High-speed rail may indeed roll into St. Paul or the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport someday from Rochester, Minn., but cross Minneapolis off the list of possible destinations.
“Target Field Station in Minneapolis is no longer a primary destination for this corridor,” Minnesota Department of Transportation Planning Director Praveena Pidaparthi told the Ramsey County Board on Tuesday.
Instead, the three leading alternatives include connecting the Zip Rail to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, or the Union Depot in Lowertown, or both. The Union Depot represents some opportunities in that the Zip Rail would allow passengers to quickly connect to the existing Chicago-bound Empire Builder service or future high-speed rail to Chicago, creating a stronger link between the Windy City and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
Dan Krom, Passenger Rail Director for MnDOT, said in an interview that a final route selection “is probably three years out.” Including preliminary engineering, planning for the 45 – 50 minute, 100-mile corridor could take through the year 2019, or longer depending upon state and federal funding. (Pidaparthi noted that Zip Line plans are still in the “Tier I EIS” phase, for wonks, with a scoping document due out this summer.)
“We looked at over 1,000 different alignments … and we’ve narrowed it down to either access to MSP or St. Paul Union Depot,” he said.
Krom said direct access from Rochester into Minneapolis would have a tough time “getting through the built-up urban environment. It’s extremely challenging. When you have open, rural areas, it’s a lot easier to figure out how you can get a passenger train through there.” Land acquisition alone would be pricey.
That’s not to say that Rochester folks can’t get to Minneapolis by rail. Said Krom: “Access to Minneapolis Target Field Station can be achieved by using the Hiawatha Line if the train ends at the airport, or using the Green Line if the train ends in St. Paul. … It’s real, real early in the project development process, but we can make some assumptions on the termini.”
A handful of state corridors (and local initiatives) are ahead in planning.
When Amtrak relocated its Twin Cities stop to St. Paul’s Union Depot about a month ago, MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle noted that his department’s passenger rail priorities include adding a second daily departure on the (regular speed) Empire Builder to Chicago.
After that, the proposed Northern Lights passenger train from Minneapolis to Duluth is probably the furthest along in planning, Zelle said at the time. In all, Krom said the four lines — Duluth to Minneapolis, a second Empire Builder to Chicago, high-speed rail to Chicago and the Rochester “Zip Line” — are all in different stages of work, more or less in that order.
“We’re working on them equally. Some of them are just a little farther advanced than the others,” Krom said. “We’ve got to offer choices for folks. A lot of people don’t want to fly. … They don’t want to have to drive. This generation is really looking at how can we live out here in the Midwest without having to drive?”
On Tuesday, the Ramsey County Board met as the Regional Railroad Authority and received an update about the “Zip Rail” proposal from Olmsted County Commissioner Ken Brown and MnDOT’s Pidaparthi. Olmsted County is leading the charge in cooperation with MnDOT and the feds.
Their full Powerpoint presentation is here. In a nutshell, planners pared down 1,200 potential alignments to 15 alternatives, which became 8, which is about to become three or four options as a result of dropping Minneapolis from the menu.
The plans call for a segment to run from downtown Rochester to Coates, Minn., off U.S. 52 in rural-central Dakota County, just east of the University of Minnesota’s UMore Park and the city of Rosemount. From there, it could have followed one of several routes to three stops: Target Field Station in Minneapolis, the Union Depot in Lowertown, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Pidaparthi told the Ramsey County Board that Minneapolis is not one of the routes moving forward in planning, so cross Target Field Station off the list for now.
(“It’s going to be connected. It’s just not part of this corridor. It’s going to be connected as part of our statewide network,” Krom emphasized later.)
The Rochester Airport has also been eliminated as a primary destination. South of Coates, the corridor would likely follow U.S. 52, though it would not be located on the actual highway, but one to two miles to the west. It could also follow Minnesota 56.
So what is high-speed? South of Coates, they’re looking at 180 miles per hour on new track. North of Coates, they’re looking at 79 miles per hour on existing freight rail. That would be a 45 – 50 minute trip. “That’s the way it’s looking. We might be able to squeeze out higher speed on both ends. We don’t know that yet,” Krom said.
And who will board this train? Brown, the Olmsted County Commissioner, told the Ramsey County Board that about 5,000 metro-area workers head down to Rochester, Minn. to work at the Mayo Clinic, but Rochester doesn’t offer the same kinds of job opportunities for spouses who may not be in the healthcare industry. In other words, those workers are not looking to relocate and need to get to and from work in a hurry.
Rochester, like the Twin Cities and points in between, is growing, and linking the two employment centers makes increasing sense, the proponents said.
Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough, chair of the county board, noted that plans for a Riverview Corridor from the Union Depot to the MSP Airport are still moving forward, and he encouraged MnDOT to coordinate with the county accordingly. Commissioner Rafael Ortega, chair of the Regional Railroad Authority, noted that both passenger lines will need a river crossing, and those are a bit hairy to plan out.
“The river crossings are always a big challenge,” Pidaparthi said. Freight rail companies are involved in the discussion.
More info. on the Zip Rail proposal to Rochester is online at GoZipRail.org.