Dogged by years of construction delays and millions of dollars in cost overruns, the Southwest light-rail line finally has an opening day.

Met Council Chair Robin Hutcheson announced Saturday the 14.5-mile line linking Eden Prairie to downtown Minneapolis will open June 12, 2027.

“There is genuine excitement with an overtone of relief at being this far in the project that we can see that it’s going to happen and carry riders within next year,” Hutcheson said ahead of Saturday’s festivities at the Louisiana Avenue Station. “It’s uplifting for everybody who worked very hard on the project and communities that endured construction. It’s a celebration for all of us.”

The Southwest light-rail line will pass through five cities — Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie. The announcement came nearly 15 years after the line first gained approval. It took almost seven years to build and involved about 5,700 workers.

The project was originally slated to open in 2018 but faced years of construction delays and ballooning costs.

More than a hundred people weathered clouds and light rain to attend Saturday’s ceremony. Bikers pedaled from a nearby trail to stop and grab coffee and barbecue. Parents and their toddlers explored the train and platform with lime-green bags and glasses from Metro Transit, occasionally blaring the train’s horn and ringing its bells.

With opening day now in sight, the route, also known as the Green Line Extension, will feature 16 stations from Southwest Station in Eden Prairie to Target Field in Minneapolis, with an estimated trip time of 32 minutes.

At its groundbreaking in 2018, then-Gov. Mark Dayton said the line would be a critical economic development project and create new jobs, reduce highway congestion and better connect Minnesotans to one another.

“He was right,” Hutcheson said.

Already the line has seen $9.9 billion in development or permitted construction between 2019 and 2024, according to Metro Transit. Another $4.8 billion in development is planned, the agency said.

When the Green Line Extension opens next June, riders will have access to 81,000 jobs and “efficient and reliable” service to get to local and regional destinations such as Methodist Hospital, the Opus Campus, Optum and Dunwoody College, Hutcheson said.

Green Line trains arriving from Eden Prairie will continue through downtown to Target Field and U.S. Bank Stadium and east to downtown St. Paul.

On Saturday, Irene Fernando, chair of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners, shared fond memories of using public transit as a youth with her family, adding that the Green Line extension is an investment in the next generation.

“[Public transit] is a freedom for those who can’t afford a private means of transportation,” she said. “For people living in this corridor, a third of all jobs in the entire region will be reached with no more than one transfer to another high-frequency line. That is a transformational benefit that will change the trajectory for thousands of Minnesota families for generations to come, just like it did for my family.”

Hopkins Mayor Patrick Hanlon, who was first elected in 2021, said he’s spent political capital supporting the line through its dark days. He said he sees the line as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shift the city away from its car-centric growth of the last century and toward dense, walkable design that more closely matches its historic streetcar-era downtown.

“The city of Hopkins was named after a train stop,” he said. “This is returning us home to that train culture.”

The city has spent years and a significant amount of money rolling out a proverbial welcome mat for the train, including a pedestrian-friendly revamp of the road connecting a station with downtown.

Ridership on the new segment of the Green Line is projected to reach 29,000 a day on weekdays and 9.5 million a year by 2035, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

Dennis Johnson, 76, said he’s been waiting for the Green Line extension for 16 years. Johnson has lived in St. Louis Park for two decades, and said the station is a big deal for residents.“I’m excited ... as we age in place, it makes it a lot easier for us to get into the events,” he said.

With the arrival of the Green Line, Metro Transit is proposing to revise several local bus routes in the western suburbs to make it easier to connect with the train and other destinations.

A plan calls for bus routes to be realigned or run more frequently to facilitate connections at nine of the 16 Green Line stations. A new Route 757 would run from Plymouth to downtown Minneapolis along Hwy. 55. And on-demand service could be started in Minnetonka. The agency is accepting feedback through Oct. 4.

“We are looking at how can we make the overall network better across the west metro,” said Katie Roth, Metro Transit’s assistant general manager of planning and project delivery.

The Southwest Light Rail has had its share of snags and plenty of detractors along the way. Originally set to cost $1.25 billion, the price tag swelled to $2.86 billion and cemented its place as one of the state’s most costly public works projects in history.

One of the most problematic aspects of the line was the Kenilworth Tunnel between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles. Concerns about soil movement forced construction to get close to buildings in the corridor. To protect building foundations, a 500-foot secant wall was added to the project, along with other modifications.

The addition of the Eden Prairie Town Center Station and erection of a crash-protection wall separating freight and light-rail trains west of Target Field were among the 622 change orders worth $225 million.

“All of these issues contributed significantly to delays and increased costs,” according to a 2023 Office of Legislative Affairs report.

Tours of a light-rail car and giveaways were part of Saturday’s festivities. Officials also are reminding the public about exercising safety as the project enters its final stage of readiness with testing of signal systems and running trains along the line before it officially opens.

Saturday marked the latest milestone for the project before passenger service begins.

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Visit startribune.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC