The new traffic jam...

 

 

"This was going to be the best thing since canned beer..."

Wow - we never saw this one coming. Years ago, when the plan was hatched to use the BN railroad tracks to run a train from St. Cloud to Minneapolis it did not sound like a bad idea. Heck, the track was already there, and it certainly had more bandwidth for use. The sales job was put together, funding was cobbled, and before you knew it, we had the Northstar.

Next up, the problems. The funding was never enough to run this train up to St. Cloud. All the lobby efforts that the good folks in St. Cloud did to get this thing going fell on deaf ears. It was not fiscally viable. Each ride must be subsidized with taxpayer funding. Highway 10 is still a mess. The Northstar was supposed to greatly reduce the amount of traffic on that major road. It did not. The number of trains which run are not enough for many of the people who work downtown. If you are in a late meeting and miss the last train out of town, well, you are stuck.

However the biggest problem of late is the congestion. There is a big traffic jam on the tracks and it will only get worse. Why? Blame North Dakota and the President. North Dakota is sitting on one of the biggest oil discoveries in our history. The oil has to go somewhere, and most of it needs to go south to our refineries on the Gulf Coast. And because our President has played favorites with the green wackos on Left, we never did build the XL Keystone Pipeline. So here we sit, with people sitting either on stalled trains, or waiting at stations for up to 90 minutes.

Don't worry though - Congress is going to look into this mess. And do what? Build more tracks? Tell us not to ship crude on rail anymore? Buy more from OPEC? Has anyone noticed the recent spike on oil due in part to Venezuela? No, we are stuck. Nowhere to go. A shiny new train which often gets caught in the queue behind a BN train pulling 100 or so oil tankers.

I don't know where this will end up. It will probably end up costing more money to build more track. The train lovers will not let this pet rock go. Eminent domain, environmental issues and so on will prolong this need for more track. Meanwhile, the workers who sit patiently on the stalled Northstar can while away the hours playing Candy Crush. The best laid plans...