Northstar Commuter Rail

[twincitizen]

Ugh, I hope neither of those things happen any time soon. Can we focus on improving the transit system within the 7-county area first?

[UptownSport]

I agree- Halfway. I think Northstar needs to be finished-
Looking at St. Cloud's population versed with other city's (that are demanding True HSR), versed with distance to metro really changed my mind. As these guys say, it's now a train that goes to a cornfield ...

Interestingly, there was a post (lost I think in recent days) where an (old) train IS making the trip to Duluth-
I think Duluth to MSP is more pleasure than commuter, so this old choo-choo would be just what the doctor ordered!

Bill to extend this to St Cloud was introduced, as was one for the NLX

Thanks!!! Is there a way to 'follow' Bill progress- News or State website?

[MNdible]

It's been said before, but why should we be building an expensive train so people can commute from St. Cloud? Is this really sound transportation policy?

[beykite]

I think its more about creating a sound inter city rail system. It could take a lot of college kids off 94 as well...

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/status ... t_topic=GO

Not sure if thatll show as a link, I'm on my phone. Both bills can be found on that page, I'm sure you can sign up for email updates. Better yet though email your representitives and tell them how you feel.

[Andrew_F]

While a good chunk of Northstar's STC to MSP ridership on day 1 may be commuters, the idea is that long-term it won't be. It will be people visiting friends, visiting attractions, going to once a month meetings, ect. Having a regional rail network is almost as important as having an urban one, IMO, and significantly more important than having a suburban one. Improve transit in the 7 county metro? As far as I'm concerned most of that 7 county metro can rot. There's no reason to waste money on building rail to Eden Prairie or Maple Grove to subsidize and justify the existence of such places. If people want to screw everyone else over by living in the middle of nowhere, we should not be supporting that.

[MNdible]

I'm sorry you don't like the SW suburbs, but there are more jobs located there than anywhere outside of downtown Minneapolis. I think it makes sense to serve these locations with high-quality transit and piggy-back on the investments the metro area has already made, and to encourage a higher density of jobs and housing in an area that can effectively and efficiently be served by frequent transit service.

Northstar will never be able to do this. It's commuter rail, running necessarily low-frequency service over a very long sparsely populated route. Yes, it's true that occasionally it will be used by a college student or a day visitor, but these will always make up a low percentage of its users.

Hopkins (and even Eden Prairie) is not the middle of nowhere. Neither are Becker, Big Lake, or Rice -- but they're closer.

[beykite]

I don't know where all the hate for inter-city rail is coming from... But no one is saying they're going to fund this over the SW LRT so I'm not sure why that argument is being made. Connecting the larger MSA's in the state to the Twin Cities via inter-city rail would be great, I'm not sure of too many arguments against it other than cost. You wouldn't just have "the occasional college student" You'd have people going both ways for vacations and day trips (MOA, downtown bars, ect), you'd get riders going to/from MSP, you'd get business travel, commuters going to both St Cloud and Minneapolis, and hopefully someday you'd get people connecting to Chicago and Rochester.

It's been said before, but why should we be building an expensive train so people can commute from St. Cloud? Is this really sound transportation policy?

Train or no train people are going to commute from St Cloud if they want to. When I was at school in Mankato my one Urban Studies teacher commuted from Maple Grove 4 times a week, people do stupid things. If they're going to do it its better they at least do it via mass transit as opposed to in a car alone on 94. Like I said though I think the idea is to eventually have this operate less like a commuter rail line and more like an inter-city line, with the possibility of someday extending to Fargo or Winnipeg.

Like DaPerpKazoo said, having a solid regional rail network could be a boon to the region and give us a competitive edge over other metros and states. All this being said I think its very unlikely the bill will pass anyways.

[UptownSport]

The line is there, it's somehow kept above abject failure in the half complete state.
Since St. Cloud is so large, and relatively close to MSP, and there's a track halfway- It should be finished and give it a chance to really sing!!

I kinda feel the same, why are we promoting sprawl? Do the core up to a high standard first
and I admire the bitterness in these words:

Improve transit in the 7 county metro? As far as I'm concerned most of that 7 county metro can rot. There's no reason to waste money on building rail to Eden Prairie or Maple Grove to subsidize and justify the existence of such places. If people want to screw everyone else over by living in the middle of nowhere, we should not be supporting that.

[Suburban Outcast]

Train or no train people are going to commute from St Cloud if they want to. When I was at school in Mankato my one Urban Studies teacher commuted from Maple Grove 4 times a week, people do stupid things.

This is off-topic, but all of the Urban Studies teachers (at least the ones I had) at MNSU commuted from somewhere in the Twin Cities it seemed (in places like Chaska and Minneapolis, so whenever there was crappy weather, they cancelled their classes ).

I wonder if there are SCSU professors that live in the Twin Cities that would use Northstar if they could, along with students who have family in the cities. MNSU to me was a suitcase college in a way, because many students went home during the weekends, so I assume SCSU is similar. How much would it cost to expand the line, given they have to duplicate the track from Big Lake to Becker which seems like one of the biggest obstacles. $200 million or even more? Would a station in Sauk Rapids near their downtown be beneficial to the line? If anything I would like to see St. Cloud's current Amtrak station to act like a multi-modal station connected to the local bus system for downtown, while East St. Cloud could be considered a station geared towards SCSU students.

[MNdible]

I kinda feel the same, why are we promoting sprawl? Do the core up to a high standard first
and I admire the bitterness in these words:

Improve transit in the 7 county metro? As far as I'm concerned most of that 7 county metro can rot. There's no reason to waste money on building rail to Eden Prairie or Maple Grove to subsidize and justify the existence of such places. If people want to screw everyone else over by living in the middle of nowhere, we should not be supporting that.

You all are about 40 years late on this. Eden Prairie Center was developed in 1976. SW LRT is not encouraging sprawl, it's dealing with the reality on the ground. The success of Minneapolis and its suburbs are inextricably linked, no matter how much fun it is picking sides. If Minneapolis were in the Sun Belt, Eden Prairie would be within its city limits.

As for Northstar, I'm not necessarily opposed to building it, but if you're worried about encouraging sprawl, look at those little towns along highway 10 that will turn into the next Albertville.

[mattaudio]

I think one thing that would have helped with Northstar, other than connecting it to St. Cloud, is if it actually stopped at walkable downtowns along the way. Instead, they opted for park and rides in corn fields, leaving it to be an overpriced express bus on wheels rather than true inter-city regional rail.

[MNdible]

Instead, they opted for park and rides in corn fields, leaving it to be an overpriced express bus on wheels rather than true inter-city regional rail.

It's commuter rail. Apparently nobody here likes commuter rail, and that's fine, but it is what Northstar is.

Nothing about the demographics along this route lead me to believe that anything approaching what the board wants (which apparently mixes the frequency of LRT with the train sets and distances of Amtrak) would be remotely viable.

I'd be curious if anybody can point to a successful model of the type that they're discussing. Please make sure levels of population density in the hinterlands is comparable. No fair referencing the LIRR.

[beykite]

I don't think anyone here is suggesting the train runs every 10-16 minutes or anywhere near the frequencyof lrt...

[Suburban Outcast]

I actually don't mind commuter rail, but I do see what some are you are getting at. The reason why the LIRR, Metro-North, NJT, Metra, even have hundreds of thousands of weekday riders is that they serve the largest downtowns in the nation and connect large suburbs with population densities comparable to our older inner-ring suburbs, which gives them enough to warrant a train link to their respective CBD. It also helps Chicago is a national rail hub, and cities in the Northeast were one of the first places to have railroads built in the nation so they have the network for commuter rail. I personally would like to see a smaller-scale commuter rail system within a 10-20 mile radius of Downtown Minneapolis, within already built-up areas (places with at least 2,500 psm, and a decent rate of downtown workers residing in the area). Regardless, I would like to see the Northstar get extended since it's already half-built but if the funding went towards somewhere in the 7-county region and is beneficial to the cities, then so be it I guess.

[woofner]

Boston is an example of a city with both a successful commuter rail system and similar relevant characteristics to the Twin Cities. Boston's downtown employment level is similar to downtown MInneapolis (this is from tedious zip code employment checks - anyone have an easier source?) and the suburban population and density is also pretty similar:


Of course Boston's system hits secondary job centers as well, something Northstar is unlikely to ever do (unless Anoka County and the Met Council get a lot more serious about job sprawl than they've ever been), and another important difference I think is that Boston's system has an average station spacing of 3 miles, including several inner city stations, both of which violate the myth of commuter rail that some idiot consultant made up years ago and that Northstar planners accepted as fact (as did Bottineau planners, which ruled out commuter rail in that highly appropriate corridor).

So I think Boston is an indication that commuter rail could be successful in the Twin Cities, but for me the question is rather (a) should it be a priority over our underdeveloped urban rapid transit system and (b) will it be more cost effective than Freeway BRT? The answer to both is probably no, although for (b) I think that depends on whether you're talking about a system developed under FRA regulations or a system developed according to global best practices.

[Suburban Outcast]

So I think Boston is an indication that commuter rail could be successful in the Twin Cities, but for me the question is rather (a) should it be a priority over our underdeveloped urban rapid transit system and (b) will it be more cost effective than Freeway BRT? The answer to both is probably no, although for (b) I think that depends on whether you're talking about a system developed under FRA regulations or a system developed according to global best practices.

You make a good point, if we did plan a commuter rail network similar to MBTA's, we could have a system with decent ridership but Freeway BRT is definitely going to be implemented over that . There was the Dan Patch line they were thinking about years ago, but got a study ban in 2002 (I found this map on their Wikipedia page):



Would this be a better commuter rail corridor than Northstar? Metra has rail lines from the Chicago Loop to the North Shore, would connecting places like Edina, and even Wayzata via Minnetonka to Minneapolis could warrant enough ridership for a commuter rail line? Compared to Northstar, they probably have more workers commuting to Minneapolis than you would find in Big Lake or Elk River combined, and probably even more. While the urban bus/rail network is underdeveloped, I wonder how we could improve access from existing suburban areas to the central cities since the majority of the metro population lives there. Streetcars or Light Metro (if we are ambitious) in the densest central city neighborhoods, light rail from the central cities and a few inner-ring suburbs, and commuter rail for already built up inner and outer suburbs (not really exurbs other than Northstar), but this would probably add billions of debt if my plans ever went into place and the under performance of Northstar probably created a hex on any future commuter rail corridors (though that's probably better for urban transit, as the funds go there instead).

[mattaudio]

I bet it would if done right. It would actually serve a lot of job centers, especially the West End (if routed via the "iron triangle") and Normandale Lakes. Doubt it will ever happen especially now that Orange Line BRT seems to serve the south of the river portion of this corridor.

[woofner]

It may make more sense to route Dan Patch west past Savage along the Minnesota, through Shakopee, Jordan, & Belle Plaine. It seems like it would be more competitive against 169 than against 35W, although they'd have to raise the speed limit in Bloomington higher than 10 mph.

Are we going to go to jail just for talking about this?

[mulad]

Yeah, that would probably make a good commuter rail corridor, though I think it needs some straightening and double-tracking (which would require property takings along the way). It'd also be a good alternate way of connecting the Twin Cities to Rochester (the railroad was originally the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Dubuque Electric Traction Company, so they had plans to go to Rochester and beyond, but they never got beyond Northfield).

[mattaudio]

I could see it as part of a regional connection to St. Peter and Mankato. Service to Northfield may be better served via UP to St. Paul, potentially as part of regional service to Rochester or Owatonna. Maybe the Edina/St. Louis Park folks would trade freight for quieter passenger rail, and then the PGR locals could switch at Savage rather than to CP at West Bloomington.