How Do You Get to Chicago?

It might seem simple to pick a route for the speedier, more frequent passenger trains that are proposed to link the Twin Cities with Chicago. After all, there’s an existing Amtrak route, and it and the alternatives have been studied for years.

But nailing down a route has become a point of contention. The one chosen—all options will shave roughly two hours from the pokey eight-hour, once-a-day service provided by Amtrak’s Empire Builder—will determine capital and operating costs, the speed of the trains, and their ridership levels. The decision also matters to communities and businesses along the potential routes, where trains are expected to spur economic development and travel.

Planners at the Minnesota Department of Transportation must consider—at least briefly—all 33 different routes that passenger and freight trains could take between Milwaukee and the Twin Cities in 1950. That’s the mandate laid down by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), says Dan Krom, who heads MNDOT’s passenger rail office.

Krom says planners from MNDOT, Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation, and the FRA are meeting several times a month to come up with a route. He expects an “objective, evidence-based” recommendation to go to the FRA by early next year.

Costs and Benefits

In Minnesota, three corridors are seen as the most serious contenders, with trains leaving in each case from St. Paul’s Union Depot.

The “river route” heads southeast in the corridor now followed by the Empire Builder, hugging the Mississippi River’s western shore until the tracks cross into Wisconsin at La Crosse. The “Eau Claire route” parallels Interstate 94 into Wisconsin and southeast toward Eau Claire and Madison. The “Rochester route” goes south to Rosemount and Owatonna, then east to Rochester, Winona, and like the river route, enters Wisconsin at La Crosse. Krom says cost estimates, based on environmental and engineering studies, are still being attached to each of these.

Based on speed alone, the decision could be close. In the 1930s, three rival trains—the Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha and Burlington’s Zephyr, following the west and east shores of the river, respectively, and the Chicago & North Western’s 400 via Eau Claire—each made the Twin Cities–Chicago trip in about six hours.