August 12, 2025 • 27 mins
The North Star Rail line in Minnesota is being canceled after struggling with ridership, particularly following a devastating 98% drop during the pandemic. Though originally conceived as an 80-mile connection between Minneapolis and St. Cloud, budget constraints limited it to just 40 miles ending in Big Lake, setting the project up for challenges from the start.
• 40-mile commuter rail line with seven stations running from Minneapolis to Big Lake
• Pre-pandemic ridership approached 800,000 annually but collapsed to just 400 daily riders today
• Service reduction from six to four daily round trips further hampered recovery efforts
• Recent transit-oriented development along the route now threatened by line's cancellation
• Metropolitan Council replacing rail service with buses, reducing operating budget from $12M to $2M
• Original plan to extend to St. Cloud (population 70,000) never materialized
• Lack of stations in key areas like north Minneapolis likely limited potential ridership
• Political pressure accelerated the cancellation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Doors are closing.
Public transit that's my way toroll On the metro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Public transit, it's the rhythmof my life.
This week on Transit Tangents,we cover the latest news
surrounding the cancellation ofthe North Star Rail in
(00:23):
Minneapolis.
What went wrong, can it besaved and what lessons can we
learn?
All of this and more coming upon Transit Tensions.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis week's episode of Transit
Tensions.
My name is Lewis and I'm Chris,and today we are diving into a
project revisiting the state ofMinnesota.
(00:43):
The last time we covered thisstate, we were talking about an
awesome project in St Paul,which was a pretty amazing BRT
project that is now operational.
This one, unfortunately, isless positive.
We're going to be talking aboutthe recent announcement, which
involves the ending of the NorthStar rail line that goes
(01:03):
northwest from Minnesota.
This was a commuter rail line,essentially, that opened in 2009
.
It started off fairly strong,although it was a little bit
lower than initial expectations,but post COVID has run into
some issues, and thus this weekwe just were met with the
announcement that this thing wasunfortunately being canceled.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, it is unfortunate to see.
I mean, we want to see realprojects succeeding in the
country but, as you said, itwasn't quite meeting the
expectations.
Pre-pandemic.
The estimated ridership wasgoing to be 800,000 people per
year and it tended to fluctuatefrom the start of the project to
COVID where you really youstayed above 700,000, but it
(01:46):
wasn't quite hitting the 800,000.
And there may be a significantreason why they didn't hit the
800,000.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Right, yeah.
So I mean right from the startthis thing was kind of hampered.
It really was not set up forsuccess.
Before we get into kind of someof those specific reasons, just
to give a little bit morebackground on the rail as it
exists today.
This is about a 40-mile-longrail line with seven stations,
running from Minneapolis to BigLake.
It is double-tracked all theway through.
(02:16):
This is a repurposing of an oldfreight line through the area.
The freight line still sees alot of traffic but it, you know,
it's a good additional use ofthe infrastructure.
Pre-covid it saw six dailyround trips.
So you had six trips headedsouthbound into the city, six
trips headed northbound out ofthe city and it takes 52 minutes
(02:39):
to travel from end to end.
But, as we mentioned, this thingreally was kind of doomed from
the start.
So this I said is a 40-mileline ending in Big Lake to the
northwest, and it doesn't take alot of research into looking on
Google Maps, on Satellite View,even to see why ridership might
(02:59):
be an issue, especially with aline ending in Big Lake which is
a fairly sprawling kind ofsuburban area home to only
11,000 people.
And when you dig a little bitfurther into this and you
realize that this line wasactually supposed to go another
40 miles further to theNorthwest, to St Cloud.
The kind of original vision forthe rail line makes a whole lot
(03:22):
more sense.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, and I am kicking myself, because if I had
known that this was coming up,I would have I would have
actually taken a camera with me.
I was in Minneapolis just a fewweeks ago.
I was traveling fromMinneapolis to Brainerd,
minnesota, and traveled thisentire corridor.
I actually had done someresearch.
I was looking for a train toget me as far north as I could
(03:45):
go, to a bigger city to thenmaybe rent a car, and then I
figured out that this train onlywent from downtown to Big Lake
and it wasn't really feasible.
The corridor seems pretty primedfor a successful rail line.
You have all these cute littletowns along the way that have a
lot of room for development,little towns along the way, that
(04:06):
a lot of room for development,and it kind of seems like when
they were starting this line,they had this mentality of if
you build it, they will come.
There's plenty of space andopportunity for that.
The downside of this is withthe line ending in big lake.
When I got to big lake, it'sexactly what it sounds like.
There's a big lake, it's veryrecreational, there's an rv park
and a little strip mall, butthat is it.
There's nothing else in BigLake and, as you said, louis, it
(04:28):
is sprawling and sparselypopulated, with only 11,000
people, so it is unfortunatethat it didn't continue all the
way to St.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Cloud, and with St Cloud too, I mean when you
compare the 11,000 people in BigLake to the over 70,000 people
in St Cloud.
I mean it's night and day whenyou're putting together a rail
line, a bus line, whatever itmay be, if you have kind of one
destination on one end of theline and the other end of the
line isn't much of a destination.
(04:59):
There's not many people going toand from there.
There are less trips beinggenerated from there.
You're obviously going to haveless and less folks the further
down the line you go.
However, in the scenario whereyou put St Cloud on the end of
the line, you have seven timesas many people, you have more
industry, you have more thingsgoing on.
You're going to end up withmore ridership from end to end
(05:21):
on the line, more people goingfurther distances on the line,
which kind of you know leads tooh, you have more people riding
it.
Now you can add more trains,which makes it more convenient
for more people, and you getnetwork effects that really lend
the transit to being to betterserve the region.
And it's wild to me that thiswasn't done correctly the first
(05:42):
time Again, when this wasinitially studied.
The plan time again, when thiswas initially studied, the plan
was to do this full length.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
This corridor is double tracked the whole way and
that's always that's alwayswhat we find when we do research
about what's the limitingfactor on expanding rail service
.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
It's almost always the fact that the rail is not
double tracked and in this casenot only is it already double
tracked but it's used like thefreight.
The freight trains use it inboth directions.
This is not like it's somederelict falling apart rail line
.
This is a functioning existingrail line that already serves
freight and art I mean,obviously it serves commuters.
For for this section, I believesome of it might may even serve
(06:19):
some of the the long distanceamtrak routes that go further
out.
I believe the Empire Buildergoes into this area.
If not, I'm going to insert myvoice right here telling me I'm
wrong.
But it's insane that, likebudget restrictions were the
reason why this never wentthrough initially.
Because, again, yes, that mostexpensive part would be like, oh
(06:40):
, if you have to double trackfor 40 miles, yeah, that's going
to be expensive.
That probably wouldn't be thebest use of funds, necessarily
if you're not sure about whatthe ridership might be.
But when it's already there,you don't need to go invest some
huge pile of money into fancystations and all this sort of
stuff.
Do a pilot for five years orsomething and just do very basic
(07:03):
, you know cement platforms witha bench and a bus shelter at
each one, and if it turns outthat the ridership is there,
then you can spend some extramoney to make it a little bit
better, as you're increasing thefrequency of the trains and
whatnot.
But uh, you know from the start, having the limiting factor be
oh, we're not worried, you know,we're worried about the budget.
So let's do this kind ofhalf-assed version that doesn't
(07:24):
end in a place that people wantto go.
You're setting yourself up forfailure.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Pre-pandemic.
Yes, you are setting yourselfup for failure, but things
looked like they were trendingsomewhat in the right direction.
We were getting close to the800,000 people that they
expected or 800,000 ridersrather that they expected per
year.
They expected, or 800,000riders rather than they expected
per year.
But then, as everyone knows andevery city has experienced,
(07:52):
covid came and ridership justabsolutely was decimated.
We saw a pretty much an entireridership collapse.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
We went from getting close to a hundred000 people to
losing 98% of total ridersduring the pandemic, which is a
wild catastrophic loss Right,and I mean obviously that
happened with transit of allkinds and all systems, not only
across the country but reallyacross the world.
So to be expected.
(08:21):
But the ridership recovery herewas pretty slow.
So with the pandemic you alsohad kind of service cuts.
So instead of six round tripsper day you were down to four
round trips per day.
Six round trips per day isalready pretty hard to plan
around.
You know what I mean.
It's not like oh, I missed the8 o'clock train.
(08:43):
I'll catch one at 8.30.
It's no like you've got threetrains to get yourself home at
the end of the day, or fourtrains, six trains, whatever it
may be.
You know what I mean.
Uh, it's not like some frequentlevel of service but when you
drop it down to, you've only gotfour trains per direction per
day.
I mean that's that's two in themorning going, you know out,
and two in the evening.
(09:03):
That's pretty rough.
So you know, seeing the servicereduction definitely makes a
lot of sense in the ridership aswell.
But even though it was slow, Imean things were coming back.
Just looking at it now, in 2021, at the low it was 50,433
riders that year.
2022 was 77,000.
(09:25):
2023 was 97,000.
And 2024 was 127,433 ridersthat year, 2022, was 77,000,
2023 was 97,000 and 2024 was127,000.
Now that is still only like 15percent of what the ridership
was before covid.
So yeah, I mean that's aproblem well, we also.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
we had an issue because the agency that ran this
they were not able to go backto their full operational
expenditure because you hadlocal counties pulling their
resources out of this lineLeading up to the pandemic.
The operational budget wasaround $12 million to operate
the line in its current state.
(10:00):
You had counties like I thinkit's Anoka County that reduced
their contribution fromsomewhere around six million to
like one point to five millionor so.
So you had a huge financiallosses as well.
(10:22):
And then you also kind of think, moving out of the pandemic
without going back to those sixtrains a day, without operating
at your full operationalcapacity, yeah, of course you're
not going to see massive growthin the ridership.
You know, I do wonder if theydid immediately reinstate OK,
here's your 12 million dollarbudget in 2023.
Would the ridership have soaredback up to close to 700,000?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Right, yeah, yeah, you don't know.
And I mean like, in addition tothat, I mean even even if you
got most of your riders back to,I mean, the, the work from home
obviously is hurt, transit in alot of places and whatnot.
And you know there are otherelements to this that have, kind
of both pre and post, covidkind of made things difficult on
(11:08):
this line.
And when you just you know,kind of anytime I'm looking at a
new transit project or I read astory about a transit project,
whether it's positive ornegative, I just like love going
into, you know, google Earthlike satellite view and just
going all the way down theentire line, essentially seeing
what's there.
And at first when I was lookingat this one, I was like
horrified because I was lookingat some of the satellite image
(11:30):
and it's just like you know,parking lots and grass fields.
And then I was, I was I'll savesome of it, but as I zoomed in
I could tell that like thesatellite images are out of date
and there actually was anemphasis on transit oriented
development in some cases here.
At first when I was looking atit, I was like wow, they didn't
even try at all.
Like I was actually gettingkind of pissed.
Scrolling through I was like,wow, these guys really mess up,
(11:51):
but it's a little disheartening.
But I kind of want to gothrough the line a little bit,
starting in Minneapolis andheading north and just kind of
taking a look at the stationsand some things that, from afar,
we can kind of look at and seein the future.
Could this be salvageable Ifsomeone swoops in at the last
minutes and saves this project?
(12:11):
Could it be worthwhileageableif someone swoops in at the last
minutes and save this, savesthis project?
Could it be, uh, worthwhile?
Or should this thing bescrapped, which is sad to say,
but, like you know, in certaininstances it could make some
sense.
So, obviously, the downtownstation is pretty awesome.
You're right at target field,uh, downtown minneapolis, you've
got great connection to thelight rail, great connection to
buses.
Um you, it's nice to have anactual downtown station area.
(12:34):
The first thing that reallystood out to me, though, was
there is no station justimmediately north of downtown.
It feels like it's a prettydense part of town.
You can tell there's a lot ofapartments there, retail, all
that sort of stuff, offices, and, if you wanted to get there on
this commuter line coming fromthe north.
(12:55):
You would have to go straightthrough it to downtown and then
you don't have another railconnection to get you back over
there.
You'd likely be getting on abus that would kind of take you
a roundabout way over the riverto get back into that area.
So that feels like a smallthing that could have been done
to capture some ridership rightaway.
To me it kind of it's verysimilar to what we have in
(13:16):
Austin with Plaza Saltillostation.
You have a lot of density atPlaza Saltillo.
You have some offices right atPlaza Saltillo.
It's really close to downtown,but having that extra stop there
in the commuter line isdefinitely a major positive.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Absolutely, and I would think again.
I'm not a transit planner.
The commuter line is definitelya major positive.
Absolutely, and I would thinkagain.
I'm not a transit planner, butI would think that if you had
this sort of north of downtownline, it helps subsidize the
rest of the line because you areadding to that ridership number
.
So it does seem like that wouldhelp improve the overall
financial health of the line.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Right, yeah, going a little further north was Fridley
Station.
There are some apartmentsnearby, but it is predominantly
parking.
Um, considering how close youare to downtown, you could
really beef up the amount ofapartments that are here.
Uh, it's an area though thatseems like it's.
Either those apartments haveprobably been there for longer
(14:05):
than the station's been there.
Uh, this one was like lessprime for like brand new
development, but there's still,I mean, anywhere you're seeing
surface parking lots right nextto a rail station.
You can ask yourself I'm notsaying, get rid of all the
parking, but could you put agarage here and also build an
apartment building that 200people could live in?
Because if the answer is yes,you probably should be doing
(14:27):
that.
You know what I mean, both fromthe sense of like housing
affordability, but also transitand making sure people can get
around those areas.
Yeah, the next one down theline or up the line, though.
This one was the one that reallyfrustrated me at first and I
was like furious.
I had to like go back andchange some of the stuff that I
put together.
I was like furiously typingaway Hakun Rapids, when you look
(14:48):
at it at first, looks like atrain station behind like a
strip mall with just a hugefield of grass behind it and I
was like, oh my god, like likeno attempt at all to do anything
.
And then I zoomed in.
I was like, okay, there's somepretty serious development that
has gone in there, and a themethat we're going to kind of see
with the next couple stationshere is this development is all
(15:12):
new.
This is all basicallypost-COVID development People
moving in in 2022, 2023, whichmakes the news about the
cancellation a little bitdisheartening.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Well, and it actually surprises me that they wouldn't
again try to push more fundinginto this to try to recapture
the ridership, Because again, aseverybody knows post-pandemic
living in cities the cost ofliving shot through the roof.
We live in Austin and we got, Ithink, one of the worst
increases in the market, butplaces like Minneapolis were
also experiencing these hugebursts in cost of living, and so
(15:48):
people were looking foralternatives of living
immediately in the city, andthese smaller satellite
communities with good transitare really viable options for
people if they can get back tothe city easily.
And it seemed like that trend,as you said, and zooming into
these little areas, that trendof building more TOD was
happening.
It may not have been happeningfor Anoka, which is the next
(16:12):
stop on the list, as you put inyour notes, it's basically just
a parking lot, which may alsoexplain why they wanted to
reduce their funding, but I dothink that eventually those
small towns would have startedto see some population increase
with better mobility and,honestly, it's probably better
for the towns as well.
I mean better tax base.
(16:32):
You can build out moreamenities for your or, yeah,
more amenities for yourpopulation.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So yeah, and even really disheartening Totally and
like create more jobs in thosecommunities.
I mean, like you know, around atransit station, if you put in,
you know retail and restaurantsand you can put put in offices,
like people in your communitycould have places to go, they
have places to work.
I mean it's, it's and you havethe ease of accessibility to get
(16:59):
folks in your community intoMinneapolis if they'd like to.
And again, I mean, like as youget on the line here even
further, ramsey Station, againfurther to the northwest, a lot
of it's still happening butthere's a ton of development
happening around the station.
And again it's just sodisheartening because it's like
the thought for the transitoriented development was there,
(17:23):
but the process to buildapartment buildings and all of
this sort of stuff and the redtape involved with doing all of
this.
It takes so long to build the.
You know we think it takes longto build transit.
It also takes a long time tobuild anything but single family
houses you want to build asingle family house is pretty
quick and easy.
You'll see these massiveneighborhoods being built, uh,
(17:44):
by these huge companies andwhatnot, but like you don't see
huge apartment complexes beingbuilt everywhere in the united
states, I would say in austin,where, like, like Austin's an
exception right now, becauseAustin has cleared the way to do
that as they should, and that'swhy we're seeing housing costs
in Austin go down, not up,unlike the rest of the country.
In the rest of the country,it's taken a while to be able to
(18:04):
do this sort of thing.
So we're seeing all of thisdevelopment around these
stations at Ramsey, at CoonRapids.
We're seeing all of thisdevelopment around these
stations at Ramsey, at CoonRapids and, unfortunately, at a
lot of these, like, people arejust moving into them.
Literally, even as we'rerecording this, some of this
isn't fully built out yet.
So you know now all of thosefolks who are moving in.
We're seeing this rail stationhere, which is that's cool, but
(18:31):
by the time they moved there, itwas already cut down to four
trips a day, and now it's like,oh, it's canceled.
And it's like, first off, whatis the desirability to live this
far out now?
Now, all of these people aremaybe going to rely on a bus,
but more than likely they'rejust gonna get in their car and
drive down.
And now all of this effort thatwas put into transit oriented
development along this rail lineis literally going to lead to
more people driving in theircars down the highway.
(18:52):
Sad, it's really.
It's actually like, reallydepressing.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Um, and I think about, yeah,those people like they moved out
there specifically.
Some people may have moved outthere specifically for this
reason and now they're just kindof left behind.
So, yeah, it is a sad situationthere.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And then we lightly talked about this one earlier.
But Big Lake, the end of theline, you don't need to say much
, considering there is a literaljunkyard in the walk shed of
the terminus station of thiscommuter rail line.
So, um, you know, if I was, ifI were a transit planner which,
like you, I'm, I'm not uh, Ithink one thing I would do is
(19:35):
probably try to avoid, uh,having junkyards in the walk
shed of the uh where, where yousee junkyards, lewis, I see
opportunity.
Yeah, and then obviously, likewe said, this was at one point
initially meant to connect allthe way up to St Cloud much
bigger population center, over70,000 people.
(19:57):
And even though it doesn'tconnect now, I think it's worth
looking at to see what it wouldhave looked like.
There would have been probablytwo small stops along the way
between Big Lake and St Cloud,but those towns are pretty small
en route.
But you'd still maybe want totry to capture some of that
ridership or just haveconvenience for folks living in
those areas.
But in St Cloud you end up witha situation where the train
(20:18):
station is not immediately likein the center of downtown, it's
not in the most walkable area,it's kind of set off to the east
by a little bit.
So you would definitely need todo some work.
There's a lot of potential todo some transit oriented
development around the stationthere.
But it would definitely bodewell to do some sort of like
feeder bus system.
There is transit in St Cloud,but you'd probably want to do
(20:40):
some sort of like well-timed bustransfers and whatnot to get
folks from saint cloud to theactual station so that folks
wouldn't have to relynecessarily on driving to the
station.
So, um, but you know, that sortof thing would again bode well
for folks who maybe are ridingthe saint cloud, because if you
arrive there you might be ableto get on a nice timed
connection onto a bus, uh, andfinish the rest of your trip, um
(21:03):
, up into that area.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So what we could have had, I don't know Well what we
could have had, even though wedon't live there, I know, yes,
what Minnesotans could have had?
Yes, every time you say StCloud, in the back of my brain I
just keep hearing St Olaf.
I don't know if you were also aGolden Girls fan.
I was not.
Rose Nyland was from St Olaf,anyway.
(21:28):
A fan I was not.
Rose Nylund was from St Olaf,anyway.
That's been playing in the backof my head this whole time.
So what really put the nail inthe coffin for this project as
we talked about?
It wasn't really set up tosucceed.
From the beginning, writershippost-pandemic had completely
collapsed and, with the fundingremoved, there wasn't really a
path forward for rebuilding thismassive ridership they had
(21:51):
before.
There was a study conducted inaround 2023 that looked at the
feasibility of this line andincreasing funding and what they
could do.
However, the study didn't.
It wasn't designed to giverecommendations or have any
commitments associated with thestudy.
So to me, that just seems likeit was a waste of time and
effort and money and money.
(22:13):
Yeah, because studies do costmoney.
They usually cost a couplemillion dollars to conduct.
But then what really started tohappen was in 2025, you started
to see the legislature paying alot more closer attention to
this line.
You had the chair of the HouseTransportation, finance and
Policy Committee in Minnesotatry to put forth legislation to
(22:36):
basically kill the line.
That representative is JohnKoznik, who is a Republican
representing Lakeville, and oneof his primary reasons for
advancing this legislation wasthe project cost too much money.
They could cancel it withpermission from the federal
government and not be requiredto pay back any of the
(22:57):
construction costs that thefederal government put up.
But then his top reason was theline wasn't helping reduce
congestion between St Cloud andMinnesota and for all of the
reasons we've already listed, ofcourse it wasn't designed to
reduce congestion at this point.
But what also is funny aboutthat statement is the
(23:20):
alternative to this would be busservice, and buses sit in
traffic and create more traffic.
So potentially can create moretraffic.
So potentially can create moretraffic.
They can also alleviate it.
But in this situation I thinkthey would just sit in the
traffic right.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It would be adding a bus to the road.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
That was a train right so all of that together
just really um started to putthe nail in the coffin before
this legislation uh thatrepresentative, uh kosnick put
forward really made its waythrough the statehouse.
That was when the Met Council,who manages the entire project
they had already started to workon a plan, but they quickly got
(23:57):
it presented before all thishappened to say, ok, we are
going to cancel the trainservice and instead we're going
to institute this bus serviceand our operational budget will
go from what we need, which is12 million to 2 million.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
so a huge, huge cost savings, uh, for moving to the
bus system right and again, Imean it's uh, I guess the jury's
still out on whether or notthis is a good idea to cancel
this.
I mean, when you look at theridership, we didn't break it
down to this level yet, um, inthe episode.
(24:31):
But this thing sees like 400riders per day right now.
400, like that's that's bad, Imean that's not good.
Uh, like it's really hard tojustify running rail service for
400 people a day, um, thatthose are numbers that make more
(24:52):
sense for for buses.
But again, when you, when youthink through the long-term
strategy of like you've got allthis development along the line,
you do have people moving intothese areas because, as intended
, intended with this developmentalong the line, yeah, it makes
you think whether or not theyshould have held on for at least
a couple more years to seewhere things were going, to try
(25:14):
to play with different ways torun the service.
But alas, here we are.
You know, again, this servicewill be officially canceled in
January.
I was trying to find some, youknow, potential good news in all
this in January.
I was trying to find some, youknow potential good news in all
this.
You know, maybe there's likesome secret way that, like some
other rail service, is able totake advantage of the space In
(25:34):
my head.
For a little bit.
I was, like you know, I hear alot of positive news about the
Borealis line that runs fromChicago to St Paul.
I thought it ran all the way toMinneapolis but it ends in St
Paul.
Minneapolis doesn't actuallyhave an Amtrak station anymore,
which I didn't know.
It just uses St Paul and thenyou transfer over.
I was like, oh, it runs all theway to Minneapolis.
(25:56):
Maybe they could just extendthe Borealis a little bit
further and utilize that to havesome additional service running
all the way to St Cloud.
But Borealis doesn't run thatfar and there would not be an
easy downtown Minneapolisaddition to it without doing
some weird turnaround.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
But that was part of the study too was maybe the
feasibility of Amtrak takingover the North Star service and
operating it, which, had thingsbeen different last November,
that could have potentiallyhappened, but as it stands now I
don't think Amtrak is taking onmany new service routes.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
You don't think Sean Duffy just wants to put trains
all over the place?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I will bite my tongue on that.
All I can say is rest in Pete.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And, with all that, thank you all so much for
watching.
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(27:12):
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um, but with all that being said, thank you all so much for
watching and enjoy the rest ofyour transits and tuesday yeah,
I'm saving that dough.
Public transit's where it's at,watch me go.
Doors are closing.
Public transit that's my way toroll On the metro.
I'm taking control.
Bus stops, train tracks it's mydaily grind.
Public transit, it's the rhythmof my life.
This week on Transit Tangents,we cover the latest news
surrounding the cancellation ofthe North Star Rail in
(00:23):
Minneapolis.
What went wrong, can it besaved and what lessons can we
learn?
All of this and more coming upon Transit Tensions.
Hey everybody, and welcome tothis week's episode of Transit
Tensions.
My name is Lewis and I'm Chris,and today we are diving into a
project revisiting the state ofMinnesota.
(00:43):
The last time we covered thisstate, we were talking about an
awesome project in St Paul,which was a pretty amazing BRT
project that is now operational.
This one, unfortunately, isless positive.
We're going to be talking aboutthe recent announcement, which
involves the ending of the NorthStar rail line that goes
(01:03):
northwest from Minnesota.
This was a commuter rail line,essentially, that opened in 2009
.
It started off fairly strong,although it was a little bit
lower than initial expectations,but post COVID has run into
some issues, and thus this weekwe just were met with the
announcement that this thing wasunfortunately being canceled.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah, it is unfortunate to see.
I mean, we want to see realprojects succeeding in the
country but, as you said, itwasn't quite meeting the
expectations.
Pre-pandemic.
The estimated ridership wasgoing to be 800,000 people per
year and it tended to fluctuatefrom the start of the project to
COVID where you really youstayed above 700,000, but it
(01:46):
wasn't quite hitting the 800,000.
And there may be a significantreason why they didn't hit the
800,000.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Right, yeah.
So I mean right from the startthis thing was kind of hampered.
It really was not set up forsuccess.
Before we get into kind of someof those specific reasons, just
to give a little bit morebackground on the rail as it
exists today.
This is about a 40-mile-longrail line with seven stations,
running from Minneapolis to BigLake.
It is double-tracked all theway through.
(02:16):
This is a repurposing of an oldfreight line through the area.
The freight line still sees alot of traffic but it, you know,
it's a good additional use ofthe infrastructure.
Pre-covid it saw six dailyround trips.
So you had six trips headedsouthbound into the city, six
trips headed northbound out ofthe city and it takes 52 minutes
(02:39):
to travel from end to end.
But, as we mentioned, this thingreally was kind of doomed from
the start.
So this I said is a 40-mileline ending in Big Lake to the
northwest, and it doesn't take alot of research into looking on
Google Maps, on Satellite View,even to see why ridership might
(02:59):
be an issue, especially with aline ending in Big Lake which is
a fairly sprawling kind ofsuburban area home to only
11,000 people.
And when you dig a little bitfurther into this and you
realize that this line wasactually supposed to go another
40 miles further to theNorthwest, to St Cloud.
The kind of original vision forthe rail line makes a whole lot
(03:22):
more sense.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, and I am kicking myself, because if I had
known that this was coming up,I would have I would have
actually taken a camera with me.
I was in Minneapolis just a fewweeks ago.
I was traveling fromMinneapolis to Brainerd,
minnesota, and traveled thisentire corridor.
I actually had done someresearch.
I was looking for a train toget me as far north as I could
(03:45):
go, to a bigger city to thenmaybe rent a car, and then I
figured out that this train onlywent from downtown to Big Lake
and it wasn't really feasible.
The corridor seems pretty primedfor a successful rail line.
You have all these cute littletowns along the way that have a
lot of room for development,little towns along the way, that
(04:06):
a lot of room for development,and it kind of seems like when
they were starting this line,they had this mentality of if
you build it, they will come.
There's plenty of space andopportunity for that.
The downside of this is withthe line ending in big lake.
When I got to big lake, it'sexactly what it sounds like.
There's a big lake, it's veryrecreational, there's an rv park
and a little strip mall, butthat is it.
There's nothing else in BigLake and, as you said, louis, it
(04:28):
is sprawling and sparselypopulated, with only 11,000
people, so it is unfortunatethat it didn't continue all the
way to St.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Cloud, and with St Cloud too, I mean when you
compare the 11,000 people in BigLake to the over 70,000 people
in St Cloud.
I mean it's night and day whenyou're putting together a rail
line, a bus line, whatever itmay be, if you have kind of one
destination on one end of theline and the other end of the
line isn't much of a destination.
(04:59):
There's not many people going toand from there.
There are less trips beinggenerated from there.
You're obviously going to haveless and less folks the further
down the line you go.
However, in the scenario whereyou put St Cloud on the end of
the line, you have seven timesas many people, you have more
industry, you have more thingsgoing on.
You're going to end up withmore ridership from end to end
(05:21):
on the line, more people goingfurther distances on the line,
which kind of you know leads tooh, you have more people riding
it.
Now you can add more trains,which makes it more convenient
for more people, and you getnetwork effects that really lend
the transit to being to betterserve the region.
And it's wild to me that thiswasn't done correctly the first
(05:42):
time Again, when this wasinitially studied.
The plan time again, when thiswas initially studied, the plan
was to do this full length.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
This corridor is double tracked the whole way and
that's always that's alwayswhat we find when we do research
about what's the limitingfactor on expanding rail service
.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
It's almost always the fact that the rail is not
double tracked and in this casenot only is it already double
tracked but it's used like thefreight.
The freight trains use it inboth directions.
This is not like it's somederelict falling apart rail line
.
This is a functioning existingrail line that already serves
freight and art I mean,obviously it serves commuters.
For for this section, I believesome of it might may even serve
(06:19):
some of the the long distanceamtrak routes that go further
out.
I believe the Empire Buildergoes into this area.
If not, I'm going to insert myvoice right here telling me I'm
wrong.
But it's insane that, likebudget restrictions were the
reason why this never wentthrough initially.
Because, again, yes, that mostexpensive part would be like, oh
(06:40):
, if you have to double trackfor 40 miles, yeah, that's going
to be expensive.
That probably wouldn't be thebest use of funds, necessarily
if you're not sure about whatthe ridership might be.
But when it's already there,you don't need to go invest some
huge pile of money into fancystations and all this sort of
stuff.
Do a pilot for five years orsomething and just do very basic
(07:03):
, you know cement platforms witha bench and a bus shelter at
each one, and if it turns outthat the ridership is there,
then you can spend some extramoney to make it a little bit
better, as you're increasing thefrequency of the trains and
whatnot.
But uh, you know from the start, having the limiting factor be
oh, we're not worried, you know,we're worried about the budget.
So let's do this kind ofhalf-assed version that doesn't
(07:24):
end in a place that people wantto go.
You're setting yourself up forfailure.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Pre-pandemic.
Yes, you are setting yourselfup for failure, but things
looked like they were trendingsomewhat in the right direction.
We were getting close to the800,000 people that they
expected or 800,000 ridersrather that they expected per
year.
They expected, or 800,000riders rather than they expected
per year.
But then, as everyone knows andevery city has experienced,
(07:52):
covid came and ridership justabsolutely was decimated.
We saw a pretty much an entireridership collapse.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
We went from getting close to a hundred000 people to
losing 98% of total ridersduring the pandemic, which is a
wild catastrophic loss Right,and I mean obviously that
happened with transit of allkinds and all systems, not only
across the country but reallyacross the world.
So to be expected.
(08:21):
But the ridership recovery herewas pretty slow.
So with the pandemic you alsohad kind of service cuts.
So instead of six round tripsper day you were down to four
round trips per day.
Six round trips per day isalready pretty hard to plan
around.
You know what I mean.
It's not like oh, I missed the8 o'clock train.
(08:43):
I'll catch one at 8.30.
It's no like you've got threetrains to get yourself home at
the end of the day, or fourtrains, six trains, whatever it
may be.
You know what I mean.
Uh, it's not like some frequentlevel of service but when you
drop it down to, you've only gotfour trains per direction per
day.
I mean that's that's two in themorning going, you know out,
and two in the evening.
(09:03):
That's pretty rough.
So you know, seeing the servicereduction definitely makes a
lot of sense in the ridership aswell.
But even though it was slow, Imean things were coming back.
Just looking at it now, in 2021, at the low it was 50,433
riders that year.
2022 was 77,000.
(09:25):
2023 was 97,000.
And 2024 was 127,433 ridersthat year, 2022, was 77,000,
2023 was 97,000 and 2024 was127,000.
Now that is still only like 15percent of what the ridership
was before covid.
So yeah, I mean that's aproblem well, we also.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
we had an issue because the agency that ran this
they were not able to go backto their full operational
expenditure because you hadlocal counties pulling their
resources out of this lineLeading up to the pandemic.
The operational budget wasaround $12 million to operate
the line in its current state.
(10:00):
You had counties like I thinkit's Anoka County that reduced
their contribution fromsomewhere around six million to
like one point to five millionor so.
So you had a huge financiallosses as well.
(10:22):
And then you also kind of think, moving out of the pandemic
without going back to those sixtrains a day, without operating
at your full operationalcapacity, yeah, of course you're
not going to see massive growthin the ridership.
You know, I do wonder if theydid immediately reinstate OK,
here's your 12 million dollarbudget in 2023.
Would the ridership have soaredback up to close to 700,000?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Right, yeah, yeah, you don't know.
And I mean like, in addition tothat, I mean even even if you
got most of your riders back to,I mean, the, the work from home
obviously is hurt, transit in alot of places and whatnot.
And you know there are otherelements to this that have, kind
of both pre and post, covidkind of made things difficult on
(11:08):
this line.
And when you just you know,kind of anytime I'm looking at a
new transit project or I read astory about a transit project,
whether it's positive ornegative, I just like love going
into, you know, google Earthlike satellite view and just
going all the way down theentire line, essentially seeing
what's there.
And at first when I was lookingat this one, I was like
horrified because I was lookingat some of the satellite image
(11:30):
and it's just like you know,parking lots and grass fields.
And then I was, I was I'll savesome of it, but as I zoomed in
I could tell that like thesatellite images are out of date
and there actually was anemphasis on transit oriented
development in some cases here.
At first when I was looking atit, I was like wow, they didn't
even try at all.
Like I was actually gettingkind of pissed.
Scrolling through I was like,wow, these guys really mess up,
(11:51):
but it's a little disheartening.
But I kind of want to gothrough the line a little bit,
starting in Minneapolis andheading north and just kind of
taking a look at the stationsand some things that, from afar,
we can kind of look at and seein the future.
Could this be salvageable Ifsomeone swoops in at the last
minutes and saves this project?
(12:11):
Could it be worthwhileageableif someone swoops in at the last
minutes and save this, savesthis project?
Could it be, uh, worthwhile?
Or should this thing bescrapped, which is sad to say,
but, like you know, in certaininstances it could make some
sense.
So, obviously, the downtownstation is pretty awesome.
You're right at target field,uh, downtown minneapolis, you've
got great connection to thelight rail, great connection to
buses.
Um you, it's nice to have anactual downtown station area.
(12:34):
The first thing that reallystood out to me, though, was
there is no station justimmediately north of downtown.
It feels like it's a prettydense part of town.
You can tell there's a lot ofapartments there, retail, all
that sort of stuff, offices, and, if you wanted to get there on
this commuter line coming fromthe north.
(12:55):
You would have to go straightthrough it to downtown and then
you don't have another railconnection to get you back over
there.
You'd likely be getting on abus that would kind of take you
a roundabout way over the riverto get back into that area.
So that feels like a smallthing that could have been done
to capture some ridership rightaway.
To me it kind of it's verysimilar to what we have in
(13:16):
Austin with Plaza Saltillostation.
You have a lot of density atPlaza Saltillo.
You have some offices right atPlaza Saltillo.
It's really close to downtown,but having that extra stop there
in the commuter line isdefinitely a major positive.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Absolutely, and I would think again.
I'm not a transit planner.
The commuter line is definitelya major positive.
Absolutely, and I would thinkagain.
I'm not a transit planner, butI would think that if you had
this sort of north of downtownline, it helps subsidize the
rest of the line because you areadding to that ridership number
.
So it does seem like that wouldhelp improve the overall
financial health of the line.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Right, yeah, going a little further north was Fridley
Station.
There are some apartmentsnearby, but it is predominantly
parking.
Um, considering how close youare to downtown, you could
really beef up the amount ofapartments that are here.
Uh, it's an area though thatseems like it's.
Either those apartments haveprobably been there for longer
(14:05):
than the station's been there.
Uh, this one was like lessprime for like brand new
development, but there's still,I mean, anywhere you're seeing
surface parking lots right nextto a rail station.
You can ask yourself I'm notsaying, get rid of all the
parking, but could you put agarage here and also build an
apartment building that 200people could live in?
Because if the answer is yes,you probably should be doing
(14:27):
that.
You know what I mean, both fromthe sense of like housing
affordability, but also transitand making sure people can get
around those areas.
Yeah, the next one down theline or up the line, though.
This one was the one that reallyfrustrated me at first and I
was like furious.
I had to like go back andchange some of the stuff that I
put together.
I was like furiously typingaway Hakun Rapids, when you look
(14:48):
at it at first, looks like atrain station behind like a
strip mall with just a hugefield of grass behind it and I
was like, oh my god, like likeno attempt at all to do anything
.
And then I zoomed in.
I was like, okay, there's somepretty serious development that
has gone in there, and a themethat we're going to kind of see
with the next couple stationshere is this development is all
(15:12):
new.
This is all basicallypost-COVID development People
moving in in 2022, 2023, whichmakes the news about the
cancellation a little bitdisheartening.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Well, and it actually surprises me that they wouldn't
again try to push more fundinginto this to try to recapture
the ridership, Because again, aseverybody knows post-pandemic
living in cities the cost ofliving shot through the roof.
We live in Austin and we got, Ithink, one of the worst
increases in the market, butplaces like Minneapolis were
also experiencing these hugebursts in cost of living, and so
(15:48):
people were looking foralternatives of living
immediately in the city, andthese smaller satellite
communities with good transitare really viable options for
people if they can get back tothe city easily.
And it seemed like that trend,as you said, and zooming into
these little areas, that trendof building more TOD was
happening.
It may not have been happeningfor Anoka, which is the next
(16:12):
stop on the list, as you put inyour notes, it's basically just
a parking lot, which may alsoexplain why they wanted to
reduce their funding, but I dothink that eventually those
small towns would have startedto see some population increase
with better mobility and,honestly, it's probably better
for the towns as well.
I mean better tax base.
(16:32):
You can build out moreamenities for your or, yeah,
more amenities for yourpopulation.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So yeah, and even really disheartening Totally and
like create more jobs in thosecommunities.
I mean, like you know, around atransit station, if you put in,
you know retail and restaurantsand you can put put in offices,
like people in your communitycould have places to go, they
have places to work.
I mean it's, it's and you havethe ease of accessibility to get
(16:59):
folks in your community intoMinneapolis if they'd like to.
And again, I mean, like as youget on the line here even
further, ramsey Station, againfurther to the northwest, a lot
of it's still happening butthere's a ton of development
happening around the station.
And again it's just sodisheartening because it's like
the thought for the transitoriented development was there,
(17:23):
but the process to buildapartment buildings and all of
this sort of stuff and the redtape involved with doing all of
this.
It takes so long to build the.
You know we think it takes longto build transit.
It also takes a long time tobuild anything but single family
houses you want to build asingle family house is pretty
quick and easy.
You'll see these massiveneighborhoods being built, uh,
(17:44):
by these huge companies andwhatnot, but like you don't see
huge apartment complexes beingbuilt everywhere in the united
states, I would say in austin,where, like, like Austin's an
exception right now, becauseAustin has cleared the way to do
that as they should, and that'swhy we're seeing housing costs
in Austin go down, not up,unlike the rest of the country.
In the rest of the country,it's taken a while to be able to
(18:04):
do this sort of thing.
So we're seeing all of thisdevelopment around these
stations at Ramsey, at CoonRapids.
We're seeing all of thisdevelopment around these
stations at Ramsey, at CoonRapids and, unfortunately, at a
lot of these, like, people arejust moving into them.
Literally, even as we'rerecording this, some of this
isn't fully built out yet.
So you know now all of thosefolks who are moving in.
We're seeing this rail stationhere, which is that's cool, but
(18:31):
by the time they moved there, itwas already cut down to four
trips a day, and now it's like,oh, it's canceled.
And it's like, first off, whatis the desirability to live this
far out now?
Now, all of these people aremaybe going to rely on a bus,
but more than likely they'rejust gonna get in their car and
drive down.
And now all of this effort thatwas put into transit oriented
development along this rail lineis literally going to lead to
more people driving in theircars down the highway.
(18:52):
Sad, it's really.
It's actually like, reallydepressing.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Um, and I think about, yeah,those people like they moved out
there specifically.
Some people may have moved outthere specifically for this
reason and now they're just kindof left behind.
So, yeah, it is a sad situationthere.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
And then we lightly talked about this one earlier.
But Big Lake, the end of theline, you don't need to say much
, considering there is a literaljunkyard in the walk shed of
the terminus station of thiscommuter rail line.
So, um, you know, if I was, ifI were a transit planner which,
like you, I'm, I'm not uh, Ithink one thing I would do is
(19:35):
probably try to avoid, uh,having junkyards in the walk
shed of the uh where, where yousee junkyards, lewis, I see
opportunity.
Yeah, and then obviously, likewe said, this was at one point
initially meant to connect allthe way up to St Cloud much
bigger population center, over70,000 people.
(19:57):
And even though it doesn'tconnect now, I think it's worth
looking at to see what it wouldhave looked like.
There would have been probablytwo small stops along the way
between Big Lake and St Cloud,but those towns are pretty small
en route.
But you'd still maybe want totry to capture some of that
ridership or just haveconvenience for folks living in
those areas.
But in St Cloud you end up witha situation where the train
(20:18):
station is not immediately likein the center of downtown, it's
not in the most walkable area,it's kind of set off to the east
by a little bit.
So you would definitely need todo some work.
There's a lot of potential todo some transit oriented
development around the stationthere.
But it would definitely bodewell to do some sort of like
feeder bus system.
There is transit in St Cloud,but you'd probably want to do
(20:40):
some sort of like well-timed bustransfers and whatnot to get
folks from saint cloud to theactual station so that folks
wouldn't have to relynecessarily on driving to the
station.
So, um, but you know, that sortof thing would again bode well
for folks who maybe are ridingthe saint cloud, because if you
arrive there you might be ableto get on a nice timed
connection onto a bus, uh, andfinish the rest of your trip, um
(21:03):
, up into that area.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
So what we could have had, I don't know Well what we
could have had, even though wedon't live there, I know, yes,
what Minnesotans could have had?
Yes, every time you say StCloud, in the back of my brain I
just keep hearing St Olaf.
I don't know if you were also aGolden Girls fan.
I was not.
Rose Nyland was from St Olaf,anyway.
(21:28):
A fan I was not.
Rose Nylund was from St Olaf,anyway.
That's been playing in the backof my head this whole time.
So what really put the nail inthe coffin for this project as
we talked about?
It wasn't really set up tosucceed.
From the beginning, writershippost-pandemic had completely
collapsed and, with the fundingremoved, there wasn't really a
path forward for rebuilding thismassive ridership they had
(21:51):
before.
There was a study conducted inaround 2023 that looked at the
feasibility of this line andincreasing funding and what they
could do.
However, the study didn't.
It wasn't designed to giverecommendations or have any
commitments associated with thestudy.
So to me, that just seems likeit was a waste of time and
effort and money and money.
(22:13):
Yeah, because studies do costmoney.
They usually cost a couplemillion dollars to conduct.
But then what really started tohappen was in 2025, you started
to see the legislature paying alot more closer attention to
this line.
You had the chair of the HouseTransportation, finance and
Policy Committee in Minnesotatry to put forth legislation to
(22:36):
basically kill the line.
That representative is JohnKoznik, who is a Republican
representing Lakeville, and oneof his primary reasons for
advancing this legislation wasthe project cost too much money.
They could cancel it withpermission from the federal
government and not be requiredto pay back any of the
(22:57):
construction costs that thefederal government put up.
But then his top reason was theline wasn't helping reduce
congestion between St Cloud andMinnesota and for all of the
reasons we've already listed, ofcourse it wasn't designed to
reduce congestion at this point.
But what also is funny aboutthat statement is the
(23:20):
alternative to this would be busservice, and buses sit in
traffic and create more traffic.
So potentially can create moretraffic.
So potentially can create moretraffic.
They can also alleviate it.
But in this situation I thinkthey would just sit in the
traffic right.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It would be adding a bus to the road.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
That was a train right so all of that together
just really um started to putthe nail in the coffin before
this legislation uh thatrepresentative, uh kosnick put
forward really made its waythrough the statehouse.
That was when the Met Council,who manages the entire project
they had already started to workon a plan, but they quickly got
(23:57):
it presented before all thishappened to say, ok, we are
going to cancel the trainservice and instead we're going
to institute this bus serviceand our operational budget will
go from what we need, which is12 million to 2 million.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
so a huge, huge cost savings, uh, for moving to the
bus system right and again, Imean it's uh, I guess the jury's
still out on whether or notthis is a good idea to cancel
this.
I mean, when you look at theridership, we didn't break it
down to this level yet, um, inthe episode.
(24:31):
But this thing sees like 400riders per day right now.
400, like that's that's bad, Imean that's not good.
Uh, like it's really hard tojustify running rail service for
400 people a day, um, thatthose are numbers that make more
(24:52):
sense for for buses.
But again, when you, when youthink through the long-term
strategy of like you've got allthis development along the line,
you do have people moving intothese areas because, as intended
, intended with this developmentalong the line, yeah, it makes
you think whether or not theyshould have held on for at least
a couple more years to seewhere things were going, to try
(25:14):
to play with different ways torun the service.
But alas, here we are.
You know, again, this servicewill be officially canceled in
January.
I was trying to find some, youknow, potential good news in all
this in January.
I was trying to find some, youknow potential good news in all
this.
You know, maybe there's likesome secret way that, like some
other rail service, is able totake advantage of the space In
(25:34):
my head.
For a little bit.
I was, like you know, I hear alot of positive news about the
Borealis line that runs fromChicago to St Paul.
I thought it ran all the way toMinneapolis but it ends in St
Paul.
Minneapolis doesn't actuallyhave an Amtrak station anymore,
which I didn't know.
It just uses St Paul and thenyou transfer over.
I was like, oh, it runs all theway to Minneapolis.
(25:56):
Maybe they could just extendthe Borealis a little bit
further and utilize that to havesome additional service running
all the way to St Cloud.
But Borealis doesn't run thatfar and there would not be an
easy downtown Minneapolisaddition to it without doing
some weird turnaround.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
But that was part of the study too was maybe the
feasibility of Amtrak takingover the North Star service and
operating it, which, had thingsbeen different last November,
that could have potentiallyhappened, but as it stands now I
don't think Amtrak is taking onmany new service routes.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
You don't think Sean Duffy just wants to put trains
all over the place?
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I will bite my tongue on that.
All I can say is rest in Pete.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And, with all that, thank you all so much for
watching.
If you have not liked thisvideo already, please consider
doing so, as it helps us outquite a bit.
You can also leave a commentdown below.
We love reading them.
We're looking always for newideas, feedback and letting us
know things that we missed aboutthis along the way.
We inevitably did so let usknow in the comments down below.
(27:12):
Um, if you want to support theshow directly, the best way to
do so is via our patreon.
You can also check out ourmerch store or buy us a coffee,
um, but with all that being said, thank you all so much for
watching and enjoy the rest ofyour transits and tuesday yeah,
I'm saving that dough.
Public transit's where it's at,watch me go.
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