Northern Lights Express

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
MNdible
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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby MNdible » July 22nd, 2013, 2:45 pm

Unfortunately, Jefferson Lines is going to drop you off somewhere in the Friendly West End of Duluth, far from anywhere you'd like to be. Hopefully, they'll eventually use the new downtown Transit Center.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby FISHMANPET » July 22nd, 2013, 3:26 pm

Just looked it up, and yup, that's not at all useful. The Depot in Duluth is a couple blocks from the head of Canal Park makes it a bit more attractive, and a shuttle bus that brought people from the Depot to the Canal Park hotels would be pretty feasible when they're that close together.

Some car sharing services for Canal Park would be good too. Looking at a map there's a ton of parking, and this weekend appeared to be a busy one, so there was a lot of traffic. It would be nice if most of those through streets could just be closed as well. Re-engineer S Lake Ave to be a straight shot to the bridge and close Canal Park drive entirely.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mulad » July 22nd, 2013, 6:17 pm

It seems like Skyline Shuttle should work better up on the Duluth end. They're not so central on the Twin Cities end, though, picking up by the State Capitol, MSP airport, and MOA.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby UptownSport » July 22nd, 2013, 8:35 pm

I can't even figure out how to book that service.

Also there's no bar car on a bus.
I hear there usually is ...

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby web » July 22nd, 2013, 8:52 pm

lake st used to be....canal park dr basically is a product of the late 70s early80s........grandmas was all alone there for a while then the area exploded

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mulad » September 5th, 2013, 11:08 am

The NLX project has gotten a FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact), which should finish off the Tier I EIS. Still plenty of planning/design/funding/construction work to go.

http://finance-commerce.com/transit/201 ... -moves-on/

Edit: Press release from MnDOT: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/newsrels/13/09/5nlx.html

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby MSPtoMKE » September 5th, 2013, 3:25 pm

The NLX project has gotten a FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact), which should finish off the Tier I EIS.
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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby MNdible » September 5th, 2013, 4:00 pm

All right! (couldn't resist)
The Fonz says "Ayyy!"

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mulad » October 16th, 2013, 8:15 pm

Since this month's iteration happened on a Wednesday, I sat in on the Intercity Passenger Rail Forum meeting again for the first time in many months. MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle was there to sit in on the meeting and see how it ran, but there weren't any action items, so it mostly became a series of presentations to him about the status of various corridors.

The NLX presentation was the first (after the commissioner gave an introduction of his background). The preliminary engineering phase kicked off in September (as was noted a couple of posts ago), and one of the presenters noted that they're seeing cost estimates drop significantly, at least at this early stage -- shaving perhaps $200 million off of what they had previously been saying would be $700+ million. Let's hope the costs continue to be lower than previously expected -- I'm a little suspicious the guy was talking about the raw cost estimates and comparing with older numbers that had contingency rolled in, though.

The Hinckley loop study to determine whether or not to serve the casino is due to be complete around February 2014. Another major event will be another round of ridership projections and cost/revenue per rider estimates, due around May with a finished report expected around June 2014. They included a printout of the general schedule, which seemed to indicate that they'll re-examine higher speeds too, so if the lower cost estimates pan out, I hope we'll again start looking at a flat 2-hour runtime again, or at least some variant that lands somewhere between the original 2-hour trip idea and the later 2h17 service at reduced cost -- the higher speed service has a much greater chance of having an operational surplus.

People from the NLX corridor were the most vocal of anyone in the room about pushing the commissioner and MnDOT to take a more proactive stand about rail initiatives -- the NLX Alliance folks of course come from an organization that was formed because of inaction on the state and federal fronts, so they're pretty concerned that the project will just slow to a crawl now that it's in MnDOT's hands.

They're also at a bit of a loss about what to do now, which I suppose just happens sometimes, but one of the NLX folks also had some good points of criticism of MnDOT. For instance, the agency only has 4 employees/FTEs working on passenger rail issues, which is not good when considering the number of projects in the pipeline. Some of the effort can be offloaded onto counties/regional rail authorities/etc., but a lot of that work has to go to consultants, and there can be a problem of lack of institutional memory with that.

Anyway, it looks like the PE phase is supposed to wrap up sometime in 2015 -- their timetable listed a few things like the project level NEPA for stations in February '15, and then the end of preliminary engineering in the railroad right-of-way at the start of September. Which would mean like 2017 for start of service, maybe? Sigh.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mulad » January 21st, 2014, 8:55 am

Upcoming meeting for the Hinckley Loop study in one week on January 28th. Of course, it's actually in Hinckley (obviously it affects them most directly, but it'd be nice if there were meetings in the Minneapolis and Duluth areas too).
Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014
5 to 7 p.m. with brief presentations at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Hinckley Community Center
102 Dunn Ave. N. in Hinckley
Here's a map. I think previous maps had not been detailed enough to show that all of the routings go around the far side of the casino. The Alternative 1 line seems to be a bit thicker -- that might be due to it being suggested in previous studies, I'm not sure.

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nlx-hinckley-loop-alternatives by Mulad, on Flickr

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby twincitizen » January 21st, 2014, 9:08 am

Running it to the casino instead of the town of Hinckley seems incredibly short-sighted.

If the train station is placed in-town, Grand Casino would almost certainly run a shuttle, probably at no cost to the public (because it would be worth it for them).

If the train station is placed miles away at the casino, no one is going to run a free shuttle to serve the citizens of Hinckley.

Not to mention the sizeable additional cost to build, or questionable social policy of running a train to a casino.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mattaudio » January 21st, 2014, 9:29 am

Agreed. This is so unfortunate. I know previously in this thread (or maybe it was on Minnescraper) I had proposed a streetcar shuttle to connect a HSR stop in Downtown Hinckley with the casino. It could be done Kenosha-style for probably $20 million or less, and the Casino could pay the operating expenses. This has to be much less spendy and disruptive than this stupid Hinckley loop for the rail.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby RailBaronYarr » January 21st, 2014, 9:54 am

What everyone else said. Honestly, right in the middle of Hinckley puts it squarely in walking distance of everything and almost every person in that town. A shuttle would be cheap to operate for Grand Casino, while the converse would likely necessitate a parking lot for people to drive 3 miles from town to reach the station. The team should be asking what we want this line to accomplish (outside of ridership) for the cities it stops in.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby MNdible » January 21st, 2014, 10:07 am

Not that I'm in love with the added capital costs needed to serve the casino, but I'm pretty sure that the train wouldn't be stopping in Hinckley were it not for the casino (and Tobie's, I guess). Sandstone is a better destination otherwise.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mattaudio » January 21st, 2014, 10:10 am

That's true. But a cross-platform transfer in Downtown Hinckley to a streetcar circulator a la Kenosha would probably not have a big hit on ridership.

I'm also skeptical of the utility of this line to begin with. If the casino stop is what pushes this into cost effective territory, that's sketchy. Why should the public be building a train to Duluth by way of a casino when casinos already provide private coach bus service to bring people in?

NLX should be a lower priority than ZipRail to Rochester, Northstar to St. Cloud, and probably even regional service to Mankato and Eau Claire.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby MNdible » January 21st, 2014, 10:17 am

NLX should be a lower priority than ZipRail to Rochester, Northstar to St. Cloud, and probably even regional service to Mankato and Eau Claire.


With the exception of Rochester, Duluth is a bigger city and a more important regional center than any of the other cities you've listed. Unlike the others, it's also a major tourist destination. So why should they be higher priority?

EDIT: As of 2010, the Duluth MSA still has 100,000 more residents than the Rochester MSA.
Last edited by MNdible on January 21st, 2014, 10:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby talindsay » January 21st, 2014, 10:22 am

I hate to say it guys, but this is probably the price that needs to be paid to get the casino to cover some of the line's costs. I would suggest that holding one's nose and lobbying for alternative 5 or 5B - which keeps the train rolling through downtown Hinckley and simply runs the train onto a spur for a casino dropoff - would probably make the most sense, since it leaves a better option for through-routing some of the trains without introducing two separate routes through Hinckley. Alternatives 3 and 4 do at least come within a mile of downtown Hinckley, though of course the station would still be by the casino.

Bear in mind that it's about a mile and a half from the center of town to the casino; of course, that fact may make it possible to convince the powers that be that it's not worth rerouting the train at all, which is what we're all going to hope for, but if the station *does* get placed at the casino it's still actually quite close to the town.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby talindsay » January 21st, 2014, 10:27 am

I'm also skeptical of the utility of this line to begin with. If the casino stop is what pushes this into cost effective territory, that's sketchy. Why should the public be building a train to Duluth by way of a casino when casinos already provide private coach bus service to bring people in?
Well, I'll agree that its utility is suspect, but for all the reasons that we urbanists support mass transit, your argument seems like an ideal argument for why we *should* build it - the casinos would run the buses regardless, and this way the public gets some good out of it. The train to Duluth would serve some people regardless but wouldn't be cost-effective on its own; by getting the casino to support it and scrap their buses, the casinos can probably save a little money, and they give the additional boost to make this line cost-effective for everybody else who otherwise wouldn't have it. Essentially, the casino business underwrites a big portion of the cost for people to get from Minneapolis to Duluth.

And Duluth really is Minnesota's second city, even if Rochester's annexation of its sprawl has caused its individual city population to be higher than Duluth's. There certainly are more people in the Duluth area than the Rochester area, and unlike Rochester, Duluth acts as a fully independent metro area.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby mattaudio » January 21st, 2014, 10:39 am

- Is the casino contributing to the capital to build NLX? My point is that, if the casino is not chipping in, they are the beneficiary and not the public.

- ZipRail to Rochester has the additional utility. It can be extended to eventually form part of the MSHSR backbone connecting to LSE,MSN,MKE, and CHI. NLX does not have such an opportunity.

- Rochester is fast becoming MN's second metro. Besides tourism, Duluth has been stagnant for decades. Rochester has been growing (yes, sprawling, but that's changing). Having spent considerable time in both cities, it's clear which one has the momentum.

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Re: Northern Lights Express

Postby Viktor Vaughn » January 21st, 2014, 11:06 am

Not to discount that one company town to our south, but Duluth has a lot of momentum. Only a few decades ago someone took out a billboard on the outskirts of Duluth that said, "last one out turns off the lights" which captured the dispair of a declining rust belt port city.

The attitude has entirely changed. People move to Duluth because they don't want to live anywhere else. They sometimes have to sacrifice financially to do so, as the economy is still less robust, but growing. To overgeneralize, people sacrifice their personal lives to live in Rochester for the money.

My bias is showing, but Duluth is a unique town impossible to duplicate elsewhere. Between the harbor, the hill, the rugged hilltop spanning the city with both wild hiking & mt biking trails - a hospital town on the prairie just can't capture that same spirit no matter how many hotels, starbucks, or overpriced restaurants they build.

As far as momentum goes, my money is on Duluth. And that even assumes our fantastical health care economy keeps growing as it has - which it can't.


I can see why people wouldn't think NLX should be a priority, but I hope it gets done. Between business travel, college students, tourists, people from Duluth flying from MSP, Duluthians headed to "the cities" for a day to go to sports event, the mall, or a concert, and casino junkies - NLX has the potential to be an immediate success and become celebrated and ingrained in Minnesota culture.

Once that happens - zip rail to Rochester would be inevitable.


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