Aboard the Borealis
Connecting St. Paul & Chicago
For almost seven decades, any U.S. passenger rail trips I might have taken were all on the East Coast, most while living in Philadelphia during the 1980s. It was convenient to travel via Amtrak up to New York or down to DC. While I’ve always been open to Midwestern train travel, only recently have I utilized this mode of transportation to or from Chicago.
In the last 13 months, I’ve done a one-way Amtrak trip, Chicago-to-LA, across southern Iowa, traveling with a friend. And last weekend, Paula and I rode the “Borealis,” the St. Paul-to-Chicago route launched six months ago. So, while I’m not a serious train buff (they’re out there, trust me!), these next paragraphs are largely an homage to rediscovering the pleasures of train travel.
St. Paul’s Union Depot, where we embark on our journey, is spacious and modern although much of the main concourse was curtained off in preparation for an event. It seems most of our east-bound companions are women a decade either side of our age. Check-in is remarkably easy: no ID required, no security screening.
We board about noon. Accommodations are more pleasant than plush; our car and the entire train are comfortably full. The internet is adequate, with intermittent breaks. We’re adjacent to the “cafe car” but brought along bag lunches. Borealis makes 11 stops between St. Paul and Chicago. Both starting and ending stations include the name “Union,” indicating the convergence of multiple rail lines.
The route to La Crosse runs along the Mississippi, Borealis’s most scenic stretch. Although November is past peak color, a muted palette remains. On a sunlit day, magnificent views of the river and valley are akin to what Marquette and Jolliet saw in the 1670s; with minimal imagination, observers can time travel back 350 years.
Our first two stations, Red Wing and Winona, are historic river towns. Although we’ve visited both communities before, we’re tempted to schedule return trips (probably driving). After La Crosse, the Borealis makes brief, two-minute stops in Tomah, the Wisconsin Dells, Portage, and Columbus, this last station as close as we get to Madison, 30 miles southwest. Bisected diagonally, rural Wisconsin offers subtle, sedate vistas: fields and prairies, streams and wetlands. We pass impressive grain bins, storing crops harvested recently in now-bare fields.
Approaching cities, bins are replaced by massive warehouses and semi-trailers awaiting their next assignment. We see once-handsome brick factories near the tracks. The addition of graffiti, some quite exceptional, creates a gritty impression. Occasionally, cookie-cutter condos are visible, presumably affordable housing… too near the tracks for upscale marketing. It’s getting dark by the time we arrive in Milwaukee, where we head due south. (The return trip departs Chicago late morning; dark sections of the journey are well lit when the route is reversed.)
Reverie over, now some facts. The 411-mile route, clocking in at 7 hours, 24 minutes, takes about an hour longer than driving without stops. This might become two-plus hours longer, factoring in commuting time before departure and transit time from downtown Chicago to one’s ultimate destination (for us, seeing grandkids). For one person traveling, the cost is about the same as driving, approximately $100 round-trip, an amount doubled, obviously, when two take the train. This doesn’t factor in the cost of parking if you drive to the depot, or the cost of a cab/Uber ride on either end.
Yes, it takes a day to get there, another day to return, but internet access promotes productivity during the 15-hour round trip. Furthermore, studies indicate trains are significantly more environmentally responsible than driving or flying, although one can quibble over assumptions underlying these comparisons. It seems the route has already gained widespread acceptance. Preliminary ridership projections were 124,000 annual passengers; Borealis reached 100,000 passengers within its first 22 weeks.
Grading out my Borealis experience: Eight on a ten-point scale. It’s a viable option. I suspect we’ll do it again within the next year or two. I hope and trust a sustained positive response will increase the likelihood of more regional passenger service, including the proposed Chicago-Omaha line through the Quad Cities and Des Moines. We’ll see.
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I’m pleased to be part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. My talented colleagues:
The ridiculousness that Moline built a $15 million station for the promised Amtrak train SIX YEARS ago that sits empty and unused now because no one is willing to challenge a freight line remains one of the most egregioulsy under-reported stories I can remember.
Here is what I wrote about it in February, 2023 when I was still working as a PR flak for Moline. I even tried to pitch it to folks who cover transportation issues, but apparently it's not important enough:
Moline Mayor and area legislators fighting to bring rail back to Quad Cities
The Q multimodal station is the future home of a Moline Amtrak station.
Moline’s effort to bring passenger rail service back to the Quad Cities may be heading to the federal Surface Transportation Board due to what Moline Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati and several area legislators deem “bad faith negotiating” by the Iowa Interstate Railroad.
At a press conference on Monday, Feb. 27, Mayor Rayapati along with Illinois Sen. Mike Halpin and Illinois Rep. Gregg Johnson presented a united front, calling on Amtrak and the Illinois DOT to force Iowa Interstate’s hand in upgrading around 50 miles of track needed to complete the long-awaited project.
“We are here to make sure our constituents know that Iowa Interstate Railroad is more interested in corporate welfare and someone else paying the bill for their track improvements than being a good partner and bringing passenger rail to Moline,” Mayor Rayapati said. “We want to support any partner that is willing to take Iowa Interstate to task and make a formal complaint to the Surface Transportation Board in order to force passenger rail to become a reality.”
More than $400 million in state and federal tax dollars have been pledged to the project, including the nearly $16 million spent in downtown Moline on The Q, the site of a future Amtrak station, the station portion of which has sat empty since construction was completed in 2018.
Sen. Halpin noted that several presidential administrations – as well as multiple governors, state legislators and U.S. Congress members from both sides of the aisle – have steadfastly supported the project financially.
“That support at all levels of government has resulted in close to a half billion in state and federal dollars pledged to make this project happen,” Sen. Halpin said. “Sadly, despite this unanimity and a bipartisan commitment to the funds for this project, there’s been one common denominator standing in the way of progress on this project and that’s the Iowa Interstate Railroad.”
All three elected officials who spoke at the press conference noted that Iowa Interstate has consistently refused to accept reasonable offers for track upgrades, instead asking for millions in tax dollars to upgrade its private facilities. Without the needed upgrades on the railroad’s tracks near Wyanet, Illinois, the project cannot be completed.
“It has become clear they are trying to extract as many public dollars into private coffers as they can, asking taxpayers to rebuild their railroad from the ground up,” Sen. Halpin said. “We’ve spent enough time hoping for the railroad to do the right thing. Unfortunately, I think they’ve failed and it’s time to take the next step.”
That next step is formally requesting Amtrak to appeal the matter to the Surface Transportation Board, which has the authority to mandate a resolution to the impasse. The move is rare, but not unprecedented. Recently, the Surface Transportation Board ordered two freight rail lines to allow passenger rail trains on tracks they operate between the cities of New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.
Mayor Rayapati and the legislators said they will update the public on the progress of the latest push to bring the project to completion when more information is available.