The Northstar Should Die

Streets.mn recently published several posts in favor of Metro Transit’s Northstar commuter line, in response to a transportation bill introduced in the Minnesota legislature aiming to shut it down. I am generally in favor of regional rail, and in vehement support of foiling the dastardly car-centric agenda of the Minnesota Republicans. But a broken clock is correct twice a day, and the MN GOP is correct on this one thing: The Northstar now represents a drain on valuable transit dollars.

The endeavor of the Northstar — to give people in the metro area transportation choices beyond the car — is a noble one. But it is always good to step back and critically evaluate: Is the Northstar a particularly effective way of doing so? In order to justify its existence, the Northstar needs to show that it’s better than alternative transit projects, like increasing bus or light-rail frequency or increasing security presence. The money is not being spent in a vacuum, and, as I will show, the Northstar fails to hold its own against these competing priorities.

Source: Metro Transit

The Dismal Reality

We can get an inkling about the Northstar’s dismal effectiveness from the “Performance” section on Metro Transit’s website. In March 2025 (most recent data), the Northstar generated a meager 434 weekday rides, compared to 3,500 for the A Line, Metro Transit’s worst-performing aBRT route. In fact, it undershoots every other major service Metro Transit offers.

The real nail in the coffin is the $16 million we spend on it, accounting for 2.5% of Metro Transit’s entire budget. The service as it stands is a leech, plain and simple: draining money which could otherwise go to more fruitful endeavors.

The status quo being unsustainable, the Metropolitan Council can either kill the service or attempt to revive it. Some have argued that the service has potential, that given enough funding it could absolutely be of service. This argument largely rests on faulty assumptions. Besides the Target Field stop, Northstar stations are heavily car-dependent. The only way to use the train is to drive to it, but if you are already driving there, why not just drive 20 minutes farther to your final destination?

The setup makes sense in the context of heavy rush-hour traffic (which presents a strong disincentive toward freeway driving), but this environment has, since COVID, disappeared. Or at least been minimized. The Northstar is just plain maladaptive to the current geographical realities of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.

The Coon Rapids station demonstrates perfectly the atrocious land use around the Northstar stations. Source: Google Maps

Consider the equity considerations of subsidizing the Northstar. Every dollar spent on nearly-empty train cars represents a dollar that could have gone to improving service frequency for any number of underserved routes and neighborhoods in the cities. The Northstar lives and breathes as one in a series of transportation projects serving the (largely white) suburbs at the expense of (more diverse) city dwellers.

Alternatives

Instead, should we divert the money toward local bus service, we could get far more bang for the buck. Local bus service occupies a strong plurality of Metro Transit ridership, again taking up a solid 46.8% of 2024 rides. Diverting more money toward local buses — increasing frequency and reliability — will make the plurality of transit riders’ lives far better.

The Northstar would die, but it would be for the greater good.

Source: Metro Transit

The cities are replete with examples of bus services that could greatly benefit from increased frequency. Case in point: Route 74 running along Randolph Avenue in St. Paul. This is a high-potential route: running along a college (St. Catherine University), many apartment buildings and eventually West Seventh Street. It is regularly packed, but also hampered by its 20-minute weekday frequencies. Each dollar spent increasing its frequency would be far more efficient in terms of trips captured than running the Northstar.

As another example, consider light-rail frequencies. Right now the Green Line runs between the two downtowns at 15-minute intervals, which is not horrible but also not ideal — expected waiting time for a train is seven and a half minutes. If they were to bump headways down to 10 minutes, rough calculations indicate that it would cost $124 million to $136 million, cheaper than continuing to operate the Northstar for 10 more years.

Allow me a deep dive: Improving service frequencies from 15 to 10 minutes would require a one-third increase in the current rolling stock of 47, as well as corresponding maintenance facilities. We know that in 2016 the Met Council bought 27 light-rail vehicles from Siemens for $118 million (around $4.4 million per vehicle, in 2016 terms), so adjusting for inflation we have a total of $93 million for vehicle procurement. To estimate the cost of a new storage barn, we can hazard a guess at around $36 million, which is based on numbers from a comparable project in Seattle that cost around $2.25 million per new light-rail vehicle serviced. So the total would come to around $129 million, and we include a $5 million error bound.

I am a massive rail nerd. I spend my time going to rail museums and playing OpenTTD. My final project for my GIS class at Macalester College in St. Paul, where I’m a rising senior, was an argument about why Seattle should expand its own regional rail. To those who wish to keep the Northstar running: I sympathize entirely.

But now is not the time to throw millions of dollars down a hole — at a time when transportation spending from the federal government is under threat, at a time when Minneapolis and St. Paul themselves are trying to densify and become more walkable, transit-friendly places.

Now is the time for us to move on to bigger and better things.