Let's first improve the Empire Builder by reviving the Sacajawea (formerly known as the North Coast Hiawatha).
Srsly. The Sacajawea would serve very underserved markets in southern North Dakota, Montana, and Washington state. Meanwhile it would add another frequency to the Builder's route thru Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Oh, that's a big project. So plan it incrementally, step by step.
#1 Expand capacity Chicago-Milwaukee to allow three more Hiawatha corridor trains, as is being studied right now, and be sure to build in capacity for several more corridor trains (at least two more CHI-St Paul-St Cloud, CHI-St Paul-Duluth, and/or CHI-Milwaukee-Green Bay) and one regional distance corridor train (like the Carolinian). That one could grow into our desired LD train as funding might permit.
#2 Build out the remainder of 70-mile St Paul-St Cloud commuter line as designed. (It was truncated half way, lacking a full federal grant. Should qualify next time by adding in Step #3.)
#3 Begin corridor service CHI-Milwaukee-St Paul-St Cloud (currently being studied again). Double-tracking, more sidings, and other investment will make this a faster and popular route.
#4 Extend one train to the edge of North Dakota to create a regional corridor service CHI-Milwaukee-St Paul-St Cloud-Fargo. on the order of the Palmetto or the Pennsylvanian.
For Steps 1-4 Minnesota does the heavy lifting, with whatever federal funding the law allows. (Wisconsin could help; term limits come into play in 2018.)
North Dakota just got a "free" train to Fargo, its largest city and the home of ND State U. (Note that Fargo is just across the river from U of Minn Moorhead campus). Then ND will have to carefully choose its next step. It could pay to extend that Fargo train north 75 miles to Grand Forks, home of the U. of North Dakota. NARP reported 12,000 on/offs at Grand Forks and 23,000 at Fargo in FY 2015. Good numbers for trains that all stop between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., too early even to milk the cow.
Or
#5 North Dakota could pay for a train across the state, stopping at Bismark, the capital, and Dickinson, another college town, as well as a few smaller towns along the way. This would be a weak segment, with low population. But it would be a good place to invest in faster sections -- so drivers would see it, slow or fast, where the trackage parallels I-95.
#6 The proposed route of the Sacajawea (NCH) passes thru a long string of big towns and small cities in southern Montana, including Billings, Bozeman, Helena the capital, and Missoula. About 10 years ago the state looked into a state-supported corridor train here, on a stretch of state-owned rail, the Montana Rail Line, that would overlap the Sacajawea Billings-Missoula. One big town of particular interest for long distance service is Livingston, near the north gate to Yellowstone National Park (which currently is inaccessible for rail passengers).
Near the state line, the Sacajawea would join the route used by the Builder thru Idaho and into Spokane.
#7 Begin service Seattle-Spokane. This seems a natural city pair for corridor service, supported by the state that brings us the Cascades. One problem has been that the main route is crowded at best, and choked at worst, where a tunnel must be cleared of fumes before another train can enter. Another old route Spokane-Pasco-Yakima-Ellensburg (an almost isolated state college town)-Seattle is highly scenic, and not heavily used. It would need considerable upgrades, but Washington knows how to do that from building the Cascades service.
There it is. A simple, less costly plan to add the Sacajawea as Amtrak's 16th LD train.
The PRIIA Study of this train was remarkably favorable. Nobody noticed the good news, because the capital cost estimates. They included $600 million the freights wanted for upgrades to the route, new stations, ADA station upgrades, 54 new Superliner cars, 18 new locomotives, and the kitchen sink, totaling more than a Billion. At that point we all quit reading the report.
Now follow on into the Exhibits. Projected 360,000 riders a year, and a farebox recovery rate of 58%, well above the average for LD trains. It would rank #4 behind only the Auto Train, the Empire Builder, and the Palmetto, and ahead of every other LD train currently operating.
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Overlooked above and I'm too tired to rewrite now, LOL, is my guess for significantly lower capital costs due to the improvements that the freights have made to their tracks. With the Bakken oil play, the freight lines have upgraded many miles in North Dakota and Minnesota, but probably to some extent in every state along the proposed route. Now with the slowing of that oil boom, there could easily be capacity for a passenger train.
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Sorry about the italics. The system will not allow me to correct for that, um, quirk.