The Wake

The Saint Paul Union Depot stands tall with the charm of 1923 neoclassical architecture – at its entrance are huge columns and large glass doors, the grass inside the half-circle driveway contains tasteful, well-trimmed shrubbery, and when it’s not a wintry abyss across the metro area, flowers line the rim of the drive as well. Inside, the Headhouse is complete with beautiful shiny marble floors, huge windows both on the walls and overhead. A bridge over Kellogg Boulevard connects to the concourse where the station meets the tracks. It’s a good looking train station. It’s just too bad there are no trains running through it. The last passenger train through the place was in 1971. Nowadays all that people do there is eat Greek food and send letters. But that may soon change.

Plans are developing to bring back commuter rail services to Minnesota. On Oct. 14, parts of these plans were unveiled at the Saint Paul depot itself when the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) held its second round of open houses to present new analyses of the state’s rail needs and to get input from citizens. The open house in Saint Paul was one of seven meetings that took place in different parts of the state, including Duluth, Rochester and Saint Cloud. The subsequent step will be to finalize plans and release them by the end of the year. The plans will then be used as a comprehensive framework around which individual projects can be oriented.

MnDOT, working with Cambridge Systematics, prioritized different train line projects according to the amount of usage they’d get. Cambridge consults offices of the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as a variety of other federal and state agencies having to do with transportation, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Transit Administration.

Ridership forecasts for various routes are “certainly the crux” of the decision making, says Marc Cutler, a planner with Cambridge Systematics. Lines that come first on the list of priorities are as follows: a line from the Twin Cities to Saint Cloud and then Moorhead , a line to Duluth, a line to Mankato, and a high-speed line through Red Wing and Winona over to Milwaukee and Chicago. The first phase of the project would give the high-speed line a top speed of 110 miles per hour, and the other lines a top speed of 79 miles per hour. The rails would however be upgradeable to 150 miles per hour speeds, at a significant additional cost.

Planners think the lines would get a lot of use - Cambridge Systems predicts that the Chicago and Saint Cloud lines would see over a million annual trips by 2030, and there could be 400,000 to 600,000 riders on routes to Duluth and Rochester.

Assuming funding for this massive undertaking can be found, the time could be now for a revamp of Midwest transportation infrastructure.

“This is a unique moment in time” for rail transportation in Minnesota, says Cutler. Federal funding “has suddenly appeared before us.”

Federal funding appears in the form of an $8 billion dollar chunk of February’s $787 billion federal stimulus package designated for high-speed rail via projects with the National Environmental Policy Act. To understand how high the competition is for this money, imagine 8 slices of pumpkin pie vied for by 50 pie-craving diners. According to Reuters, 24 states filled out 45 applications for a piece of this $8 billion train pie. The amount of money requested totals $50 billion. Though officials had expected to be able to begin doling out grants this month, they now expect they won’t be writing any checks until later this winter, due to the overwhelming number of applications. The New York Times reports that the only Minnesota project in the White House’s top ten rail priorities list is the track between Chicago and Minneapolis. MnDOT also lists an additional $40 billion in federal funds for the state to potentially glean, mostly in the form of loans, for various -to-city and intercity rail projects.

MnDOT announced its application for $382 million from federal stimulus money in August. This amount would go towards a Saint Cloud extension of the soon-to-open Northstar line from Minneapolis to Big Lake, as well as a high-speed rail system from Chicago to the Twin Cities up to Duluth.

The state has predicted that the project costs for their rail plan would cost about $8.4 billion, or $7.2 billion if the upgrades were done as one system. The projects outlined in the first phase would cost about $5.3 billion.

Cutler cautions that the rail plan is an “incremental, multi-generational task.” He uses the example of the interstate highway system – it didn’t appear overnight, and the early highways were not as good as the later ones. Each train line will be treated as an independent start-up project, meaning there will be different timelines for each project.

Cutler also stressed the importance of learning from other transit systems’ mistakes, referring to the New York City’s Penn Station and Grand Central Station. There is currently no direct connection between these two major transportation hubs. While the original plan for Twin Cities rails would’ve only put a depot in St. Paul, the state has since changed directions to include large commuter train depots in both St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Some lines are certainly coming along more quickly than others. The Northstar commuter rail, for example, is on its way. The line’s grand opening will take place on Nov. 14 of this year, and it will begin regular commuter travel on Monday, Nov. 16. The route will run from downtown Minneapolis out to Big Lake, a bedroom community of the Twin Cities that’s not far from Saint Cloud. The $320 million cost of the project is shared by state and federal governments, as well as by Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins. It is estimated that 3,400 people a day will use the train on weekdays from the get go.

The Northstar can travel at a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour, and with six stops, the duration of the route will be about 50 minutes. It connects with the Hiawatha light rail by Target field and then goes on to Fridley, Coon Rapids, Anoka, Elk River, and finally Big Lake.

Dave Christianson, the project manager from MnDOT, also says that the train corridor between the Twin Cities and Duluth, dubbed the Northern Lights Express, is also far ahead of most other corridors. He says the project is one step away from final design, and that it has seen full support along the line. While there is the question of funding, he says the route could be in operation by 2015 or 2016. Christianson also alludes to additional rail corridors with grassroots support, such as a line to Eau Claire, Wis.

When looking at the future of the Minnesota railways, it is important to note that there was a time when the Saint Paul Union Depot was truly a bustling transportation hub. At one time there were 18 tracks serving the place, which 282 trains and 20,000 passengers used daily. This fact was brought up at the Question and Answer portion of the Rail Plan meeting on Oct. 14 when an audience member recalled a time in the 1950’s when there were three daily trips from the Saint Paul depot directly to Union Station Chicago that took little more than six hours.

Today, the Amtrak web site lists two daily trips that take eight hours – Google Maps estimates the drive time between Saint Paul and Chicago at 6 hours and 14 minutes. The Amtrak ticket costs $96 if you buy it within a few days of your trip, or $56 if you buy it in advance. The same trip by automobile would cost $47 in a car with a poor fuel efficiency of 20 miles per gallon.

The Union Depot is currently owned by the U.S. Postal Service and private owners. In June 2009, the Ramsey County Board approved the purchase of the depot’s concourse and the 9 miles of land connected to it from the U.S. Postal Service for $49.6 million, and is trying to purchase the Headhouse from private owners for another $8.1 million. The mailmen will be relocating to a space in Eagan in 2010, at which point the county will begin a $237.5 million project to revamp the space to once again be used for its original purpose. Dave Christianson says that Amtrak signed a letter of intent to operate out of the Saint Paul Union Depot in 2012.

Minnesota’s rail plans are in conjunction with a larger Midwestern rail plan which would bring high-speed trains to a number of major Midwestern cities. The Midwest Rail Initiative is proposing 110 mile per hour trains from Chicago to Milwaukee, Green Bay, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Saint Louis.

Tags: Cambridge Systematics, commuter rail services, Minnesota, MnDOT, Northstar commuter rail, rail transporation, trains