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Northern Lights Express: Planned Higher-Speed-Rail Amtrak line from Minneapolis to Duluth
(hexbear.net)
https://www.dot.state.mn.us/nlx/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Lights_Express
Top Speed: 90mph (~144 km/h)
Avg. Speed: 60mph (~96 km/h)
Projected Yearly Ridership: 700k
A one-way trip will take about 2.5 hours, roughly the same as driving.
The project has received $194.7M from Minnesota, meeting the 20% local funding required for federal grants
its slow and shits not even electrified. nor is the miserable excuse for commuter rail they have in mpls (lot of love went into parts of it but gimped from the start by not going to st cloud)
but like, a train is a train. its at least not slower than driving, and the drive it replaces can be pretty miserable when there's traffic or construction so I think it'll get some adoption. Duluth sees a lot of tourism too
^^^
Projects like this are more or less the best we can hope for as long as Amtrak is privately run. I'm happy we're at least getting trains that don't take twice the time that driving does