ENG Full service returns to the METRO Blue Line on Aug. 20, closing the longest shutdown in the light-rail line’s history. Buses replaced trains between Target Field and the Mall of America from June 29 through Aug. 19 while crews rebuilt track and signal systems on the 20-year-old line, the region’s first light-rail route. The work is part of Renew the Blue, a $120 million rehabilitation program covering signal and communications replacement, new rail through curves, tunnels, and grade crossings, and station rebuilds at Lake Street/Midtown and Franklin. Metro Transit has put the track-and-signal package between Cedar-Riverside and Bloomington Central at $101 million. It has not publicly named a design consultant for that work. As the Twin Cities’ first light-rail corridors pass 20 years, state-of-good-repair rebuilds like this one are a growing share of transit capital work, along with the track and signal scope that comes with them.
Sources: Metro Transit, Renew the Blue; Railway Track & Structures
POLICY A 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods paused hours before it took effect. The federal government has delayed the tariff on $20 billion of Canadian imports for three days, after the two countries reached a last-minute deal two hours before the levy was set to start. The measure invokes Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, a Depression-era provision never used before that allows duties up to 50 percent on countries deemed to discriminate against U.S. business, with no investigation required and no time limit. It would cover products making up 5 percent of Canadian exports to the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said “substantial progress” had been made as talks over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement continue. This episode is yet another marker of trade-policy volatility that keeps materials-cost and procurement risk elevated, on top of the Section 232 steel and aluminum actions already in play.
Source: Associated Press, Aug. 18
POLICY A day after the state moved to freeze copper-nickel permitting near the Boundary Waters, Minnesota’s other active nonferrous review is still on the clock. The Department of Natural Resources is taking comments through Sept. 14 on the scope of the environmental-impact statement for the proposed Tamarack nickel-copper mine, an underground project near McGregor that would ship ore to processing plants in North Dakota and Michigan. Tamarack sits outside the 350-square-mile Boundary Waters watershed covered by the Aug. 18 executive order, so its state review continues on the normal track. The scoping documents now open for comment set what the environmental-impact statement will study, which fixes the environmental, geotechnical, and hydrologic scope for the firms that carry the review.
Sources: Minnesota DNR, Tamarack EIS scoping; MPR News, Aug. 18
ENG Entries are open for ACEC Minnesota’s Engineering Excellence Awards. The 2027 program, the 60th, is taking preliminary entries through Oct. 8 and final submissions through Oct. 29, with winners honored at the gala on Feb. 18, 2027, at the McNamara Alumni Center in Minneapolis. The awards have recognized the state’s best consulting engineering work every year since 1967 through an independent cross-sector panel of judges against five criteria. Top projects advance to ACEC’s national competition. Member entries are $1,100. Firms can start a preliminary entry through the program page.
The four-session Emerging Leaders program for early-to-mid-career staff runs this October and November. Sign up before spots fill up!
The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading.