All Aboard Minnesota's Feedback to the updated MnDOT State Rail Plan

Below is the formal letter sent to the Minnesota Department of Transportation regarding the State Rail Plan. We encourage members to submit feedback on the State Rail Plan before November 17, 2025.

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Re: Comments on draft Minnesota State Rail Plan

We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the new draft of the Minnesota State Rail Plan (Plan). The state has an important role to play in planning and implementing expanded passenger rail service in Minnesota. Ridership on the Borealis, which has exceeded all projections by a large margin, demonstrates that Minnesotans are eager to ride trains to more destinations.

The Plan’s solid information about the freight rail system is clear, informative, and specific. We would like to see expanded information about passenger rail, specifically more background, clearer goals, and specific action steps.

1. Provide additional background information about the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). In section 3.3, page 57, the plan should more completely describe the major increase in funding for passenger rail through the IIJA and the opportunity this provides to states. The Federal Railroad Administration’s bar chart showing annual federal investment in passenger rail funding should be added to page 57.

Section 3.3 needs a more complete summary of the Corridor ID grant funding and other federal programs. The Plan should state the total number of Corridor ID grants submitted in the US, the number of states that have a Corridor ID grant and list the funded Corridor ID grant projects in the Midwest.

Readers could easily be confused by the dollar amounts in Table 3.2 which includes some numbers in billions, others in millions, and some in thousands.

2. Move much of the content from Appendix E to the body of the Plan and add concrete action steps. Key information about passenger rail should be in the body of the Plan not in the appendix. AAMN supports MnDOT’s Corridor 1 and 2 priorities listed in Appendix E. The Plan should discuss MnDOT’s role in moving each of these priorities forward including action steps for 2026-2030. We will continue to advocate that the Twin Cities to Kansas City corridor (connecting with Amtrak routes to the west and southwest), be elevated in priority such that a Corridor ID application is submitted by MnDOT in the next round of federal funding.

3. Concerns about the scoring matrix in Table 8-4 and E-6. This scoring system does not accurately reflect the benefits and cost effectiveness of the different routes. The Twin Cities to Kansas City route receives only 9 points when Union Pacific, a class one railroad, invested in that line to upgrade it to class one track with Centralized Traffic Control. Please explain somewhere in the plan:

• How this matrix was developed and whether it had an external review.
• The underlying questions/data used for scoring.
• Why key elements such as track and bridge condition and Centralized Traffic Control were not used as a ranking criterion.
• Whether population density within a corridor was considered.
• Why connecting bus service is a criterion when it can change from year to year. Bus connections to rail stations should be improved when a new service begins.

4. Provide more information about joint efforts to purchase engines and passenger railcars. The Plan should talk about Amtrak Midwest, the shared rolling stock jointly purchased by Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois for state-supported service. The Plan should mention when this effort began, how much equipment has been ordered and delivered, and if MnDOT recommends that Minnesota join this effort. The timeline for purchase and delivery of new equipment is LONG, and this should be made clear to readers of the Plan. The Plan should note that the removal of Horizon cars from service on the Borealis will result in lost ridership for an uncertain period. The Plan should say that the $77 million allocated by the Minnesota legislature in 2023 for passenger rail equipment was reallocated to other priorities during the 2025 legislative session.

https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2019-11/MW%20Fact%20Sheet_071513.pdf

5. List additional benefits of passenger rail. Section 2.3.2, page 44, and page 94 of the draft Plan should include benefits of passenger rail beyond the four listed. The Plan should note that passenger rail:

• Provides access to downtown centers,
• Enhances local economic development (could use info from Red Wing and Winona),
• Provides service to people with health conditions that prevent them from driving or flying,
• Connects rural communities that do not have good intercity travel connections to each other and larger metro areas,
• Serves communities without affordable access to airports and could reduce the need to subsidize regional airports,
• Provides needed redundancy in the transportation network,
• Reduces the need to park a vehicle at one’s destination, and
• Reduces motor vehicle traffic on highways.

It could also be noted that Amtrak has a generous luggage policy compared to airlines and that some trains allow bicycles as luggage at a lower cost than airlines.

6. Add section about investments by other Midwest states. Information from the PowerPoints from the fall 2025 meeting of the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission should be used to create a section in the Plan about investments in passenger rail being made by other Midwestern states. For example: passenger trains travel at 110 mph on sections of track in Michigan and Illinois supports five passenger rail corridors and 30 state supported trains.

7. More background and action steps regarding railbanking and bike access on Amtrak. More could be said in Section 2.1, pages 19-20, about the role of the state in facilitating conversion of abandoned or underutilized rights of way to active transportation or transit use. Is there a list of potential candidate corridors, for example the Canadian Pacific spur that served the former Star Tribune printing plant, the Camden spur that runs up the Mississippi River, and the bridge over the Mississippi River adjacent to the Midtown Greenway? What is the process for evaluation, prioritization, and acquisition?

Given high demand by passengers to bring bicycles on Amtrak trains and the environmental and economic development opportunities this presents to communities, what can be done in the short and long term to make more trains and stations conveniently accessible to travelers with bicycles?

8. Additional comments:

• The map on page 109 is missing the station name for Staples.
• The plan should note that the Empire Builder service between St Cloud and Fargo arrives/departs at inconvenient times, limiting its value to communities. (For example: Westbound EB arrives at St Cloud at 1:10 AM and Eastbound EB arrives at Fargo/Moorhead at 3:30 AM).
• In the map on page 11, the City of Owatonna looks like it is labeled Rochester.
• The last sentence in paragraph three on page 39 is confusing.
• More could be said about how MnDOT works with other state agencies and other rail authorities like the Great River Rail Commission, the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority, and Chippewa-St. Croix Rail Commission on passenger rail planning and implementation.
• Figure A-4 on page A-16 shows a station in Rochester. What does this refer to?
• The plan could include a section about options to link Saint Paul Union Depot and Minneapolis for interlining of trains (Chicago - Duluth, for example).

• Please include the passenger rail survey questions in the appendix.

Thank you for hosting the webinars and accepting public comments. We would welcome the opportunity to meet in person with you about our comments on the Plan.