St. Paul?

[zephyr17]

However, UP has a record of particularly bad behavior, so God knows what sort of trouble they're causing. UP has been causing a lot of trouble with passenger train projects, as far as I can tell just for the sake of causing trouble; being spectacularly uncooperative and deliberately incompetent when dealing with government agencies, in a way which extends well beyond the behavior of CSX or CN, let alone CP, NS, or BNSF. The federal government should buy out UP and get rid of its management, really.

I'm no fan of UP, and they certainly have done some anti-passenger rail things. But they're not quite the monster that you're making them out to be. And they have done some pro-passenger things too, including their cooperation with Caltrans when it comes to AmtrakCalifornia operations.

UP is quite happy to host passenger trains when they are paid what they consider a good rate for trackage rights, and an agency funds capacity improvements they think is necessary to keep the overall velocity of their freight business up. Caltrans pays more for its access than Amtrak does.

I am not saying that the amount of money in trackage rights and capital improvements that makes UP happy is right, but it is their railroad. But there is no denying the better handling of Caltrans supported trains by UP is largely due to they get more out of hosting them.

 

[Nathanael]

OK, I'm beginning to get the picture. So it sounds like for historical reasons, UP's line is on the wrong side (the north side) when running in front of the depot, despite the fact that *all* of UP's connections are on the south side and UP has to cross CP to get to any of its own trackage (UP has no line to Wisconsin any more, they sold it to the Minnesota Commercial).

Correction, it looks like they've taken that line back. They have to run on and cross BNSF to get to it though. This is still true:

The logical thing to do is to rearrange the track ownership with a simple land swap, moving UP's ownership to the southern track.

 

[NW cannonball]

OK, I'm beginning to get the picture. So it sounds like for historical reasons, UP's line is on the wrong side (the north side) when running in front of the depot, despite the fact that *all* of UP's connections are on the south side and UP has to cross CP to get to any of its own trackage (UP has no line to Wisconsin any more, they sold it to the Minnesota Commercial).

Correction, it looks like they've taken that line back. They have to run on and cross BNSF to get to it though. This is still true:

The logical thing to do is to rearrange the track ownership with a simple land swap, moving UP's ownership to the southern track.

The freeway interchange in downtown Saint Paul is known here locally as the "Spaghetti Bowl"

The much older rail interchange nearby deserves the name even more so. When the thing was built there were even more railroads involved with much more traffic and no modern signaling and routing technology.

Here are some links to current published planning ideas and possible options -

http://hizeph400.blo...kepoint-in.html gives an overview.

and this www.co.ramsey.mn.us/rail/docs/ltkfigures1.pdf shows some of the possible and hoped-for plans to adapt the monstrous interlocking and nearby tracks for passenger rail.

google this - "engineering assessment rail flows saint paul merriam" for a humongous pdf of the Saint Paul area situation.

--

Included in these references is the option of building a "flyover" to get passenger traffic from the joint main tracks at Hoffman to SPUD.

Also projections from Minn DOT that freight congestion through this major interchange will likely get even worse with a hint that freightrailroads might re-route to less-congested places (not in Minnesota) - starting to make a case for state subsidies for at least part of the projected cost of improvements to this ancient railroad interchange.

In the short term, however, SPUD is not connected to any main track at this time.

Whatever negotiations between SPUD, AMTK, Metro Transit, and the freight roads involved -- who knows? Any party can stonewall and appeal to the legislature.

Me - hoping some usable compromise appears fairly soon.

 

[NW cannonball]

Here's a link to local news coverage of the Dec 8 "opening" http://www.twincitie...ransit-hub-next

Notably missing - Amtrak, light rail, regional bus.

Very good reconstruction of the old depot - but there's another thread about that.