Light rail hoax

Light rail was supposed to cause a development boom in the Hiawatha corridor, but a new study shows that the Blue Line has had little effect on land use near rail platforms in its first six years.

Sarah West, an economics professor at Macalester College, and Needham Hurst, a graduate student at Harvard, found that the Blue Line, which began carrying passengers between the Mall of America and downtown Minneapolis in 2004, caused almost no increase in the likelihood of new development up to 2010. Their new paper is coming out in Regional Science and Urban Economics. 

Study says Blue Line's development impact is minimal | Star Tribune