CMStPnP might find this link of historical interest .
Specific 1969 ridership figures for a Milwaukee to Watertown, WI commuter rail service are not explicitly detailed in available Milwaukee Road 1969 annual reports, which focused heavily on the growth of their suburban Chicago commuter service (which grew by over 20% that year). While the Milwaukee Road operated between these points, dedicated commuter service was minimal by 1969, with most patronage served by intercity trains rather than daily, high-frequency commuter rail.
Lots of injuries and death along the two railroads through the years. Interesting that Watertown was once the second largest city in Wisconsin. The only certainty is change. Many disjointed attempts at revival.
Historically there is a Milwaukee Road tie-in to that route. One of the railroads Milwaukee absorbed was the Milwaukee and Watertown Railroad and Milwaukee to Watertown was a route of the former Watertown wood plank road. So I suspect the railroad initially was built by the Plank Road interests because it was cheaper to maintain and more profitable. Byron Kilborne was a big real estate or finance guy in Milwaukeeâs early times. Part of downtown Milwaukee was called Kilbornetown or something of that nature at one time. There is still a Kilbourne street or Avenue somewhere in the city. He financed the early railroads out of Milwaukee including the Milwaukee and Mississippi. He had a financial interest in the Plank Road.
Per the Wisconsin WisDOT State Rail Manager last July they were looking at Pewaukee, Oconomowoc and Watertown, WI. Though I noticed in the article I just posted about Madison service in the Madison service thread, I think they just mentioned Pewaukee and Watertown. The train has to slow for the switch in Watertown for the branch to Madison so that would make sense. Pewaukee vs OconomowocâŚMnDOT Identified earlier that their study showed Pewaukee was a good choice. However, as I write this Oconomowoc is becoming a larger suburb than it was before due to sprawlâŚso who knows. They want space for a min of 80 parking spaces from what I understand.
The suburban stop is not dependent on Madison service but I am not sure it will happen with just one Borealis train. Think they want at least two frequencies before building a station.
I guess Watertown is a definite stop, I would think on any Madison service (80 miles) which would need to be more times per day than Borealis to be effective. But CMStPnP or others would know better.
I recall driving to Watertown I think as young person to see the Southern 2-8-2 Circus Train
Stix, you seem to have started it with a quote about Milwaukee commuter trainsâŚ
Which may or may not have been in a different thread, or have been disappeared somehow. I donât see it when I look back at the posts in this oneâŚ
We started a few digressions (New Mexico and New York) but those didnât have enough interest for a longer-term hijack. Nothing like involving Milwaukee, especially with Madison added to the mix, to bring the âengagementâ up!
You made mention that if there was a need for Minneapolis to St. Paul commute service the Milwaukee Road would have kept itâs service. In the case of the Milwaukee Road it clung onto it past Amtrak for whatever reason in Milwaukee. I think the railroads financial condition played a role in Minnesota as well as Milwaukee. As for the other tangents they were contrasting other commute services / areas with Minnesota. We are still within the bounds of the discussion, in my view.
Other states mentioned seemed to recover OK from the pandemic (New Mexico for example). Pandemic was listed as a reason for decline of the Northstar by some.
The broader discussion is to look at the Northstar in contrast to other areas.
OK, just checking. Thought perhaps you all thought I was talking about Milwaukee WI rather than the Milwaukee Road in the Twin Cities. FWIW my first train ride was a school outing where we got to ride the Milwaukee Road commuter train from Minneapolis to St. Paul.
No question the pandemic hurt the Northstar - ridership went from 3000 per day in 2019 to around 400 in 2024.
As for why it didnât come back, itâs not really clear. Scheduling wasnât great in that it was one-way south in the morning and one-way north in the afternoon; never understood why since the trains had to go back the other way anyway they couldnât have patrons on them?
Minneapolis probably has a very high percentage of office jobs that could be done from home. A problem in both cities is that so many people who were forced to work from home during the pandemic have chosen to keep working from home. I know that because of that, many downtown businesses (esp. restaurants) have been struggling lately.
Plus, parking is pretty cheap in downtown Minneapolis. Many ramps have âearly birdâ specials of only $6-7 for the day.
What I read about it was they never restored the frequencies after the pandemic that they had before the pandemic. Also, they mentioned the schedules sucked post pandemic.
On the whole Return to Office business, I am a Federal Contractor and it just cannot be done without spending gobs of money for the Federal Government. Most of the private companies that say they are all in office or hybrid, secretly negotiate remote jobs via HR if they find someone they want that lives in a cheaper area. Itâs a mirage. Regardless, we will need transit even with remote workers.
They operated on that schedule because thatâs what their agreement with BNSF allowed. If they wanted more trips, they would have had to pay BNSF more money (and BNSF would have used that money to make more capacity improvements). Not only was the total number of trips fixed, but the morning and afternoon windows were as well. A certain number of football / baseball specials were included as well. Iâm not certain but I believe that the schedules were chosen to allow for 6-hour MOW windows in between morning and afternoon service.
There were no empty deadhead trips. In the morning, four inbound trains left Big Lake in the morning on half-hour intervals. The first one turned and came back to Big Lake as the single reverse-direction trip, then turned again and became the last inbound train. All four trainsets laid over at Target Field downtown. In the afternoon, the same pattern happened to produce five outbound trips and one inbound trip, and all four trainsets wound up at Big Lake.
In 2010 the state applied for a TIGER grant (the very first round of what would become a regular competitive federal transportation grants program) for funds to pay for a capacity improvement between Northtown and Coon Creek. In exchange they would have received some extra slots, which they could have used for additional Northstar trains or Northern Lights Express trains to Duluth. They didnât get the grant. (Instead, they got a big grant to renovate Saint Paul Union Depot and move Amtrak there⌠which, IMO, was more of a preservation project than an actual transportation improvement.)
That was when the service was brand new and people had high hopes. But it never hit its ridership or cost recovery projections. It suffered delays and probably lost ridership during the 2013 - 2014 rail mini-meltdown in the upper Midwest. Then the pandemic happened. When it ended, the localities that contribute to the subsidies were divided on whether to restore pay to restore full service or cut their losses on something that has underperformed from the start They dithered for a few years until the latter crowd won out.
I remember seeing someone claim once that transit usage in the USA correlates more closely with the cost of downtown parking than with any other measurable factor. I wouldnât doubt it.
Not actually at the time. I hope we donât need to read minds or have more petty insults like MR forum members do routinely But who cares? The service was a failure for lack of demand.
It would be interesting to see how the service was cut back over the years as demand waned. Was the âhourlyâ service provided in off-peak times before the postwar expansion of automobile ownership?
In the East there could be the appearance of real profitability from commuter operations⌠but that was much like the profitability of the Atlantic City trains from Camden: reduced rates, more wear and tear to track and equipment, and operation of heavier consists off-peak with fewer passengers cut into profitability. The real âringerâ was capital replacement cost for equipment of adequate performance: that happened in New Jersey and New York (including Long Island) and it can be sad at times to see âwhat could have beenâ (e.g. RSD-7s or RSD-15s on Long Branch commuter trains) had there been the money for PRR to invest.
