Northstar Commuter Rail

[DanPatchToget]

Rode the Northstar this evening for the first time in 4 years. It'll be interesting to see the ridership data with the service increase. Anecdotally I saw around 30 people on the northbound trip and around 12 people on the reverse-commute trip (3 of them transferred from the Northstar Link bus in Big Lake). In Big Lake there were 8 people waiting to get on the Northstar Link. Surprisingly I saw one other person who rode the Orange Line from South Bloomington, transferred to the light rail in downtown, and then got on Northstar.

[angrysuburbanite]

Have there been any recent efforts to study/build an infill station at Foley Blvd? The 2022 P&R report said it had 164 vehicles/day. While not much (though it's probably a little higher now), this could increase Northstar ridership a bit for relatively low cost.

[Tcmetro]

Foley Blvd is now grade separated at the BNSF tracks so there's now opportunity to add a platform. I wonder if they can get away with one platform on the east side. A full station would require a bridge over the tracks and elevators.

[DanPatchToget]

Northstar trains have to use the east/southbound track (the westernmost track) to access Fridley Station, so building a station at Foley Boulevard with only a platform on the west/northbound track (the easternmost track) would require adding a crossover somewhere between Fridley and Foley.

[Silophant]

Remember that, even though it's not moving particularly quickly, the NLX project received a big chunk of state funding last year, and includes a Foley Blvd station. The Met Council isn't going to stand up a separate project to build that for MnDOT on their own.

[HuskyGrad]

New Northstar Study has dropped. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerra ... index.html

[Bakken2016]

New Northstar Study has dropped. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerra ... index.html

2036-2038 implementation is absolute BS


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[Tom H.]

For reference, the recently-completed (2022) I-94 expansion project from Maple Grove to Clearwater cost $350M. A separate project to fill in the gap from Albertville to Monticello will cost $101M (starting this summer).

Not to say that these Northstar estimates are cheap, but we are spending almost half a billion dollars to basically maintain service levels on an existing highway facility along the same corridor. (And, in the spirit of Northstar, the added lanes don't *quite* get to St Cloud, instead ending in Clearwater.)

[Oreos&Milk]

New Northstar Study has dropped. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerra ... index.html

2036-2038 implementation is absolute BS


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Most seem to suggest a 2040 in-service date. That's just a short 16 years from now! I'm confident our train-riding president Joe Biden will be riding it on opening day while being a young 97. Wonder if he will still be an avid cyclist. Maybe he will even bring his bicycle with him. oh boy! can't wait!

Just 140,160 hours left give or take! oh boy! wonder if there is enough time for me to get my camera?

[DanPatchToget]

New Northstar Study has dropped. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerra ... index.html

2036-2038 implementation is absolute BS


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By that time it should be a full-fledged regional rail service on par with the likes of UTA's Frontrunner.

[Korh]

Part of me wants to wager which will happen first
the US will get true HSR first in one shape or form (i.e NEC upgrades, CAHSR, brightline west, etc) and start to make some progress after decades of trying

Or Northstar being extended 30ish miles


It's neck and neck tbh

[commissioner]

New Northstar Study has dropped. https://www.dot.state.mn.us/passengerra ... index.html

2036-2038 implementation is absolute BS


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By that time it should be a full-fledged regional rail service on par with the likes of UTA's Frontrunner.

With Minnesota's hostility to rail, I'm not holding my breath.

[Silophant]

This almost reads to me like malicious compliance with the legislative directive. Appendix B clarifies that it's just an update of the pre-pandemic study from 2020, adding more St. Cloud service on top of the six daily Big Lake-Mpls roundtrips, all during peak am and pm hours, with all the rolling stock inefficiencies and mainline congestion that implies. That's why there's line-items in there for things like even more trainsets than the six Metro Transit has, though four of them haven't been used in years, and an expansion of the Big Lake OMF to hold them. On the one hand, it definitely is "an assessment of a project to extend Northstar Commuter Rail service to the city of St. Cloud", on the other hand, it's been pretty clear since about Sept. 2020 that prepandemic-style "lots of trips inbound in the morning, lots of trips outbound in the afternoon" commuter service wasn't going to make sense going forwards. We'll see what comes out of the secondary study due next January, which is to look at intercity transit in the MSP-St. Cloud-Fargo corridor more generally.

I'm also not holding my breath.