now to organize a committee with other business owners who oppose light rail. He hopes to help raise public awareness about what light rail would do to establishments like his. He feels that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages and that light rail will do damage to his business.

“We won’t be here,” Stransky said. “We’ll be out of business.”

For several area residents, the threat of light rail is a threat to their bus service, said Susan Mercurio and Dianne Nakajima.

“I love the bus service,” said Nakajima, a 14-year resident of the Midway area and a loyal bus rider. “It’s cozy and warm in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer. I take the bus every day to work.”

Nakajima depends on the bus as her mode of transportation and worries that the light rail would not only cut back on the buses she uses, but would also put many of her bus drivers out of business, she said.

Mercurio, a six-year Midway resident, also depends on the buses for transportation, and she is disappointed that those in charge of planning the Central Corridor light rail did not address the concerns of those in the neighborhood, she said.

“The Minnesota Department of Transportation or whoever does this did not take into account the needs of the pedestrians,” she said. “What to them is a transit corridor is our neighborhood, it’s our home.”

Mercurio would like to see the light rail put in on I-94 as an elevated transit system instead of along University, she said.

“If you want to have your little toy so you can show that you’re up with the big boys in Chicago, then put your little toy down the middle of I-94 where the people who you feel are you constituency are already driving their stupid cars bumper to bumper and stay out of our neighborhood,” she said.

Matt Clark, a longtime resident of St. Paul and a banker in Minneapolis, also has strong feelings about putting the light rail elsewhere. Clark supports the light rail between St. Paul and Minneapolis, but not as it was proposed, he said.

Clark agrees with Mercurio that a better idea would be to put it down I-94, he said. But he also thinks that Pierce Butler Route should be considered, as well as a subway down University, instead of the light rail.
He fears that as it is, it will be unfriendly to pedestrians.

“It won’t be friendly crossing a five-lane street,” he said. “It’s not something I’d want to do with my little ones or my wife.”

Susan Pilon, another Midway resident, feels that a light rail system down University would not solve the congestion problem on I-94. She feels that those who advocate the light rail are trying to manipulate the lives of the residents, she said.

“My hope for the future is that they will actually find a solution to the traffic congestion in our freeways so that we can thrive as a friendly, viable neighborhood and have economic growth that suits the neighborhood,” she said.