4.5. SR 09-21-1998 - Laserfiche WebLink

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3. Service Assumptions As demand forecasts have not yet been run for this service, it is being assumed for purposes of beginning this evaluation that beyohd Elk River, the Northstar Corridor may best be served by an "intercity" pattern of all-day passenger service. "Commuter rail" service, typically, consists of largely peak-period, unidirectional trains oriented to people making work trips to the CBD in the rush hour. This initial service concept assumption is based on a couple of observations. One is that St. Cloud itself is, at 65+ miles, beyond the distance at which a large number of peak-hour work trips destined to the Minneapolis CBD are likely to be generated. A second is that St. Cloud, while not large, and not apparently a "bedroom community" for the Twin Cities, is a university city and regional service center, generating trips for a variety of purposes. University towns, especially, tend to generate more passenger traffic per capita than other cities their size (examples which come to mind are Davis and San Luis Obispo, California, and Eugene, Oregon). This kind of passenger traffic is not typically oriented primarily to peak travel periods alone. It represents a combination of trip purposes and times, suggesting that a diversity of potential travel times · offered to the traveling public will tend to meet needs better than purely commuter-oriented scheduling. Accordingly, mornir4g, midday and evening trips, in both directions, are hypothesized in this concept. The early and late trips, however, are designed to fit into classic "commuter" time slots. Third, it is interesting to not that some "commuter" rail systems now actually serve a market which is not predominantly composed of peak hour, peak-directional trips to and from the regional CBD; San Francisco's Caltrain, Miami's TRI-RA/L, and some lines of the SEPTA "Regional Rail" system in Philadelphia provide examples of this. It is recognized that no decision has been made as whether the northern terminal of the Northstar Corridor rail service will be St. Cloud or Rice. In the example service timetables that are presented here, it has been assumed for illustrative purposes that the service will terminate at a station in Downtown St. Cloud. With n'finor adjustments, however, the concept, will work just as readily with a terminal in Rice. In St. Cloud, the former Northern Pacific station, located on the BNSF mainline, is used by AMTRAK as the passenger station for the single daily Empire Builder in each direction. This station is located on the north/east bank of the Mississippi, across the river from Downtown in a semi-industrial area, in the middle of the wye formed at the junction of the former Great Northern Monticello-St. Cloud line, and the GN/NP joint mainline (also sometimes referred to as the "Elk River" Line). The Great Northern Bridge is still in use, and could be used to take Northstar Corridor trains across the Mississippi directly into Downtown St. Cloud. Here, it would be about a 20-minute walk to the St. Cloud State University campus, and close tO the county courthouse and central business activities of the city. It would also be possible to closely integrate the rail service into the city transit network, in a more intensive way than would be possible across the river. Trains could continue to the GN yard area for layover and servicing, but passengers would be handled downtown. The old station could be retained as an "East St. Cloud" stop for both the Empire B~tilder and the corridor trains, but other than for nostalgic