A Somalian woman enters the train at Cedar Riverside, a stop on the Blue Line.
Credit: Mark Peterson/Redux Pictures/Politico Magazine

ST. PAUL, Minn.—When the first light-rail trains set out between Minneapolis and St. Paul, the two cities threw a party 11 miles long. At the ribbon-cutting in downtown St. Paul, politicians proclaimed their hopes that the new Green Line would re-twin the Twin Cities, bridging an old rivalry. At a stop on the University of Minnesota’s campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders mingled with the crowd, and the university’s Goldy the Gopher mascot posed for photos. And along St. Paul’s University Avenue, at the stations that almost didn’t get built, people of every color joined the party: a Hmong dance troupe in St. Paul’s Little Mekong district and African-immigrant restaurateurs in a tented food-court stop two miles west.

More than 45,000 people rode the Green Line on its first day, June 14, 2014—the first time trains had connected the Twin Cities’ downtowns in more than 60 years. The $957 million project […]

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