Northstar Commuter Rail

[Silophant]

Not sure how I feel about that. It makes sense for both events (the World Cup and Amtrak's fleet shortage), but I fear they'll end up buying the equipment and then the rest of the Northstar equipment will get sold off.

I mean, they won't sell the equipment unless the service is cancelled, and if it's actually cancelled, there's not much point in keeping it idle in Big Lake forever. I'd prefer they keep the equipment and actually try returning to full service, given that most of the costs are fixed and there's ample evidence that more transit service results in more ridership, but the Met Council is apparently bound and determined to get rid of Northstar, so.

[DanPatchToget]

Well if they're putting in this much effort to get rid of Northstar, then they can also put in the effort to find some other use for the trains in our state.

Or do a complete swap with the Hiawatha. They get our coaches that are perfectly suited for that route, and we get their coaches to do a Twin Cities-Fargo service, a third daily Twin Cities-Chicago train, or something like that.

[Tom H.]

Is the infrastructure removal in the freight ROW mandated by the original federal funding agreement? IIRC, a lot of those agreements require returning the corridor to its original state if service is ended within some sunset date.

[Oreos&Milk]

When Northstar was once just a dream, 25 years ago: https://www.pbs.org/video/commuter-rail-13905/

We should have just kept those Seattle cars and blocked Seattle on Myspace and never looked back! They would be still running from St. Cloud to Minneapolis had we done as such. Damn our Minnesota Nice Ethics!

[DanPatchToget]

Here's my take on what we could do with Northstar: https://streets.mn/2025/05/08/northstar ... be-wasted/

[COLSLAW5]

could someone explain to me why they think it would cost $500 million to extend the train to St. Cloud? When the service was put in place the main issue was the rail line was not double tracked. Looking at google maps it now is so where would all this money be spent?

[BikesOnFilm]

According to the 2024 MnDOT study, the $500m represented:

$6 million for planning
$30 million for project development
$93 million for rolling stock
$144.9 million for phase 1 construction
$279.2 million for phase 2 construction

There’s a breakdown of improvements that they estimate that would be necessary, like an expansion of the Big Lake station and facility, but the study doesn’t explain in detail why these improvements would be needed for service. They say the $500m is necessary for the “low service” option (versus $670m for the “high service” option). The low service is two daily round trips, and high service is four daily weekday round trips + two weekend round trips.

Critically, and probably most frustrating to the readers here - this was envisioned as separate from the 6 daily commuter trains running from Big Lake to TFS. As in, they studied what it would cost to buy new trains specifically to run two new trains to St. Cloud, not how much it would take to just run the existing ones there.

I’m sure most reasonable people would argue there’s no need to spend $93m on new rolling stock- just use the existing trains and get them to a population center. And if you don’t add rolling stock, is expanding the Big Lake facility really needed? Are some of the proposed track improvements based off 8 daily round trips instead of the current 6? Beyond the WTF nature of the underlying assumption of needing new trains, it’s hard to tell what else is necessary.

Here’s the link in case you see something I don’t, admittedly I was skimming for charts and line items:

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2024/mandated/240329.pdf

We’re in an information gap where we are not knowledgeable enough to know how necessary any of these improvements are to run a basic service, but we can reasonably assume that the comparatively few railroad specialized MnDOT staff are being told what they need by BNSF, consultants, or both. And if we don’t have the institutional knowledge at the state to push back on things that are extravagant or unnecessary, we just take what they give us and call it a study.

To avoid that problem, we’d need to value passenger rail enough to devote the state level resources to develop the knowledge base to build it effectively in house. But that’s a bigger issue than one floundering commuter rail line.

[COLSLAW5]

Thanks for that, I am still confused by what is even included in the phase 1 and 2 constructions. An entire new bus garage with underground parking only cost $150 million.

But yea instead we are going to spend millions to rip out all the infrastructure from the BNSF right of way.

All this is fun to think about as everyday there seems to be a post on reddit about how bad the traffic is. Also as we head into a downturn more companies are probably going to start requiring a RTO as a way to reduce staff.