Midwest states launch new rail service, 12 years in the making

On a Tuesday in late May, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Amtrak President Stephen Gardner and hundreds of passengers climbed aboard a passenger train traveling between St. Paul, Minnesota, and Chicago to celebrate the launch of Amtrak’s new Borealis service between the Midwestern cities. It was a celebration 12 years in the making.

The Borealis service only runs once a day in each direction, but that effectively doubles the service to the cities along its route. Before Borealis, those cities were only served by Amtrak’s long-distance Empire Builder train that runs once a day between Chicago and Seattle or Portland. The Empire Builder, though, often arrived at inconvenient times, and the eastbound trains were routinely late, because of delays in Montana and North Dakota. (Amtrak says the route’s on-time performance was just 51% last year.)

The new service was also a breakthrough. It is the first new passenger route launched in Minnesota since 1975, and the first in Wisconsin in more than two decades.

Joseph Aiello, the director of community engagement and organizing the Rail Passengers Association, lives in the Twin Cities area and took the first Borealis to Chicago. It was an exciting trip with many dignitaries on board and communities welcoming the train when it came to each of the stations. But Aiello was especially excited that there were enough passengers on board that rail officials eventually had to allow them to sit in the VIP coach.

“So many people getting on that train weren’t there just for the hoopla. They were there with luggage and bags. They were just like, ‘Oh, I need to get to Chicago,’ or ‘I just need to get to Milwaukee’ even on Day 1,” he said. “That was the biggest highlight for me.”

Officials in both states—like dozens of others across the country—are now planning for even more new passenger routes, because of incentives in President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law. Evers said he wants to ride a special train between Milwaukee and Green Bay for next year’s NFL draft there, as a way to promote permanent service between the cities. Officials in Madison want to connect to Milwaukee via rail. Minnesota is exploring service to Duluth, while advocates there are pushing for connections to Fargo, North Dakota, or Kansas City, Missouri, too.

But as much as the new Borealis service excites passenger rail advocates, the time it took to get the trains running is a sobering reminder of the effort it can take to start even straightforward service.

“Is it worth a 12-year wait? I don’t think the 12 years is worth it, because I think we can do better, but in the end, the train is here and I think it is definitely worth the struggles of getting it off the ground,” Aiello said.

“These are low-hanging fruit. The tracks are there, the train, the crew. Just get it running, especially when you have a route,” Aiello said. “But it’s politics. It’s how legislation and bureaucracy work. You’ve got to study this. You’ve got to study that. You have to do an environmental process. And, again, they already have a train running, so what are they studying?”

The studies look at the effect on capacity that adding more trains would have on other freight and passenger trains, but those are straightforward questions with just one extra train each way on a route where passenger trains already run, he said.

The Long Path to a New Route

Lisa Stern, the chief of railroads and harbors at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, said local officials wanted a new passenger train to supplement the Empire Builder because so many of the people riding the long-distance train were doing it just to travel to nearby destinations in Illinois, Minnesota or Wisconsin.

“In addition, this provides great options for our public here in Wisconsin. It provides connections to businesses, universities and tourist attractions like the Wisconsin Dells,” she said.

“I hope it’s successful,” said Minnesota state Rep. Paul Torkelson, a Republican. He said the state has subsidized other rail services, such as commuter rail and light rail, but those haven’t attracted the riders needed to make them “closer to self-sustained.” Borealis is expected to attract 232,000 passengers a year.

“So the big question with Borealis is: Will the projected number of passengers materialize?” he said. “Our track record isn’t so good.”

The Borealis service is relatively simple, as far as new routes go. It runs where passenger trains already travel. In fact, the Borealis is basically an extension of two existing Hiawatha routes that already ran between Chicago and Milwaukee. That’s likely because Illinois and Wisconsin had not been able to figure out a way to add more daily Hiawatha trains between the two cities, despite more than a decade of trying.

On the western side of the Borealis route, initial discussions about extending the route across the river to Minneapolis —where more of the population in the Twin Cities area lives—raised questions about its feasibility, so the idea was set aside.

There was talk of using more modern trains for the service—like those in use on other Midwestern routes—but that proposal also didn’t work out, because Minnesota isn’t part of the consortium of Midwestern states that bought the new cars and locomotives.

Even though the 411-mile route was relatively straightforward, getting Borealis started involved a lot of coordination. The transportation departments of Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin worked with Amtrak (which runs the service), Canadian Pacific (the freight rail company that owns most of the track) and the federal government (as a regulator and a funding source).

“There is a lot that goes into starting a new passenger train. Funding is only the beginning,” said Greg Mathis, the commuter and passenger rail director of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, or MnDOT, in an emailed statement. “We needed to figure out everything from the schedule and equipment to funding agreements and insurance, to ticket pricing and onboard amenities.”

“This could sometimes be a challenge since each party has unique needs and requirements,” he added. “Fortunately, everyone stayed focused and put in a lot of time and effort to make it happen.”

The process formally began in 2012, when MnDOT asked Amtrak for a feasibility study of running a second train each way between various destinations in Minnesota and Chicago. The request came shortly after Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor at the time, backed out of a planned high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison paid for by the Obama administration. That plan called for an eventual connection to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, too.

Amtrak issued its feasibility report in 2015, which highlighted many advantages to using the existing Empire Builder route—which runs nearly 30 miles north of Madison—rather than through the capital city itself.

The states conducted more studies and drafted engineering plans for potential infrastructure improvements along the route from 2016 to 2020.

In 2021, Minnesota lawmakers voted to contribute $10 million for the project, to go along with $6.5 million from Wisconsin, $5 million from Amtrak and $31.8 million from a federal grant. The project’s environmental documentation was also completed that year.

“Part of the reason it took so long is because it was all funded through state and local funds,” said Wisconsin’s Stern. Local governments in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Ramsey County, Minnesota, helped pay for some of the early planning, she noted.

On the other hand, the timing of the Borealis route allowed it to take advantage of the 2021 federal infrastructure law and of a major freight rail merger.

When the Canadian Pacific railroad combined with Kansas City Southern in 2023, the new railroad promised to support passenger rail operations. For Borealis, that meant that Amtrak could start running its new service even before construction on infrastructure improvements it had promised were complete. Some of the money from the infrastructure law is covering those improvements. The passenger rail operations are paying to add new track in the La Crosse area, improve the Mississippi River bridge to help increase speed there, and make signaling and track improvements in the Winona area. The improvements are expected to cost about $52 million.

Will the Next Route Come Online Quicker?

The beginning of the Borealis project came shortly after Congress changed the relationship between states and Amtrak. A 2008 law specified that states should be the lead sponsor of routes that are 750 miles long or shorter, and that they would pay a share of the operating cost. By putting more of the onus on the states, the law increased tensions between states and Amtrak.

But the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Congress passed in 2021 tweaks that relationship. Now, Amtrak will initially bear almost all of the cost of running a new route in its first few years as it determines how the public responds to the new transportation option.

“Under the current IIJA structure, service has a chance to start, to be started at a pretty low state cost, and then prove itself,” said Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesperson. “For the last 10 years, it was hard to convince some people in some states that it was worth a shot.”

And Stern, the WisDOT rail chief, said a separate program known as Corridor ID will help with the earlier steps in the process. Corridor ID spells out the different steps that states need to take to create a new passenger rail service. Plus, it provides a federal match for states working on routes along approved corridors, she noted.

The question of how long it takes to get new routes up and running has taken on new salience during the Biden administration, which included $66 billion for rail-related improvements in the 2021 infrastructure law. Most of the money for construction in that law so far has gone to big projects, like improvements on the Northeastern Corridor, California high-speed rail and the privately run Brightline West between the Los Angeles suburbs and Las Vegas. But the administration also provided Corridor ID grants for nearly every state in the country to plan for future service.

That enthusiasm has been tempered by the experience of states that have already tried to expand service but have been unable to do so. The most prominent example is the Gulf Coast rail service between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, which was knocked out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and still is not running again. Freight rail companies resisted the new service, but, even after they settled with Amtrak, the service languished while the city of Mobile clears the way for the construction of a depot there.

Illinois officials also want to start service between Chicago and the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River but haven’t been able to do so despite more than a decade of efforts there.

But the successful launch of Borealis has encouraged rail advocates looking for examples for the rest of the country, or even closer to home.

Aiello said officials from Arizona to Ohio will be paying attention to how Borealis fares. He said the introduction of new service in Wisconsin is especially significant, because it shows the potential for passenger rail even in places where it has been a political target.

“What happens when you have political will? Scott Walker leaves, and now not only is the new governor (Evers) on the train, but now he’s talking about a soft launch of passenger rail to Green Bay for the NFL draft next year,” Aiello said. “That’s a brilliant way to get people used to the idea of another expansion throughout Wisconsin.”

Brian Nelson, the president of All Aboard Minnesota, is hoping the new route will inspire state officials to pursue plans to deliver service to Duluth and to add more daily trains along the Borealis route. In fact, he’s hoping MnDOT will extend Borealis through Minneapolis and then up to Fargo, North Dakota. His group is also pushing for a connection between the Twin Cities and Kansas City, which would link it to Amtrak trains traveling to San Francisco or Los Angeles without having to go to Chicago.

“MnDOT has been very receptive to our proposals,” he said. “What we hope is going to happen is that, with the Corridor ID program in place … things are going to happen much faster now. There’s a lot of states in the Midwest that want or are proposing more services, new services, high-speed rail services. I think the momentum is really building around passenger rail.”