Northstar Commuter Rail

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
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FISHMANPET
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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby FISHMANPET » December 31st, 2015, 8:21 pm

There's gotta be cost breakdowns on that somewhere, right?

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby mulad » December 31st, 2015, 8:45 pm

There's some information in the National Transit Database about maintenance and other things that Metro Transit pays for, but a lot of the money goes into a big payment to BNSF for their role operating the trains. I haven't asked anyone at Metro Transit about getting more info, but I've been pessimistic about getting an answer.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby mattaudio » January 18th, 2016, 3:08 pm

I stopped in downtown Elk River for a brief moment on my way home from St. Cloud. Downtown is literally across the highway (but a 30 MPH urban stroad in this place) from the BNSF mainline. But how far of a walk to the station? Nearly an hour, if you want to not-walk-on-a-freeway.
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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby acs » January 18th, 2016, 3:45 pm

There's a downtown Elk River?

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby mulad » January 18th, 2016, 3:48 pm

Yes, this is one of my biggest complaints about the line. I wish they would have chosen a spot next to the town center, but they're trying some level of TOD around the station that did get built, so it's hard to justify moving it at this point. When/if Northstar trains turn into DMUs or EMUs, it might make sense to add another station downtown.

I believe there had been a plan to add a bike path close to the railroad, but I think neighborhood opposition ended up nixing the idea. That could shorten the route by a couple tenths of a mile, but I'm not sure how useful that would be since it goes through the power station and other relatively unused land. At least the Twin Lakes Road route goes past some businesses. Still, I think they ought to do something to make a better path to the center of town -- seems like someone will get killed walking/biking along U.S. 10 someday, if it hasn't happened already.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby VacantLuxuries » January 18th, 2016, 4:06 pm

When/if Northstar trains turn into DMUs or EMUs, it might make sense to add another station downtown.
Has this ever been brought up as a serious possibility? I thought they needed the massive trains because they share tracks with freight.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby David Greene » January 18th, 2016, 4:24 pm

There's a downtown Elk River?
Umm...Elk River is a proper town. I still remember when it wasn't even an exurb as I have cousins who grew up there. 30 years ago it was considered way the hell out there.

My great-grandfather owned a harness shop there back in the day.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby FISHMANPET » January 18th, 2016, 5:17 pm

When/if Northstar trains turn into DMUs or EMUs, it might make sense to add another station downtown.
Has this ever been brought up as a serious possibility? I thought they needed the massive trains because they share tracks with freight.
We (mostly me) have talked some about this recently here and in the St Cloud extension thread and probably elsewhere, but there are FRA compliant DMUs finally, and there's always the hope that FRA rules get reformed to allow off the self foreign trains to be operated here.

American rail safety is primarily about making sure people survive when trains collide, while European and Japanese rail safety is about making sure trains don't collide with each other in the first place.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby mattaudio » January 18th, 2016, 10:36 pm

Also, the double tracking between Becker and Big Lake looked complete, though maybe they're still working on the signalling... both tracks were flashing yellow signals over that section in the direction of my travel, across all the blocks I could see.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby FISHMANPET » February 2nd, 2016, 4:30 pm

Metro Transit says today's ridership is 17% higher than yesterday's.
https://twitter.com/MetroTransitMN/stat ... 8012952576

Sounds like lots of people decided taking the train would be way easier than driving home in this mess. Makes you wonder if Northstar could be more successful if we just stopped making driving easier in this corridor. It obviously works for people, just not as well as driving.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby acs » February 2nd, 2016, 4:47 pm

Too bad US-10 will probably be a full freeway and I-94 will have 6 lanes before Northstar is ever completed.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby amiller92 » February 3rd, 2016, 10:03 am

Metro Transit says today's ridership is 17% higher than yesterday's.
https://twitter.com/MetroTransitMN/stat ... 8012952576

Sounds like lots of people decided taking the train would be way easier than driving home in this mess. Makes you wonder if Northstar could be more successful if we just stopped making driving easier in this corridor. It obviously works for people, just not as well as driving.
Sounds like a great topic for a street.mn post to me (which I'm not going to write).

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby pwm94 » February 15th, 2016, 8:40 pm

State Rep. Jim Knoblach, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, has said he's researching the cost of an extension to St. Cloud and doesn't think it would cost all that much money.

"I continue to believe there are possibilities for it," the St. Cloud Republican said in a recent interview.
http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local ... /80230164/

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Nathan
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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby Nathan » February 16th, 2016, 9:19 am

Come on state republicans... get greedy, use that surplus... build us a train! It's not that spendy, you can justify it!

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby LRV Op Dude » February 16th, 2016, 10:48 am

Come on state republicans... get greedy, use that surplus... build us a train! It's not that spendy, you can justify it!
They have to fund Green Line extension first.
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Nathan
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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby Nathan » February 16th, 2016, 3:33 pm

I was only drawing attention to the fact that a Republican lawmaker is advocating for the completion on this route, I kind of figure the green and blue line extensions are going to happen with little struggle? Maybe I'm optimistic. I just really want the north star to be completed to finally discover if regional rail can be successful in our region when it connects destination to destination.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby maxbaby » February 16th, 2016, 4:30 pm

Come on state republicans... get greedy, use that surplus... build us a train! It's not that spendy, you can justify it!
Update this 1960's style freeway system that we have.

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby matthew5080 » March 10th, 2016, 1:03 pm

Community/Activist push for Northstar extension to St Cloud. Glad to hear this!

http://www.startribune.com/st-cloud-tra ... 371663581/

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby grant1simons2 » March 28th, 2016, 4:00 pm

Knoblach pitches bill to extend Northstar to St. Cloud

http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local ... /82343858/

Will be introduced tomorrow
Knoblach's bill doesn't include any funding for an expansion, and prohibits the state from spending any more on operating costs than already budgeted. But he says he doesn't anticipate any additional cost to run the trains an additional 27 miles to the Amtrak station in St. Cloud.
Somebody please explain how this would work?

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Re: Northstar Commuter Rail

Postby Silophant » March 28th, 2016, 4:15 pm

Republicans Knoblach and Pederson are introducing legislation to extend Northstar to St. Cloud.

The plan is to do it for no extra money, by removing one round trip from the existing service and extending two remaining round trips to St. Cloud, thus keeping the total daily train mileage approximately the same. Assuming that operational costs actually scale linearly with mileage, I guess that might work? Since BNSF runs the train, do they actually just charge a per-mile fee to the Met Council? In addition to barring the state from spending any more operating dollars than they currently are, the bill also prohibits the state from spending any capital dollars, so the St. Cloud station would be the Amtrak station (with it's 20-space dirt parking lot), and there would be no Becker or Clear Lake stations unless some other funding source pops up.
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