Local Government

Minnesota’s failed rail project raises questions about Oklahoma City’s economic promises

November 3, 2026

Ray Carter

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

As they urge area voters to approve a tax increase to partially fund a $1.8 billion, 39-mile passenger rail system running from Edmond to downtown Oklahoma City to Norman, Oklahoma City metro-area officials are claiming the proposed train service will boost the economy.

In his August “State of the City” address, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt claimed the commuter rail line “will be a game-changing new amenity for the community” and that “the stops along that line will become booming commercial developments, as we have seen in every other city in America.”

Holt said passenger rail will help “keep our economy strong and growing, and it will spur commercial development, among other benefits.”

The Northstar commuter rail line, which opened in 2009 with promises of reduced traffic and economic growth, was shut down earlier this year after years of low ridership and high operating costs.

Officials in Minnesota may beg to differ.

Earlier this year, the Northstar Line in Minnesota ceased operation, meaning there is no longer any economic benefit for any community along the line.

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.”

And, for one community, the negative economic consequences associated with the Northstar Line occurred long before it ceased operation.

“One city even went bankrupt trying to build a parking ramp and some kind of business district around it,” said Minnesota state Rep. Jon Koznick, a Republican critic of the Northstar line who is co-chair of the Transportation Finance and Policy Committee in the Minnesota House of Representatives.

In Ramsey, Minnesota, developers and local officials anticipated a major economic boom around a Northstar station, but the associated Town Center development instead became mired in financial problems, bankruptcy, and foreclosure.

Banking on economic benefit from the Northstar Line, developers poured millions of dollars into Ramsey, Minnesota, but the bright vision of passenger-train-derived economic prosperity never came to pass.

In 2010, the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota reported, “Since its inception, the Ramsey Town Center ‘economic development’ project has been a spectacle for all the wrong reasons. During the life of the project, the RTC has faced a defaulted loan due to mismanaged funds, three indictments of bankers involved in the project, bankruptcy, and foreclosure.

“Today the RTC—which the city expected to carry a value of $1.3 billion—stands as a monument to wasteful spending and bad public policy,” the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota continued. “The 320-acre site in rural Anoka County sits mostly empty, still trying to lure in tenants; an economic development project badly in need of economic development.”

The foundation’s post noted that the then-mayor of Ramsey continued to declare a Northstar Line train stop could be a “game changer” for the community.