urbanMSP

If you're part of the "Amtrak's Borealis Train" group on Facebook, there is a photo and a video of the eastbound Empire Builder and westbound Borealis occupying both tracks/platforms at the same time in Columbus, WI. The platforms are being reconstructed there, so only one train had been a...

I couldn't read the whole thing either, but the audio version gave the hint they were looking at Amtrak's Monthly Progress Reports (near the bottom of the page). The May 2024 report shows the train had operating expenses of roughly $500k, with revenue of $600k, but that doesn't really mean the train...

The Wisconsin Association of Rail Passengers (WisARP) obtained ridership figures for the first 11 days of Borealis service in May, and it averaged 604 riders per day (329 westbound, 275 eastbound, a difference apparently expected due to the schedules vs. the Empire Builder). With a bit under 300 sea...

It's good news that Amtrak says the ridership is high enough for them to talk about another train, though I wish there was a bit more detail about what that means. Since the Borealis is an extended Hiawatha train, you can look at some of those existing trips to see what else might be good candidates...

Relatedly, I think that the highway river crossings in the Twin Cities need to have local bus stops at either end, and some guaranteed minimum level of service across. The transit service that exists is often only commute-time express service to one of the downtowns.

At some point I hope to write a blog post about it, but the easiest extension of Northstar (aside from going to St. Cloud, which I feel is more an issue of money and political will than anything) would be to continue west from Target Field on the BNSF Wayzata Subdivision line. It only carries about ...

Some recent Borealis trips have been running with a Horizon cafe car instead of the Amfleet one, making it harder to distinguish from the Hiawatha trains that often consist of all-Horizon cars . I made another blog post, this time looking at the areas in Winona, La Crescent, and La Crosse where the ...

I put together a blog post about curvature along the river. My mind keeps waffling back and forth about how much speed can be attained there since I don't have enough detail about actual track conditions and vehicle quality, but a 5 to 10 mph speed boost seems possible at the stroke of a pen, and ge...

Looking at the La Crosse County property map , it looks like the big properties along the current river crossing are Xcel Energy (NSP), the river barge port (F.J. Robers & Co. appears to be the same folks as J and T Noyes LLC, which appears to lease the land to a few different companies), and a ...

I don't know specifically what is limiting so much of it to 65 mph these days. You can look at the Location History tab of older runs of trains like this fairly ideal eastbound run on June 11th to see what I mean. Trains can run about 70 mph between the inner suburbs of St. Paul and the approach to ...

As far as I know, you don't need a fully-sealed corridor without any grade crossings until you want to go above 110 mph, though of course it's a good idea to aim for that for safety reasons anyway. It's not really clear to me what's required for 90-mph operation. I'd assume all grade crossings need ...

Yeah, I've been wondering what it would take to improve speed, since the Borealis is getting hit by delays at a few spots on the route which would be recoverable if it could just go a bit faster elsewhere. I can see with train tracker apps that it's generally running at a full 79 mph through Wiscons...

It sure would be interesting if Amtrak could make an arrangement to pull spare cars from the commuter railroads across the country and supplement their limited capacity. 10% of the US BiLevel fleet would be like 47 cars, or you could get close to triple that if it's possible to pull from Canada (con...

In terms of when the line might open, this is like trying to coordinate a party to celebrate the graduations of a group of a dozen 11th-graders and one 9th-grader. I have not heard of anything opening early, and am reluctant to say that anything will actually happen. Still, I'd definitely encourage ...

I made a more detailed post on the Empire Builder / Borealis thread , but I figured I should mention platform upgrades and other ADA compliance updates are apparently underway in St. Cloud or set to start soon. Hopefully that would make it easier for Northstar to use the station, since it should inc...

Amtrak stations all over the country are getting their platforms rebuilt, along with lighting updates, fixes to other walkways, signage, and changes to their parking lots. This is to bring them into ADA compliance. I had noticed that changes were being done at Columbus station, where it appears to h...

Yeah, only on the move for 2 hours each day on average for the pre-pandemic schedule. Now presumably up to 3.5 hours each day for the two that run (though of course they're probably rotated on a daily basis).

People see Northstar's low overall ridership and think that means the trains have always been empty, but that's pretty much the opposite of the truth. It's actually been a very strong performer in terms of number of passengers per train, and held its own on that metric despite the extreme service cu...

I guess I had it in my head that it would cost something wild like $100 million or more to extend the service to Minneapolis, but that seems not to be the case from this 2015 TCMC study (first link in the "Studies" section on MnDOT's Borealis page ). On page 23, it only lists the things yo...

I mostly just wish we had a proper regional/commuter rail system here that would let people shuttle between the various options easily, and we wouldn't be debating the path to use for a single magical leftover. Historically, trains ran through in multiple different ways, and intercity buses still do...