Learn more about the proposed $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded Edmond–OKC–Norman commuter rail: OKCCommuterRail.com.

Some Oklahoma City metro-area officials are calling for a $1.8 billion, 39-mile passenger rail system running from Edmond to downtown Oklahoma City to Norman, funded substantially by a tax increase.

But in Minnesota, officials recently closed a similar 40-mile commuter train because it drew few riders.

Running from downtown Minneapolis (Target Field Station) to the town of Big Lake, Minnesota, the Northstar line launched in 2009 with proponents predicting it would reduce traffic and aid economic development.

But service ceased in January of this year amid what the American Rails website described as “persistently low ridership and high operating costs.”

Citing data from the Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Council, which operated the Northstar line, American Rails reported that the train served a pre-COVID maximum of 2,660 average weekday rides, but by 2024 averaged about 430 weekday rides. That meant the taxpayer subsidy also climbed to $116.60 per ride.

The Railway News website similarly noted the Northstar line had experienced “years of struggling to meet ridership projections,” and reported local officials were now “pivoting from fixed rail to a more flexible bus network.”

A February article on Apartmentcities.com, an Internet listing service, noted that the Northstar Commuter Rail was promoted as a way “to reduce traffic congestion on busy highways like Highway 10 and I-94, provide a reliable alternative to driving, and contribute to a greener metropolitan area.”

“However, the reality diverged sharply from initial projections,” the article stated. “Planners had anticipated robust daily ridership, but the numbers never materialized.”

The Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank, noted that the Northstar line was taking in only “$500,000 a year in passenger fares, while spending up to $18 million” each year.

A Feb. 19 column by University of Minnesota professor Bill Lindeke, a supporter of rail as a form of mass transit, bluntly stated, “The commuter transit model is mostly dead.”

“The commuter rail service plan—a half dozen trips into the city in the morning and another half dozen leaving downtown in the afternoon and early evening—quickly became outmoded as workplace patterns shifted,” Lindeke wrote.

Minnesota state Rep. Jon Koznick, a Republican who is co-chair of the Transportation Finance and Policy Committee in the Minnesota House of Representatives, is among those who believe the cessation of the Northstar passenger train is a win for taxpayers.

“These things are expensive as heck,” Koznick said.

The original plan for the Northstar line was for it to run from Minneapolis to St. Cloud, which is located about 64 miles away in central Minnesota, but officials lacked funding, so the line was shortened. Instead, the line ran about 40 miles and ended at Big Lake, a smaller community in Minnesota.

Some proponents of commuter rail still argue the Northstar line would have succeeded and drawn far more passengers if it had run to St. Cloud, but Koznick is skeptical, noting the line never met even scaled-down ridership projections adjusted for the shorter route.

“It never met the ridership expectations even to Big Lake—ever,” Koznick said.

Once Covid hit, ridership plunged as offices in downtown Minnesota shifted to work-from-home models. Riots tied to the death of George Floyd deterred even more people from riding the train to downtown Minneapolis starting in 2020.

Ridership never recovered. Essentially, the Northstar line was reduced to being “a fancy way to get to a Twins game,” Koznick said, and “not that many people” who attended Twins games were “using the Northstar to do that.”

Ultimately, the commuter rail line was closed and replaced with bus service.

Koznick said that shift moves the same number of people around the area but does so at a fraction of the cost of a commuter rail line.

“That was a $2 million cost and probably still a really high (per-passenger) subsidy, but I’d rather stop wasting $12 million and spend $2 million, so that we’re saving $10 million,” Koznick said.

“Rapid transit” bus service, which has fewer stops over larger areas, is becoming more common, Koznick said, compared to traditional bus service that makes stops every city block and involves a much longer travel time.

The “rapid transit” bus service effectively duplicates rail service, but with far more flexibility when it comes to shifting consumer needs, he noted. Ridership patterns show bus service is “more popular than light-rail trains that are fixed,” Koznick said.

Some officials in Minnesota are now pushing for the creation of another $3.5 billion passenger rail line. But Koznick said research shows bus service could serve the same number of likely passengers at a fraction of the cost of proposed new passenger rail service.

“They’re really questioning: Should we spend $3 billion, or should we just spend $300,000—which is still a lot of money—and we’re still going to move a similar amount of people,” Koznick said.

Technological advances are also undermining any case that can be made for passenger rail service as a daily form of transportation for the typical citizen, he said.

Self-driving electric cars are becoming more common, and self-driving taxis are expected to be a growing service nationwide in the coming years, he noted.

“When you have driverless vehicles, remote robotaxis that can drive people where they want to go when they need to go,” Koznick said, “it makes a train extremely obsolete.”

Photo credit: Jerry Huddleston via Wikimedia