I could be mistaken, but generally the cases where it’s cheaper to go slower are the cases where there are existing, functioning tracks to work with, or downtown areas where straighter routes cost more in land purchase, or hilly areas where faster routes require more civil engineering. This route has little of any of those features as far as I can tell.

Though maybe it does. I’d like to see the cost breakdown for that billion — are there specific elements jacking the cost up? (For instance, would it be more effective to single-track much of it?)

If your views are those of the FRA, we’d better hope for some dramatic advances in hybrid and plugin car technology because realistically that’s what everything between the coasts will depend on.

The thing to remember about high speed rail in general is that a core high speed rail network will never make it if it does not have mediium density feeder services like this one

No, the thing to remember about HSR is that a low-traffic commuter line to a metro area of 300,000 is useless as a feeder. The more transfers and long connections you put on an HSR line, the less likely people are to ride it. A 20-minute subway in Minneapolis would work well as a feeder; a 2.5-hour Amtrak line from Minneapolis to Duluth, not so much – people might as well fly direct from Duluth to Chicago.

Like the federal-aid highways of a hundred years ago, those 110 mph lines are just another urban-rural subsidy. Subways and electrified regional rails for urban areas are old technology, and have none of the pizzazz of 110 mph diesel intercity rail, to say nothing of the potential to draw lines on a national map.

So, with MnDOT’s input being in all probability as useless as it normally is, what’s the actual situation?

The current state of rail access to Duluth from the south has been shaped by the very heavy abandonments of the 1970s and 1980s (there was no comparable spate of abandonments to the north, where the rail network was basically run by the taconite mines during that period). CNW (later UP) dropped their line and took trackage rights on Wisconsin Central (now CN) so Duluth-Chicago went down from two lines to one; the old NP line along Highway 61/I-35 was downgraded with the Burlington Northern merger in the early 1970s, and Soo Line abandoned three routes into the city from the 1970s to 1989, leaving just the former Great Northern from the Twin Cities to Duluth. Meanwhile, if anything, the tonnage going out of the port of Duluth grew. It’s one of the world’s largest inland ports. So you’ve got relatively heavy freight traffic on the former NP line, now BNSF, with 12 long trains a day, and FRA Class III (50mph freight, 60 passenger) speed limits. The upgrades the boosters of the project have in mind would substantially increase capacity on the line for both passenger and freight as well as increasing speed (they’d be at 110mph passenger and 80+ for freight).

As for passenger traffic, there’s certainly a lot of potential. Interstate 35 has become quite congested at peak periods — summer weekends, and increasingly with the casinos along the route, weekday evenings. The traffic does not drop below 50,000 a day until you’re about 50 miles out from downtown St. Paul, and only the stretch between Hinckley and Moose Lake is still below 20,000 a day for a year-round average. In other words, this is a busier road than, say I-88 or I-80 in Illinois west of Chicago, and also busier than most of I-35 from the Twin Cities to Kansas City, but not as busy as I-80 through Iowa. The casino traffic is a big part of the story. An estimated one-third of the projected rail ridership on this line would be casino traffic, mostly to Hinckley though there are also casinos in the Duluth area. The casino traffic is absolutely critical in terms of potentially enabling this line to get by only on capital funding, without operating subsidies.

The winter weather in this region is horrible as well — I speak from experience — and there’s much more incentive from that to quit driving than you might have in a fairer climate. But the surveys that have been done so far make very clear that passenger rail at 60mph or even 79 is a non-starter — it has to actually equal or beat driving to be viable.

The thing to remember about high speed rail in general is that a core high speed rail network will never make it if it does not have mediium density feeder services like this one — or for that matter good local transit in the cities it serves. This is a route that would help feed a broader rail network, and as for the local transit Duluth has a fairly good local bus service with good and growing ridership and a U-pass scheme for the college students — of which there are about 25,000 in the area.

Intermediate speed rail like this 110mph proposal is useful because it is a key strategy for building up both freight and passenger rail capacity on an already overtaxed national rail network. Frankly, we’re in a burgeoning crisis on both oil scarcity and CO2 emissions, and it may be that an interstate-scale national program of this kind of rail development is needed as we move to more efficient modes of long-distance transportation.

So let’s first cut through the Pawlenty obfuscation, let’s get a good handle on the numbers ranging from ex-car trippers to commuters to casinos, and also see what freight railroads are willing to contribute (or determine how much it is sensible to effectively subsidize freight as well as passenger infrastructure) before writing this particular scheme off.

Having any service to Duluth can be justified as part of the Amtrak system. High speed diesel service to Duluth can only be made possible as an extension of the Midwest HSR System. Since the mainline from Minneapolis to Chicago would be profitable, extending point-to-point service to Duluth would have sufficient riders to the Twin Cities & Chicago to make it worth the extra costs, from Hinckley to Duluth.

You’re talking decades in the future. The 110 mph service envisioned by the Midwest quote-unquote HSR system will never be profitable. And no, the extension to Duluth is unlikely to be worth the cost, ever – it’s the sort of line that SNCF operates under contract with local money and that the JR companies are abandoning in order to concentrate on profitable urban and high-speed lines.

Duluth isn’t the center of the universe, despite what some railroad builders think. It’s a small town and Minneapolis should focus its energies on local transit to bring it up to par with European cities its size, such as Munich, Hamburg, Milan, and Rome.

“Surburbs existed long before the car became popular and have exellent rail transit to jobs, a strong walkable urban center, and the space growing families desire.” and sprawling suburbs.

These street car suburbs had most of their transit torn up after WWII. So, these street car suburbs are no longer as transit friendly as they used to be. The suburbs created after WWII are sprawl-based, suburbs that are not conducive to public transit.

But you reference major urban areas…aka cities (Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Fran and so on) and then talk about living a car-free lifestyle, I know, that is what I was talking about in the first place.

There is also a major difference between suburbs and cities with populations over 50k. These smaller cities used to have transit, but once again was torn up in favor of the car. So, unless you can find a street-car suburb, with great transit (which is possible, especially in the street-car suburbs around Boston) great. But most suburbs do not have good transit.

I was simply arguing against the comment that most of the U.S. lives in suburbs, which is definitely not true. This is from the census.

I’d give NLX a chance after a new administration is brought in at the state level to properly analyze these projects. The people involved right now, far and wide, are appointees of a governor shooting for a 2012 election run as a conservative Republican.

I’m really miffed that the Feds haven’t gotten their act together in reforming how new starts funding is figured out. Obviously the CEI calculation causes very strange project decisions. Large ridership aggregation points left to bus service (northstar/foley), express service bus being used as modal trip time comparators to local service light rail (bottineau and comparison to noble and maple grove P&Rs), developed urban dense areas bypassed (southwest), etc. I’m convinced its not going to get better until MetC is concerned about a real system in the area.

Since service from Cambridge to Coon Rapids (Northstar) is only 29 miles and Hinckley 67 miles, the Twin Cities could use half of the upgraded track and all of the rolling stock to run commuter trains throughout the day.

Having any service to Duluth can be justified as part of the Amtrak system. High speed diesel service to Duluth can only be made possible as an extension of the Midwest HSR System. Since the mainline from Minneapolis to Chicago would be profitable, extending point-to-point service to Duluth would have sufficient riders to the Twin Cities & Chicago to make it worth the extra costs, from Hinckley to Duluth.

Christopher Parker also has a good point. Many Minnesota municipalities have had small public works projects bid or completed below budget because so many contractors are out of private sector work.

Also Yonah, bad news on the Southwest Line – it’s not serving the city. I live on Lyndale Avenue which will be torn up next summer and it would have work swell for light rail. But that’s what you get when your MPO has no interest in building a system. Thanks for all the coverage.