Northstar Commuter Rail

[aguaman]

beautiful photo.
thanks...

[spearson]

Roughly 100 new daily round-trip riders are expected to use the Northstar Commuter Line when rail service at the new $13 million Ramsey Station starts next Wednesday, Nov. 14, the Star Tribune reports.

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/177905741.html

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/ ... ml?refer=y

I wonder how many will be truely new patrons and how many will already be riders that find this station more convenient. I wish them luck, Will see if they can get some housing that people can afford to rent and also take the train in on. Don't think the $1100 a month will fly that far out!

It's 1100 a month for an average one bedroom already...

[twincitizen]

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/180934591.html

Despite the failure of Northstar and the negative impression it gives to all public transit investments (especially "choo-choos"), it doesn't seem like this ill will could possibly get in the way of Southwest or Bottineau. I do think the failure of Northstar may have had a hand in bumping Red Rock and Gateway to BRT mode sooner than they might have otherwise (actually not a bad thing in either case, considering ridership projections). If any good can come of Northstar's shortcomings, it will be stopping the pointless Duluth train from happening.

[min-chi-cbus]

I'm not sure a Duluth train would be pointless, especially if it ran through St. Cloud.....

I still think the North Star's problem is that it connects to nowhere. It's very much like this new Stillwater bridge that is going to connect Stillwater and the metro area to.......................corn and cheeseheads. Had North Star connected to St. Cloud (or Rochester from the other direction) I bet its success rate would be high enough to call it a "success".

[twincitizen]

http://erstarnews.com/2012/11/23/twins- ... ridership/

It's too bad this website doesn't have a comments section. I'd love to hear what the folks in Elk River, Otsego, Rogers, and Zimmerman have to say

It's actually a better article than what the Strib puts out, with actual data and breaks down the funding shares, projected cost increases etc. Kudoes to Paul Rignell of the Star News.

Excerpt: The Metro Transit officials said expenses have been lower partly because equipment has held up without need for replacement (about $432,000 worth) and rail line employment vacancies have not been filled, for salary and benefit savings of another $177,000.

Metro Transit is planning a larger budget for Northstar in 2013, up about $700,000 to $18.01 million, largely due to projected increases for diesel fuel and a 10.9-percent rise in health care premiums for remaining staff.

[mattaudio]

Interesting. It's about 140 miles as the crow flies from Mpls to Duluth. It's about 190 miles from Mpls to Duluth via St. Cloud. I guess I'm not sure if you're suggesting a Duluth train that goes via St. Cloud. If it was fast enough where it would still be competitive with drive times even with the longer route, it would actually be a decent idea. Unfortunately the rails that head from St. Cloud to Duluth have long since been ripped up.

It could have used either the ex-GN northeast from St. Cloud (about 60 miles of track now gone between St. Cloud and Brook Park, still affording a stop in Hinckley) or it could have used the ex-Soo which crosses the Staples Sub just south of Little Falls. This would require ~115 miles of track on what is now mostly a recreational trail. It would connect to the Lakes Sub near the Wisconsin/MN border and would afford stops at Mille Lacs (including the other Grand Casino) and Moose Lake. A final option would be to rebuild the Fort Ripley cutoff between Little Falls and Brainerd, then using the Brainerd Sub east to Duluth, affording stops in Little Falls, Brainerd, and potentially south of Cloquet near 210 and I-35.

All three of these options would do a better job of serving more recreational destinations, especially if they could serve either Mille Lacs or the Brainerd Lakes area. All of them would also provide for service on one line via St. Cloud instead of having services split at Coon Creek Jct. That said, both would be unbelievably prohibitively expensive, controversial, and would require speeds of at least 150 MPH to compete at the same level as the NLX proposal at 110 MPH.

[mulad]

Yeah, if you want to have a route that doesn't need to be completely rebuilt, the only way to go to Duluth via St. Cloud is to go up to Staples and then turn back. As mattaudio said, it would require much higher speeds to be competitive with the planned NLX route, or people would have to put up with long travel times (4-5 hours end-to-end). Any route would require significant double-tracking on routes that currently only have single track.

Here's a zoomable map showing the existing lines and most of the abandoned ones in the region:

http://www.itoworld.com/map/15#lat=45.7 ... 768&zoom=8

I do think it could make sense to run something from Fargo (maybe originating in Grand Forks or even Winnipeg) to Duluth via Staples, so if someone really wanted to, they could hop on an improved Twin Cities to Fargo service and then transfer in Staples to something heading back east. But of course the chance of that east-west route ever happening is pretty remote, and would be a long while after NLX.

[mattaudio]

Or the two services could terminate in MSP and be interlined to Little Falls... then people wishing to go from GF/Fargo to Duluth could transfer there. I think this is doable within 100 years, right?

[twincitizen]

Ridership totals and averages for October: http://fridley.patch.com/articles/fridl ... f-12366338

Quick observation 1: Sunday>Saturday, I assume that is due to 2 Vikings games that month.

2: Inbound riders > outbound riders at all stations. Either inaccuracy in the counting or roughly 30 people at each station taking the train in the morning and catching a ride home from someone.

Fridley ridership is still abysmal. Only 70 avg. daily riders inbound...ouch

This area has local and express bus service to downtown. Whichever planner insisted on building Fridley Station should be fired (the costliest on the line I believe, due to the tunnel). At some point I thought Fridley was dropped because of cost-effectiveness. Foley Station could and should have been built instead. The ridership numbers would be significantly higher, due to the large Park & Ride at that location.

Other random thought: Since neither Riverdale or Anoka Station serve their namesake area particularly well (not close enough to be walkable) and the stations are not very far apart, why weren't they just combined into a single station with one large park and ride. It seems this whole line was plagued by poor planning, poor station locations, etc.

[UptownSport]

You have to wonder how clever anti-transit people are ...
It's going to get approved so throw a spanner in the works to make sure it's a failure ...

[ECtransplant]

2: Inbound riders > outbound riders at all stations. Either inaccuracy in the counting or roughly 30 people at each station taking the train in the morning and catching a ride home from someone.

Given the paucity of trains that run, and the limited time window in which they run, it wouldn't surprise me at all that people often need to find a ride or take the bus for one leg of their trip.

[UptownSport]

Strib seems to be keeping on Northstar:

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/181625741.html

[twincitizen]

Good comment: (probably the only good one, ha!)

I hope that when people read articles like this they distinguish between light rail, like the Hiawatha and Central Lines, and commuter rail, like the Northstar. The Hiawatha line connects major destinations on both ends, and the Central line is replacing and greatly expanding service in an extremely busy bus corridor. Both are and will be huge successes, as is evidenced by the development of new housing units designed to complement train service that are going up in those areas. The Northstar line has a destination on only one end, and terminates in a fully suburban environment. It only runs during parts of the day. I am a big supporter of rail transit, but in a city like MSP, it has to be done only where appropriate. The Northstar line was founded on some very wishful thinking, and that is coming home to roost now, with articles like this one.

[web]

if it had ended in st cloud instead......I bet 150% more riders and fridley makes no sense

[jack0451]

If it was the trip that was supposed to return to Minneapolis, Metro Transit will send out a bus to supplement it.

Back in May, I was on a train heading northbound and it had some sort of mechanical failure. They made us transfer to the train behind that one. We had to wait a while for the bus to shwo up but one did show up to take us back to Minneapolis.

A Northstar train developed a bad oil leak yesterday and got stuck in Northtown Yard long enough for a second Northstar to come up behind. They decided to join them together and run the train with the engine in the middle. I wonder how things worked for disembarking in Big Lake...

Someone (not me) took some photos:

https://picasaweb.google.com/1031584439 ... edCommuter

[twincitizen]

Anoka approves plan to market area around Northstar Station

Plus the following items from Met Council's TOD grant awards announcement:

• Foley Boulevard Station Area Planning, Coon Rapids—$40,000 for design workshops, an alternatives analysis and zoning tools to help develop a station area plan to transform the auto-oriented environment into one that is multi-modal and supports transit in an area near commuter rail.
• Fridley Northstar TIF Master Plan, Fridley--$100,000 to support the station area planning process by providing land-use alternatives analyses to encourage more transit-friendly development near commuter rail.

Ramsey awards:
In addition to the 13 TOD grants, the Council also approved two Livable Communities projects in Ramsey that were pending until some planning issues could be addressed.

The Center of Ramsey (COR) Center Street project will receive a TOD grant of $650,369 for infrastructure improvements that will support pedestrian and auto connections to the Ramsey Station and other nearby amenities.

A $100,000 pre-development TOD grant to the city for the Mississippi Skyway project will help fund planning activities that will help the city, Met Council and National Park Service compete for funds to build a bridge that connects the rail station to the city’s trail and sidewalk system, as well as federal, state and regional trails.

[mulad]

Elk River is looking to convert a couple of grade crossings to quiet zones (primarily with median barriers on the approaches) and installing wayside horns at others to reduce train noise. Converting all of the crossings to quiet zones is estimated at $5 to $5.5 million, but the wayside horn option reduces the cost to between $1.5 and $1.75 million.

Wayside horns are simply stationary horns mounted at a grade crossing and pointing out to the road. They're a fairly recent development, and apparently Andover is the only place in Minnesota that currently has them. A weird development if you ask me, but the diagram in the article of the area subjected to intense noise is pretty persuasive in showing this is a better alternative than just using the horn on the train.

http://erstarnews.com/2012/12/13/elk-ri ... ain-noise/

[UptownSport]

A favorable Star article:

Riding the 6:51 out of Big Lake

[Le Sueur]

There are cookies on the Northstar?!? This line has to be the most vibrant transit experience in the country!

[mulad]

Filthy rulebreakers!

Anyway, Ramsey has gotten some grants for their station area -- a $650k grant for a Center Street project (which I'm guessing involves constructing a new street) and a $100k grant to plan for a pedestrian bridge over U.S. 10/169 to connect the station to points south. I see that there's already a paved path leading from the Mississippi River up close to the highway which doesn't seem to connect to anything, so presumably it would hook into that...

http://abcnewspapers.com/2012/12/26/two ... -projects/