ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota legislators have passed a bill withdrawing $77 million in funding for development of Northern Lights Express passenger service between the Twin Cities and Duluth, Minn., with one lawmaker calling the proposed rail service “effectively dead.”
Along with defunding the passenger project, House File 1143 also cut special education funds by more than $22 million over the next two years. The total of $100 million will be transferred to a fund providing unemployment insurance for seasonal school workers. The state Senate passed the bill by a 44-23 vote on Sunday (May 18), after the House had passed it by a 131-0 margin on May 16. The bill now goes to Gov. Tim Walz for his signature.
The legislature had allocated $194.7 million for the project in May 2023 [see “Minnesota legislature approves funding …,” Trains News Wire, May 22, 2023]. That funding was intended to provide the necessary 20% local match for an expected federal grant to develop the 152-mile route, but the federal money has not been awarded.
State Rep. Jon Koznick (R-Lakeville), co-chair of the House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee, celebrated the move, saying in a press release that “the Northern Lights Express train is effectively dead and taxpayers are better off because of it.”
Koznick said in the release that a U.S. Department of Transportation letter had said federal funding would not be available without the necessary local funding, so the move means it will now be nearly impossible to receive such funding.
“As Chair of the Transportation Committee,” Koznick said, “I’ll continue working to make sure that the remaining $108 million is spent on things that really matter like building roads, repairing bridges, and investing in the transportation systems and infrastructure that Minnesotans use and rely on, not billion dollar trains to Duluth.”
Koznick had previously introduced legislation to eliminate the Northstar commuter rail operation — about the same time the state Department of Transportation and the Twin Cities’ Metropolitan Council said they were considering replacing the train with bus service, based on its low post-pandemic ridership [see “State legislator seeks to kill …,” News Wire, Feb. 24, 2025].
This effectively happened because of one entity: MNDOT. Once the funds were allocated, they did nothing. That being said, and I’m a supporter of rail service to Duluth, this one does suffer from the “let make it cool and shiny.” Instead of being practical, they went all in on spending a lot of money on rebuilding track and buying new equipment. IMHO, what really should happen, and what one hopes does one day, is simply a state-sponsored Amtrak train to Duluth ala the Borealis. Amtrak’s Arrowhead/Northstar train actually was a success in the late 70s early 1980s especially in the summer when the train left St. Paul in the morning and Duluth in the evening. So get back to the basics, start small with one train, and go from there.
Almost $200M was the state’s 20% share… in other words $1B for establishing passenger service on 152 miles of existing trackage? That’s $6.5M per mile! Obviously a few stations and platforms and layover facilities would be constructed. Maybe a trainset or two. But that is a whole lot of money. Something is wrong with that picture.
Politicians need to ask the question, “Just because something can be done, does it have to be done?”
The Federal funding for this can be better spent on fixing existing infrastructure. I’m for train travel but that amount is ridiculous. Did they have numbers of projected riders. Pulling funding from education tells me they have bigger state budget issues or misguided plans for that money.