ST. PAUL, Minn. — The chair of the transportation committee in Minnesota’s House of Representatives is leading a legislative effort to kill the Northstar commuter rail service.
HF 269, introduced by Rep. Jon Koznick (R-Lakeville, Minn.) — chair of the Transportation Finance and Policy Committee — seeks permission from the Federal Transit Administration to discontinue the service without repaying the $85 million in federal funds used to build the service. It would require the state transportation commissioner and Metropolitan Council — the Twin Cities-area governmental body that oversees Metro Transit, the Northstar operator — to submit a plan for that discontinuation within 90 days of receiving FTA permission.
Koznick, in a Sunday, Feb. 23, press release, called it “an over $320 million failed experiment in commuter transit. … it’s time to stop wasting $11 million annually on a project that simply doesn’t work to reduce congestion or move people.”
Koznick — whose district is south of the Twin Cities, while the Northstar line runs to the northwest — previously sought to shut down the service in 2021. The state Senate proposed a similar bill in 2022.
He has also introduced a bill, HF749, that would require the service to be killed if it carries less than 450,000 people in any six-month period. In its best single ridership year, 2019, Northstar carried about 767,000 riders.
Following the pandemic, daily ridership fell from 2,455 daily riders in 2019 to 275 in 2022, prompting a study by the Metropolitan Council to consider service options. Ridership rebounded somewhat in 2023, to about 600 riders per day.
Northstar currently operates four weekday round trips on a 40-mile, seven-station route between Minneapolis and Big Lake, Minn. The operation was initially intended to serve St. Cloud, another 27 miles northwest of Big Lake, but was cut back because of a lack of funding.
Minnesota as a state has a GDP in the range of $400 billion. Merely an observation.
If they completed the double track for the 7 mile gap past Big Lake and ran it to Saint Cloud as originally intended, it would be a more successful operation.
I would favor a settlement where the state first pays back the $85 million in Fed funds to the US Government. Only then they could trash the system if they so decide..