Northstar Commuter Rail

[mattaudio]

@twincitizen brought up the prospects of this shutting down due to continued underperformance and legislative bargaining this year. Has anyone seen any good info on the following?
* What is the state or Met Council on the hook for regarding Federal grants or other funding sources? Those often have fingers reaching into projects long after they are completed. Would there be any repayment or other penalties?
* Assuming there's a way to be let out of any obligations, how could some of these assets be reused? Could the trainsets be refurbed into something an operator such as Amtrak could use for regional services in an era of fleet shortages?

[Korh]

I assume it'll depended whether the current administration will try to spin it as "blue state returning the money the stole" and want the money back or "look how even make state governments more efficient" and wave the amount because I'm 90% certain the MN GOP are banking on the later.
If they do ask for the money back I will bet money on Northstar's schedule being limited to "Twins and Viking games only" with the current schedule being replaced by buses.
If they don't the fleets probably gonna be sold off to the god knows how many services that use bombardier bi-levels and MP36PH if not scrapped because the main reason why Amtrak doesn't use them are the doors between the cars, they don't line up with any of their current fleet and I don't know if anyone has done it but a bit of a hassle to walk between cars. Plus it's not ADA compliant to do so and I think that's the biggest sticking point for Amtrak in recent years (someone correct me but the amfleets, viewliners, and ventures do in "theory" let people roll through but for the superliners I think your stuck in a private room for most of the trip).

[Silophant]

I'm 90% sure that the bi-level doors would line up with single-level Horizon cars like they're using on the Borealis. It's probably not ADA-accessible though, I don't think there's a way for a wheelchair to get up the couple of steps from the bottom level to the mid-level where the doors are.

You're correct about the Superliners - their doors between cars are on the upper level, so anyone who can't manage the stairs is stuck on the lower level of whatever car they boarded for the duration of their trip.

[DanPatchToget]

The only people who still want to keep Northstar running are the ~200 people riding it and the "all trains are good trains" people on here, streets.mn, etc. who refuse to acknowledge how bad the numbers are.

I haven't seen anyone deny the ridership numbers for Northstar are bad. There are however plenty of people who understand why the ridership numbers are bad (and pre-pandemic numbers weren't the greatest), and despite years and years of pushing the Met Council, MnDOT, etc. to fix Northstar it's been met with nothing but talk and a couple studies that also didn't do anything to fix it.

I'd prefer just running Northstar as is until MnDOT, the Met Council, etc. grow a spine and get the damn thing built to St. Cloud like it was supposed to over a decade ago. If we shut it down it'll be very difficult if not impossible to bring it back whether in current form or a form that's more likely to be successful.

I also think it would be foolish to assume that shutting down Northstar will give the GOP a small win that will make them supportive or neutral towards urban transit improvements. I can guarantee they won't stop with Northstar in terms of trying to gut our transit system. Also not to open a can of worms, but from a national perspective I think the GOP has gotten plenty of wins lately (perhaps more than they bargained for, but we'll see), I don't think the DFL should be giving them more.

[angrysuburbanite]

https://www.metrotransit.org/northstar

RIP

[COLSLAW5]

Wild, Metro transit can't even operate buses to Big lake and Elk River. So the farthest they will go is Ramsey Station and they are saying that it will take 15 minutes longer from Ramsey. Sounds from the survey that they will try to set up some other route to just serve big lake and elk river then just head downtown.

[BikesOnFilm]

If there was a huge crush of people who wanted to take transit from Big Lake and Elk River to Minneapolis, would we be in this position to begin with?

[thespeedmccool]

I put 60% odds on this bus getting cancelled in under 2 years.

RIP Northstar. Minnesota will never have a rail network.

[Korh]

Feels weird that the state is more likely to get more trains if the talk of Wisconsin looking in to a second borealis is true then any MN lead project when 15 years ago Walker killed the proposed HSR project and zip rail was still in the state wide plan.

[StandishGuy]

Hmmm... This is not all Metro Transit's fault. MNDOT has been plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into I94 and Hwy 10 lane expansions, the cities along the route have done little to make the stations less car oriented and the MN Republican Party has made opposing rail a significant part of their platform. Ultimately, the MSP region continues its unimpeded sprawl in every direction, particularly along this corridor. It was a flawed project to begin with, and Metro Transit has had to work with really bad, and not improving, conditions over the entire span of Northstar. IMO we need to get Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, including their cities, to significantly densify and transform into walkable places before rail like this is going to succeed. That's not even likely based on the pace of change since 2020... Unfortunately, MSP is too car-brained to make our transit system work.

[DanPatchToget]

I really hope this doesn't happen, but I wonder how many commuter/regional rail systems in North America could potentially purchase the Northstar fleet. Or maybe Amtrak would buy them and renovate the coaches for intercity service (if that were to happen, using them on the NLX and a third daily MSP-CHI train would be nice).

[BikesOnFilm]

IMO we need to get Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, including their cities, to significantly densify and transform into walkable places before rail like this is going to succeed. That's not even likely based on the pace of change since 2020... Unfortunately, MSP is too car-brained to make our transit system work.

Let's not catastrophize, the major cities and their first (sometimes second) ring suburbs are making a lot of progress on this. Suburban edge communities are growing, but the majority of total growth is still collectively in the urban core and built out suburbs.

Have we considered that maybe it's not the fact that we're too car brained to make commuter rail work, it's just that the cities where commuter rail is most successful are in places where there was enough railroad centric growth during the heyday of rail travel?

In the alternate universe where Minneapolis was as large and important as Chicago in 1900, maybe we would have commuter trains running back and forth to the much larger cities of Saint Cloud, Hudson, and Hutchinson multiple times a day right now. We'd also probably have an I-94 that carves an even deeper scar through our downtowns because that commuter rail infrastructure still wouldn't have prevented car-brained engineers of the 50s and 60s from trying to replace the trains with freeways. And there's a lot of sprawl between all those cute little transit oriented downtowns we missed out on.

We gave it a shot, turns out we can't recreate Metra suburbs by building a half-hearted attempt at one commuter rail line, and that's all our local leaders were capable of supporting. Let's move on and refocus on making sure actual transit riders in the actually dense places of today and the near future can use the trains and buses we do have.

[mattaudio]

I agree with @twincitizen about looking at legacy commuter rail to rail-suburbs vs Northstar-style commuter rail to park-and-rides and unrealistic TOD aspirations. We probably can't have Metra or Caltrain or East Coast urbanism around commuter rail stations, but I do think we could do a better job of connecting existing walkable places with opportunities for growth.

For Northstar, that would have been stations in Downtown Elk River and a terminus in urban St. Cloud. Elsewhere in the metro, it would be stations in towns like Hastings, Stillwater, Hudson, Shakopee, Chaska, Delano, etc. regardless of mode. While I would love to see that, there are at least three barriers I see:

1. In modern times, you'd need relatively frequent all-day service to these destinations to make trains competitive. I don't think they'd need to revolve around commuters to the city like in the past, but I'm not sure we have the funding or appetite to run trains every hour or two to those towns.
2. Much goodwill and political capital towards expensive suburb-connecting corridor transit has been burned by botched project planning (Southwest LRT) and low ridership/high subsidy from the start (Northstar Commuter). It's going to be harder to create corridors or add service than it was 10-20 years ago.
3. Even when we *do* have the opportunity to connect a distant yet walkable suburban node, we haven't been able to seal the deal. Opposition to Purple Line connection to Downtown White Bear Lake comes to mind (and now the entire corridor is paused? canceled?)

[Tom H.]

It's a great idea to consider commuter rail to walkable suburbs, but unfortunately many of them haven't preserved the rail ROW adequately. For example, the recent Chestnut St reconstruction in downtown Chaska, while overall a good piece of urbanism, destroyed the historical rail ROW across Chestnut for a pedestrian underpass. This is probably common in other suburbs as well.

[thespeedmccool]

The other problem is that we'll never get the political will ever again to build another commuter rail.

It'll be "remember Northstar?" every time someone proposes rail to a far-flung suburb ever again. Heck, that's already happened: Red Rock planning (if we can call that quagmire "planning" at all) pivoted to BRT years ago. Same with Purple Line and Gold Line, which were both originally conceptualized as commuter rail before planners decided it would be too expensive to make the Northstar mistake again.

Not only would you need the political will at some point in the future to build a cash-bleeding train, but you would need buy in from cities, counties, MNDOT, etc. to prevent the exact same death spiral from happening again.

A robust LRT network is still possible, but commuter rail is dead because we're not built for it, no politician will propose a Northstar again, and no politician will want to be the one to deny North Branch their fourth southbound lane to support an empty train. We will never have a regional rail network in Minnesota. Minneapolis is probably destined to remain a "quiet midsized metro" forever.

What we need is for these suburbs to actually want commuter rail and lobby for it (like they lobby for freeway expansions today) but unfortunately, trains are socialist crime vectors so that'll never happen

[mattaudio]

But why do we even need commuter rail, with a handful at best of trains running from park and rides to downtown weekdays in peak direction? Much of that commuter demand has dried up since covid and everyone working from home, and express buses are fine for the demand that remains.
If anything, this is an opportunity to pivot to a regional rail model that could actually be worth a try.

[Bakken2016]

But why do we even need commuter rail, with a handful at best of trains running from park and rides to downtown weekdays in peak direction? Much of that commuter demand has dried up since covid and everyone working from home, and express buses are fine for the demand that remains.
If anything, this is an opportunity to pivot to a regional rail model that could actually be worth a try.

Our LRT is our regional rail, once Green Line Extension and Blue Line Extension opens. That opens all day 10-15 min service to many suburbs in our region.


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[DanPatchToget]

But why do we even need commuter rail, with a handful at best of trains running from park and rides to downtown weekdays in peak direction? Much of that commuter demand has dried up since covid and everyone working from home, and express buses are fine for the demand that remains.
If anything, this is an opportunity to pivot to a regional rail model that could actually be worth a try.

Our LRT is our regional rail, once Green Line Extension and Blue Line Extension opens. That opens all day 10-15 min service to many suburbs in our region.


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Light rail is not regional rail. From a physical and service standpoint there are major differences, and while our current and future light rail system is good it definitely does not/will not cover the distances and speeds that regional rail can.

[angrysuburbanite]

I’d describe our LRT system as being more in line with the interurban railways that TCRT once operated. I do agree that a regional rail network should probably be downscaled in terms of rolling stock to tram-like vehicles (think River Line in New Jersey, for example). But yes, the LRT definitely covers many of our streetcar suburbs in a regional fashion already.

[wingedmolotov]

I'm curious, which are our streetcar suburbs?