Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part piece arguing for the environmental and community-building importance of the Northern Lights Express train between Minneapolis and Duluth. Read part one here.
“Trains are generally less problematic on a per-person perspective, because they can have more people in them per energy expended. A train will spend virtually the same amount of energy to move 1,000 people as it will use to move 100 people, so if you can put 1,000 people in that train it’s suddenly one-tenth of the pollution.”
– Yonah Freemark, senior research associate with the Urban Institute
Branching Out by Train
Once the NLX train line is built and begins operating, it could become a trunk for several branch lines bound for other regional destinations. If the Midwest becomes a hub for people escaping the worst effects of climate change in the country’s coastal and southern regions, branch lines would be vital to meet increased service demands. And by beginning branch line construction immediately after NLX is completed, planners, engineers and builders would be able to apply the theoretical and practical know-how accrued through the NLX construction to build the branch lines on time and within budget.
For reference, consider the Princeton branch line — a short branch of the Northeast Corridor Line, running from Princeton Junction northwest to Princeton with no intermediate stops. Also known as the Dinky, or the Princeton Junction and Back (PJ&B), the branch is served by special shuttle trains. Now running 2.7 miles (4.3 km) along a single track that once was a double, it is the shortest scheduled commuter rail line in the United States.
The Princeton Dinky takes approximately five minutes to travel end-to-end in each direction. The Princeton branch has overhead electrification. That means the train runs on cleaner energy and is more energy efficient than the Siemens Charger diesel-electric passenger locomotives used by Amtrak (it is not transporting the 1,800 U.S. gallons of diesel fuel those trains require). It also accelerates faster than diesel locomotives.
The following are possible branch lines that could be created sometime in the next 30 years:
- Years ago, passengers could ride a train that connected Duluth to Staples and transfer to the Empire Builder to travel to western cities, such as Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. From 1959 to 1966, the Northern Pacific offered two round-trips per day between Duluth and Staples on trains 55 & 56 and trains 57 & 58; both trains used Budd RDC-3’s (rail diesel cars). Locals sometimes referred to them as the “Staples Streetcar.” Trains 55 & 56 were discontinued on June 7, 1966, while trains 57 & 58 lasted until May 24, 1969.
- The May 1, 1969 edition of the Northern Pacific’s public timetable shows trains 57 & 58 making scheduled stops at Duluth, Superior (Wisconsin), Carleton, Deerwood, Brainerd and finally Staples. Intermediary flag stops (small railway stations between the principal stations or stations where the train stops only on a signal from passengers at the station or on the train) existed at 17 other points along the line. In the near future, once the Empire Builder is joined by a rebuilt North Coast Hiawatha route and another route connecting Fargo, North Dakota to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, there should be sufficient passenger demand for the reestablishment of the Staples Streetcar.
- A northern branch could connect many northern Minnesota communities up to International Falls, Minnesota, with an international link to Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada. A branch northeast could connect Two Harbors, and then continue heading northeast to the increasingly popular Grand Marais and ending at Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
- Another branch could serve the tourist town of Ely, Minnesota.
About 20 years ago, I saw plans for a proposed commuter rail service on a new track connecting Duluth to Ashland, Wisconsin. Let’s lengthen that line south to Prentice, then east to Bradley, and then south again to Wausau, then east again to Green Bay, south to Milwaukee and finally end at Chicago. That route is similar to a proposed Northern Michigan Passenger Railway Project planned to travel from Ann Arbor to Traverse City, with a northern branch to Petoskey. Maybe, with the Michigan Department of Transportation studying the Ann Arbor to Traverse City line, my proposed NLX branch lines are not so far-fetched after all.
Transit Oriented Development
Traffic counts vary widely on the I-35 corridor. According to Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) employee James Miles: “Existing volumes range from as high as 80,000 AADT [annual average daily traffic] just north of the I-35 split in the metro to as low as 14,000 AADT just north of Banning Junction.” After NLX trains start running, however, businesses and housing will be built around NLX stations. We see this happening elsewhere.
For example, over the Long Island Railroad branch from Huntington to Penn Station is the Park Lane North Cooperative Apartments with 206 units and the 118-18 Union Turnpike Apartments with 213 units. These otherwise unremarkable apartment buildings are built upon a wide bridge on the Jackie Robinson Parkway. These apartments are located (according to Google Maps) 1,848 feet from the Kew Gardens, Long Island Railroad Station. About 400 feet south from Key Station are two lines of one-story shops and restaurants built upon a Lefferts Boulevard bridge over the tracks.
While I was watching a front window video on a train from Huntington to New York Penn Station, I was very surprised to see those massive structures built on bridges above railroad tracks on Long Island. At first, I thought that these structures were constructed above a rock tunnel, instead of on two concrete bridges. The wide bridges appear at the 57-minute mark on the video.
Building structures near transit stations is called “Transit Oriented Development.” It creates high-density housing and businesses within an easy walk or bike ride to transit stations, helping our towns to reach their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
Let’s encourage our elected representatives to pass laws that urge Minnesota and Wisconsin real estate developers to develop similar apartments and businesses in, around and over NLX stations and railroad tracks. I hope to see many such developments.
A Need for Speed
Years ago, the Box Tops had a hit song, “The Letter,” with the lyrics: “Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane. / Ain’t got time to take a fast train.” Speed has become everything in our culture.
But the question for a traveler is not only how quickly you get to your destination — but also how comfortable, convenient and environmentally friendly your journey is. Speed alone should not be a determining factor, or we’d all be driving Formula One race cars.
The fastest train in America, Acela, Amtrak’s flagship high-speed service along the Northeast Corridor, runs at 150 mph for about 34 miles. It has an average speed of 82 mph between Washington and New York, while traveling about 66 mph between New York and Boston. America’s newest passenger train service, Florida’s Brightline, currently operates at 79 mph. These passenger trains attract thousands of passengers each day, reducing automobile and airline trips from increasingly congested highways and skies. Similar to these other commuter rail lines, Northern Lights Express will provide fast service, with speeds up to 90 mph and an estimated travel time between Twin Ports and the Twin Cities of 2.5 hours. In short, you don’t need to have the world’s fastest trains to make train travel attractive to the traveling public.
According to MnDOT, “About 700,000 to 750,000 people are projected to ride the train the first year. In 20 years, it is estimated that ridership will be about 1 million per year. These numbers consider how likely someone is to take the train instead of driving. Factors include age, gender, car ownership, cost of gas and reason for travel.” To put that in perspective, MnDOT notes that “Drivers make about 3.6 billion trips between the Twin Cities and Twin Ports each year. If just 1 in 5,000 of these trips switched to the train, NLX will meet its ridership projections.”
Don’t forget that federal and state governmental ridership projections are based on conservative numbers. Once a line starts moving riders, such as the METRO Blue Line, actual ridership numbers are often far greater than their projections.
Additionally, NLX will be saving human lives by preventing traffic accidents while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions along the Interstate 35 corridor will help the Midwest come into compliance with the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. Also remember that NLX’s top speed will be gradually increased well above 90 mph after this important service has started, making traveling by train faster than driving.
For evidence that Americans do ride recently created passenger trains, consider Seattle’s Sounder commuter rail operation. This two-line commuter rail service is operated by BNSF on behalf of Sound Transit. Passengers started riding on September 18, 2000 on the S line and December 26, 2003 on the N line. In 2019 both lines moved 4.6 million riders, despite the fact that the top speed of these trains is 79 miles per hour, slower than the 90 miles per hour of our future NLX.
Now Is the Time
Duluth Mayor Emily Larson, who recently announced her candidacy for a third term in office, is a longtime supporter of the NLX, calling it “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve connectivity between the Twin Cities area, Duluth and northeastern Minnesota.” She says, “Now is the time.” And she is right.
According to U.S. Department of Transportation projections, the rush hour traffic will become highly congested on Interstate 35 between the Twin Cities and the Twin Ports by 2035. (Please examine their map to see that rush hour traffic will become, in their words, “stop-and-go conditions” by 2035.)
When NLX ridership numbers reach about 1 million per year, NLX will decrease traffic counts and traffic congestion on I-35 and nearby north-south roads such as Minnesota State Highway 65. For the movement of both passengers and freight along the I-35 corridor, we must establish NLX transit as soon as humanly possible.
NLX will be one of the most economically built mass transit projects in the United States, giving taxpayers a great return on their investment. It is the only viable option for increasing affordable housing supply, reducing road traffic, increasing economic growth while improving air quality in the I-35 corridor.
As a bonus, the more commuters use transit, the fewer parking spaces we need in our cities and towns. The land now used for parking can then be repurposed for the needs of people, not large automobiles.
Therefore, I ask you to contact your elected representatives and tell them to support building NLX now.
Very well-researched and informative. I hope it comes to fruition!
None of this makes any sense. Rail works on the East coast and other places because of density. People ride trains because it is easier, faster and/or cheaper. I rode the Blue Line into work in Minneapolis for years for those reasons, and would still be riding it if the train hadn’t turned into a homeless shelter that smells like urine and weed.
Before the legislature decides to spend money on a train to Duluth, it should look hard at the Northstar line, which once was supposed to extended to St. Cloud but probably should be shut down altogether because ridership is so low.
Are people really going to take a train to Duluth? Amtrak used to go there but stopped because of low ridership, and since that time Duluth has actually lost population. Duluth is also really easy to get to on 35. A trip by train would likely cost more, would not save time, and then would leave you without a car once you are there. The MnDOT numbers are absurd. 700,000 riders a year? 2000 people going to and/or from a city of 85,000 people every single day? Again, look at the original projections for the Northstar line and then the actual numbers.
The most ridiculous part of this was the idea about other train lines in Northern Minnesota and rural Wisconsin. Fort Francis is a city of 7,000 people. I People go there to go fishing. While it would be inconvenient to be carless in Duluth, you can’t function in a place like Fort Francis without a car. No one wants to go to Ely without a car. These small towns don’t have local transit. These places don’t have Uber drivers. No one who lives in rural Minnesota or Wisconsin wants to not use their car. Trains are a solution for dense, urban areas and corridors between those areas. They are impractical and inefficient in sparsely populated areas.
This is a complete waste of money. This is the kind of wasteful project that gives legitimate rail projects a bad name. Spend some more money making the Blue and Green lines safe again. Subsidize free bus trips back and forth at a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of this boondoggle. This was Jim Oberstar’s pipe dream. It should have died when he lost his seat.
Many decades ago, my father rode a Budd Rail Diesel Car passenger train from Duluth, Minnesota to Ely, Minnesota to visit a friend. He told me that he enjoyed the train rides to and from Ely; while regretting that I never had a chance to enjoy that ride. Passengers rode that train to and from Ely in an age when nobody imagined Lyft and Uber, somehow managing to get around just fine like my father.
This century, we should be building NLX and future branch lines, but also invest in last mile, local bus and van transportation. That would benefit residents and tourists alike. Those investments will expand our nation’s transportation infrastructure that will enhance family mobility, create economic growth, while significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Minnesota and Wisconsin. All Minnesota citizens that want our children and grandchildren to have a great future must contact our Minnesota state legislators, and then tell them to “Build NLX Now!”
“Passengers rode that train to and from Ely in an age when nobody imagined Lyft and Uber, somehow managing to get around just fine like my father.”
Well, very few passengers rode that train. Like all the passenger trains in Northern Minnesota and the prior line between the Twin Cities and Duluth, it was never economically viable, and eventually got shut down as a result. Ely is now a city of 3,000 people that has been losing population for decades. And if you are asking for public investment in transit, your response to the availability of local transportation can’t be that people will somehow manage to get around. No one is going to take a train anywhere if they have to just manage to get around at the other end. Traveling by train to these cities would be horribly inconvenient, which is why there is no demand for them.
“This century, we should be building NLX and future branch lines, but also invest in last mile, local bus and van transportation. That would benefit residents and tourists alike. Those investments will expand our nation’s transportation infrastructure that will enhance family mobility, create economic growth, while significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Minnesota and Wisconsin.”
You can keep saying that over and over, but there is no evidence that any of that is true. Again, the MNDOT projections are complete nonsense. They are based on 10 million people traveling between the Twin Cities and Duluth every day. This is a solution in search of a problem, and building this will be throwing money down the drain. There are far better investments that can be made in creating economic growth and reducing greenhouse gasses than in building a train/trains that no one needs.
Again, rail is great in urban areas and densely populated corridors. It does all the things you claim under those conditions. But it doesn’t make sense in low density, low population areas.
I just went back and read part one, in which Mr. Buchanan compares the NLX to the Pere Marquette line that travels the 176 miles between Grand Rapids, Michigan and Chicago. So I looked up the ridership for that line, and it had 86,000 passengers in 2022. It peaked at 97,000 passengers in 2019, before a sharp drop during the pandemic, from which it seems to have mostly rebounded. Even at its peak use, though, there has been regular talk of discontinuing the route because it is such a money drain.
https://streets.mn/2023/01/27/the-case-for-building-northern-lights-express-part-one/
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FY22-Year-End-Revenue-and-Ridership.pdf
Grand Rapids has 198,000 people vs. Duluth’s 86,000. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area has 3.7 Million people, while the Chicago metro area has nearly 10 million. Does anyone really believe that a route between a smaller metro and smaller city, is going to have not just more riders, but 7 or 8 times (700,000) as many riders? That the NLX would be one of the most-traveled lines in the entire country? Comparable to the line that runs between New York City and Philadelphia? The MNDOT numbers are completely absurd. My estimate is that it would top out at about 50,000 riders per year, and could be a lot less.
Do you know how much a one-way ticket between Chicago and Grand Rapids costs? $40. In part one, Mr. Buchanan talks about taking your bike on the train for an extra $10, with the appeal being that unlike the bus, you don’t have to box it up. That’s a $50 dollar ticket per person/bike each way. So if two people take the train with their bikes back and forth to Duluth, its $200. And that only gets you to the station in Duluth – you still have to get out to the bike trails. If you drive instead, you might spend $30-$60 on gas, depending on your car and current gas prices, and you can get to and from your destination. You could even rent a car for 2-3 days, drive it to Duluth and back, pay for the gas, and it would still be cheaper (and far more convenient) than taking the train. No one is going to do this. It makes zero sense.
https://amtrakguide.com/routes/pere-marquette/
Again, trains are great in densely populated areas. Trains are great when they provide cheaper, faster, and easier travel options. None of that applies to the NLX. Its a very expensive solution in search of a problem.
Forgot one last point:
“Drivers make about 3.6 billion trips between the Twin Cities and Twin Ports each year. If just 1 in 5,000 of these trips switched to the train, NLX will meet its ridership projections.”
3.6 billion per year? So, on average nearly 10 million people take this trip every day? The population of Minnesota is 5.7 million. So every single person in Minnesota and over 4 million other people travel between the Twin Cities and Duluth every single day?
I’m shocked that this is the kind of analysis that is being used in spending (throwing away) hundreds of millions of dollars.
Normally I don’t like to rain on other people’s transportation fantasies because I have plenty of my own regarding future freeways and such so I’m not going to criticize the idea of a new alignment rail line along the north shore and so on and so forth. But like you I agree that 3.6 billion number is outragous so I feel the need to join you in calling it out.
Let’s do some back of the napkin math. There’s a lot of traffic to the casino at Hinckley, so lets use the traffic counts on I-35 just north of the Hinkcley exit as a starting point. Some cars have more than one occupant, but not every car on this stretch is going all the way from the Twin Cities to the Twin Ports, so we’ll go with the number as the average daily persons traveling that distance: 16,300 in 2018. That gives 6 million trips a year. So if 1/5000 switched, that would be 1200 trips.
That 3.6 Billion figure does, in fact, come straight from the linked MnDOT page .Occam’s Razor would suggest this is just a typo and they really meant “million” which would be a reasonable value.
I support transportation projects (and publicly-funded projects generally) if they make sense based on real numbers and honest math. Those things are sorely lacking in this project.
I suspect that it was 3.6 million, not billion, but that typo must have occurred earlier in the MnDOT analysis because the 1/5000 calculation then translates to 720 riders per year, or just under 2 riders per day. Your 6 million number gets us up over 3 people riding the train each day.
Do I really think there will be only 2 or 3 riders per day? Probably not, but if you look at ridership on other train lines around the country, the 700,000-750,000 number is absurd.
The narrative or term use of “drivers” used by Dan H really means car dependence and is misleading since none of us who operate a motor vehicle are actually driving it because there is an engine that is the actual driving force. The actual overall benefit of any rail system is as an option that can more often than not be preferable to using a car, especially in this region where we have a winter climate with all kinds of road conditions intermittently throughout every winter that are difficult to fix or manage, like potholes, ice, crashes, and nauseated so on.
Moreover, in this country we do not have adequate user fee for the private car, and significant portions of the population are car free or unable to use the car, including people with disabilities and the elderly. Our roads are very expensive to maintain, and who is supposed to pay for the roads if users do not want to? The I35 motor way only system is not a “freeway”, it is an expenseway.
In the first few years when the Blue Line opened (Hiawatha Line) it was moving people at a lower cost per passenger than any of the Met transit busses, including the #5 and #21, both very crowded and busy bus lines. That is what rail transit can do, or does when placed in alignments with adequate density and strong dense destinations, and with adequate useful overall length of a system. . .
We have experienced a pandemic during which public transit dropped significantly throughout the country. Recently ridership has been gradually returning with the Northstar line increasing by 125% of pre pandemic levels, and that line does not even go all the way to Saint Cloud, as it should. If it went to Saint Cloud and farther, it certainly would move more people.
The perception statement “you still have to get out to the bike trails” is a little off in my view.. All of our roadway system and every street should be built for safe travel by bike.
We should now have high speed rail to Chicago and Duluth from the Twin Cities, And by now we also should have eight commuter rail lines spreading out 60 to 70 miles in all directions from Minneapolis and Saint Paul. By todays standards they all should be electric. Unfortunately in this region our suburbs and other areas did not develop for transportation options, just the car.only
.
“The actual overall benefit of any rail system is as an option that can more often than not be preferable to using a car.”
I agree, and that is why the train to Duluth is such a bad idea. It isn’t a preferable option. It will be slower than taking a car, more expensive than taking a car, and far less convenient than taking a car. And if you don’t have a car, there is an existing option to take a bus to Duluth. This is a solution in search of a problem. Using the MnDOT’s analysis with real numbers, 2-3 people a day will ride this train each day. Again, I expect it actually will be more than that, but looking at other lines throughout the country, the projected ridership numbers are nonsense.
I was a big supporter of the Blue line and rode it daily for years. I did so because it was cheaper, faster, and more convenient to get me to work downtown. Your explanation of the Blue Line is exactly why the train to Duluth is such a terrible idea. The Blue line has “adequate density and strong dense destinations.” Urban rail makes sense. Rail in dense corridors between large urban areas makes sense. A train to a city of 85,000 people that goes through sparsely populated rural areas does not.
“The perception statement “you still have to get out to the bike trails” is a little off in my view.. All of our roadway system and every street should be built for safe travel by bike.”
As someone who bikes a lot, I agree that streets should be built for safe travel. The reality, however, is that they are not built that way, and its been struggle just to add bike lanes on a handful of streets in the Twin Cities. Saying that the streets “should” be made safer for bikes isn’t an answer to the problem. You can’t base the rationale for expensive projects on hopes and wishes.
“We should now have high speed rail to Chicago and Duluth from the Twin Cities, And by now we also should have eight commuter rail lines spreading out 60 to 70 miles in all directions from Minneapolis and Saint Paul. By todays standards they all should be electric. Unfortunately in this region our suburbs and other areas did not develop for transportation options, just the car.only”
I agree with the idea of high speed rail to Chicago, which will connect large urban areas and has a lot of population (i.e. Milwaukee) in between. The idea of a high speed rail line to Duluth just compounds the mistake of the NLX. High speed rail lines are being built in areas with high density and high use. It make zero sense to go to Duluth. And while I would like to see additional light rail added in the metro, there is simply no demand to run commuter rail 60-70 miles in every direction. The Northstar line has rebounded from the pandemic, but it has always underperformed and been rife with delays and other problems. And – understanding that rail does not have to be profitable and that roads are heavily subsidized – at some point there has to be a cost-benefit analysis with any project.