Survey Explainer and Top-Line Recommendations

To inform an update of Minnesota’s state rail plan, MnDOT released a Minnesota State Rail Plan Passenger Rail Priorities Survey earlier this year, which you can find the questions for here. We encourage you to fill out the survey in its entirety, reflecting your current experiences with passenger rail service in Minnesota and your hopes of what it can be with sustained, intentional investment. And for three questions, we recommend a particular set of answers that we believe are best positioned to lead Minnesota on a path towards sustained investment in passenger rail. These recommendations are as follows, with explanations below:

For the question asking about how your interest in how we expand passenger rail, rank the options in the following order:

1. Focus on increasing the frequency of trains on existing routes
2. Focus on developing a core network that are served by multiple trains each day
3. Focus on extending rail service to all parts of Minnesota, even if this limits frequency to only one train each day
4. Minnesota does not need additional passenger rail service

For the question asking about what types of projects MnDOT should prioritize, we recommend picking at least the following three options:

• Projects that increase the frequency of trains on existing routes
• Projects that enhance connections to other forms of public transportation
• Projects that address environmental justice

For the question asking if there’s about which destinations you’d like to take passenger rail, we encourage you to describe the places you want to go, but also:

• Be ambitious, noting any and all place that you’d like to go, as even if it’s difficult to reach with rail specifically, this can always be used as inspiration for intercity bus service as well
• We recommend commenting  how often this train would have to run to make it usable, with an emphasis on asking for eight or more round trips per day

And for the last question about additional feedback, we recommend suggesting a heavy rail corridor between St. Paul Union Depot and Minneapolis Target Field as part of the Rethinking I-94 Project.

General Preferences for Passenger Rail Development

Nature of Interest in Expansion

One of the questions asks respondents to describe their interest in passenger rail expansion, giving them four options to rank: focus on increasing the frequency of trains on existing routes (the Empire Builder, Borealis, and/or Northstar); focus on developing a core network that are served by multiple trains each day; focus on extending rail service to all parts of Minnesota, even if this limits frequency to only one train each day; Minnesota does not need additional passenger rail service.

To start with, we believe that “Minnesota does not need additional passenger rail service” should be ranked last. It is clear that Minnesota, as with every state, needs not only more passenger trains, but significantly more. 

For next-to-last, we recommend that you choose “focus on extending rail service to all parts of Minnesota, even if this limits frequency to only one train each day”. This is for two reasons. First of all, the more often a train runs, the more useful it is. Although a train that runs once a day provides options to people who live near its stops, it doesn’t provide them anywhere near the same freedom as a train that runs more frequently. Second, and relatedly, trains that run more frequently are more likely to be politically popular. According to polling done by the Rail Passengers Association in 2021, while people who had a lot of rail service near them felt very positively about Amtrak, people who had only a “decent amount” of rail service in their area felt much less positively. In fact, their opinions weren’t all that different from people who had little to no rail service in their area. 

This is important because building an extensive, useful passenger rail network will take a lot of political will over an extended period of time. Even if MnDOT were given billions of dollars to run new train service tomorrow, there would be track improvements to be made, new train sets to buy, crews to hire, and even just negotiations on the contracts for all of these things (and more). While this work takes place, these projects would be fragile and vulnerable to being cut by any political actor with an ax to grind against passenger rail. The question then, is how do we make passenger trains as popular as possible so that politicians have enough political will to see new passenger rail projects all the way through from start to finish, whether that be simply running a new train set on already existing tracks or building entirely new stations and tracks? The Rail Passenger Association’s polling provides a clear answer: providing a lot of service frequency before providing a lot of service coverage. 

This isn’t to say that once-a-day trains don’t have their place. We can see very clearly from the new Borealis service on Amtrak that any train connecting destinations people want to go to will get a lot of ridership, especially when run at convenient times. It also isn’t to say that coverage should never be expanded. People in Pipestone, Wadena, Hibbing, Sandstone, St. Charles, and Mankato deserve passenger rail too (and the planning to serve these communities should start as soon as possible so that the positive momentum from higher frequencies on existing routes can be taken advantage of as quickly as possible). But if increasing the frequency of service between Red Wing and St. Paul first gives us the best chance for Amtrak trains to eventually run through Pipestone, or if first setting up a frequent train between Mankato and Minneapolis increases the likelihood of trains one day running through St. Charles, then the choice is clear. We’ll let the best pitch for expansive passenger service be successful existing service.

Type of Projects to Prioritize

After asking about what type of expansion you’re interested in, MnDOT is also interested in hearing what types of projects you’d like them to prioritize. To do this, they list ten options for types of projects: 

• Projects that make existing trains more reliable to reach your destination on time
• Projects that increase the frequency of trains on existing routes
• Projects that expand passenger rail service to parts of Minnesota that currently lack passenger train service
• Projects that will create new routes to destinations outside Minnesota that minimize the need to change trains in other cities
• Projects that have environmental and climate benefits
• Projects that serve significant population centers
• Projects that serve less populated areas with limited transportation options
• Projects that enhance connections to other forms of public transportation
• Projects that can help reduce traffic on highways
• Projects that address environmental justice
• Other

Unfortunately, there is significant overlap between many of these options. For instance, a project that serves a significant population center is likely to help reduce traffic on highways. Similarly, a project that increases the frequency of trains on existing routes is likely to have environmental and climate benefits. Therefore, you may be able to select one of these options as a substitute for another without fear that your opinion will be diluted.

However, some options are very singular. Enhancing connections to other forms of public transportation and addressing environmental justice are unlikely to be covered by any of the other project types because they are very particular projects, such as improved bus bays and waiting areas at train stations or reducing pollution at rail yards where trains are stored. These options are crucial to include in your feedback. 

Potential Passenger Rail Destinations

The last question on this survey before demographics is essentially “What two cities would you like to travel between by train?” We can’t recommend the particular cities that you put in here. Those answers are most powerful when they are what will positively impact your life. Do you, a family member, or a friend attend a university that it’s currently impossible to access by train from Minnesota, like the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, University of Sioux Falls, University of Iowa in Iowa City, or University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire? Do you visit friends and family in Omaha, Des Moines, or Fargo? Do you ever need to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester for doctors appointments? Whatever the reason you have for wanting to visit a place in or near Minnesota by train, you should put those city pairs in, with two caveats.

First, be ambitious. MnDOT’s 2015 State Rail Plan included a number of routes for a two-phase expansion of the state’s passenger rail network, visible on Page 3-2 of this document, includes several routes that the state would like to build trains on. However, we can and must go further. Individuals on Twitter have added additional potential services to this map, and even these are just a start. As is visible on this website, Minnesota is crisscrossed by existing rail tracks. Although it will take money and time to make sure these tracks are up to par to move not just goods but people, the communities that these routes go through deserve the freedom that frequent, consistent, reliable passenger rail service offers. 

Second, when the survey asks if there is anything else they would like you to know/share, we recommend talking about how often this train would have to run to make it usable. As an example, if you were asking for a train from the Twin Cities to Sioux City via Mankato that passed through your town, how often would you need it to run to make it a competitive option with just driving? This is important because although MnDOT’s 2015 State Rail Plan contains many routes, it often doesn’t talk about operating them that often. Both the Twin Cities to Alberta Lea and then Des Moines line and the Twin Cities to Mankato (and eventually Sioux City) line are proposed to have only up to four round trips per day. That would likely only mean a train every three or four hours in each direction. Although this may be enough to get a lot of ridership, as shown by the Borealis, we don’t believe that it’s a vision for true mobility and freedom via trains. We believe that MnDOT should be aiming higher, with gaps during the daytime (7am-7pm) of no more than an hour and a half between trains, which would mean eight round trips per day. Ideally, trains should be even more frequent than that, with twelve or even sixteen round trips per day planned for. That would allow, over a twelve hour period, for trains to arrive either every hour or even every forty-five minutes. With trains arriving that often, taking the train wouldn’t require too much more special planning than driving or flying, enticing more people to get on board.

Is there anything else you would like us to know or would like to share?

Before asking about your demographics as a survey respondent, MnDOT provides a chance for open-ended feedback. This is a perfect chance to bring up a project called Rethinking I-94, which MnDOT is conducting to figure out what should be done with the portion of I-94 that connects Minneapolis and St. Paul. When it was constructed, this highway displaced 30,000 people, and was intentionally routed through the neighborhoods that contained 90% of the area’s Black population. This legacy has inspired visions the Rethinking I-94 project such as Reconnect Rondo, which looks to build a land-bridge over I-94 in the significantly-impacted Rondo neighborhood, and the more expansive Twin Cities Boulevard vision, which seeks to remove the sunken highway and replace it with an at-grade boulevard that has bus-rapid transit and entirely restores the area’s original street network.

However, limiting the transit implications of the Rethinking I-94 project to bus rapid transit would be a grave mistake. This is because at this point in time, the only transit connection between Minneapolis Target Field—where the Northstar Commuter Rail Service and the Green and Blue Light Rail lines (currently) end—and St. Paul Union Depot—where Amtrak trains like the Borealis and the Empire Builder stop—is the Green Line or the 3, 94, and 363 buses. Although it’s great to have this connection, trips on the Green Line and 3 bus are scheduled to take around an hour, the 94 bus runs every twenty minutes at best, and the 363 bus only runs three round trips every day. On all of these services, delays can significantly affect trip times. This means that for most people transit is not useful for trips across the Twin Cities because it takes so much longer than driving. And for Minneapolis residents looking to take Amtrak, it means they either need to drive to St. Paul to get on the train or take the Green Line all the way there, adding an hour to their trip. With such limitations, transit and passenger rail will always have limited usefulness for Twin Cities residents, because although it can provide freedom locally, it won’t provide them that same freedom for longer-distance trips. To achieve that, we need a more significant investment.

When it comes to Rethinking I-94, that more significant investment means a dedicated passenger rail corridor between Minneapolis Target Field and St. Paul Union Depot. This would not only allow Amtrak trains—both the routes that already run and the ones that are under planning—to serve Minneapolis directly, but provide the infrastructure necessary for trains to connect the city as a form of regional and suburban transit. Whereas the Northstar Commuter Rail currently only runs four trains a day in each direction and ends at Minneapolis Target Field, train services in other countries that run on corridors like the proposed one can run up to thirty trains per hour. And like services in other countries, this corridor between Minneapolis and St. Paul would make more one-seat rides possible, allowing somebody from Anoka to get to Downtown St. Paul or somebody from White Bear Lake to get to Downtown Minneapolis without having to transfer. As laid out by the I-94 Rail Coalition, this vision would make both Amtrak and Metro Transit much more usable for residents of the Twin Cities area, Minnesota overall, and even the entire Midwest. That is why, when MnDOT asks if you have any additional feedback, it is crucial to note that you would like a heavy rail corridor between St. Paul Union Depot and Minneapolis Target Field to be included as part of the Rethinking I-94 project.