The corridor has served as an important transportation link in the Twin Cities since territorial days when it connected downtown Saint Paul and Fort Snelling. Streetcars and later buses connected destinations along West Seventh St, the main thoroughfare of the corridor, since 1884. Streetcars were removed in 1952 and from 1998 to 2012 bus service improvements were identified as the preferred alternative with busway and later arterial bus rapid transit projects studied. Renewed study started in 2013 and the results of work done from 2014-2017 identified a modern streetcar system similar to systems in Portland, Kansas City, and Detroit as the locally preferred alternative with an alignment along West Seventh Street and MN-5.