Taking the Train! Ridership up in Midwest

I just got an email from the Southeast Minnesota Rail Alliance. Amtrak is showing record ridership on Mideast rail routes this year. As we look toward rebuilding our rail infrastructure, not only here in Minnesota, but around the nation, this is encouraging news.

Here's the press release:

Midwesterners love their trains!

Amtrak recently released its annual ridership and revenue numbers and the report revealed that people across the Midwest are riding the train in record numbers.

Here are a few highlights from the report:

• The Empire Builder – beginning in Chicago and traveling through Minnesota on its way to the Pacific Northwest – is Amtrak’s most popular overnight passenger train. More than half a million people rode the route last year.
• Ridership totals on the shorter-run corridor services is up 55% across the Midwest during the past five years.
• The Hiawatha service between Chicago and Milwaukee has seen a 49% increase in ridership during the past five years and recently topped three-quarters of a million riders during the past year.

As Illinois Rep. Elaine Nekritz, chair of the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission, put it, “These numbers confirm what state and federal officials are increasingly realizing – expanding and improving passenger rail service makes sense for the Midwest.”

These numbers are an affirming sign for local and statewide advocates of expanded passenger rail infrastructure in Minnesota. It is important that we have a variety of transportation options, including rail, as our state looks to enhance our economic viability and quality of life in the 21st century. Passenger rail – including a high-speed route from Rochester to the Twin Cities – will ensure the accessibility and capacity we need to meet those goals.

Upcoming Election
Election Day, November 2, is less than three weeks away. If you haven’t already done so, the Alliance encourages you to ask where your state and federal candidates stand on rail. The upcoming legislative and congressional sessions will be very important for the future of rail. Most important, don’t forget to vote.

Disney Backs High Speed Rail

As a native of Central Florida who has watched the beautiful locales of his childhood despoiled in the name of "progress", I don't often have good words for Walt Disney World. However, I have to say that, in a recent move, they've done something of which I approve.

According to Today's Orlando Sentinel, Disney has offered both political backing AND 50 acres free of charge on which to build a station for a proposed High Speed Rail Line between Orlando and Tampa.

Close on the heels of California, Florida is an epicenter of the "Car Culture"-- once a symbol of American vitality, but which now hangs like a millstone around our necks. Bringing High Speed rail to the Sunshine state seems like a huge step in the right direction toward solving the problem.

Good Luck!

Here in Minnesota, we too, are hoping for high speed rail...with a little luck, a lot of money, patience and hard work...once upon a time, trains ran from Chicago to Saint Paul in about 4 and a half hours....today, it takes 8. In Vermont, trains in 1938 would run from Brattleboro to NYC in five hours or less...these days, it takes over six hours. Great Article at Slate gives these and other facts.