After a 42-year hiatus, passenger rail service will return to the historic
Union Depot in Lowertown Saint Paul on Wednesday, May 7—bringing the station one step closer to becoming the central multimodal transit hub planners spent $243 million envisioning and renovating.
Union Depot will return to its original intent of being a national connection point for train travelers when Amtrak’s Empire Builder arrives to the station’s Kellogg Entry at 10:03 p.m. Amtrak’s current station in the Midway area of Saint Paul will close when the Chicago-bound train departs that morning.
From Union Depot, passengers can connect to a variety of other transportation networks, including intercity buses like Greyhound and Jefferson bus lines, as well as Metro Transit and MVTA local bus services. In June, the new Metro Transit Green Line light rail will start rolling with Union Depot as its Eastern terminus. There are also plans to house a bicycle center, complete with storage facility at the station, according to a joint statement from the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority (RCRRA) and Amtrak.
Originally built in 1881 as a stepping stone for passengers arriving and departing on journeys to and from the quickly expanding Western United States, as many as 20,000 travelers a day passed through the station during its peak in the 1920s, says Deborah Carter McCoy, of RCRRA.
“It’s a very important building for many people,” says McCoy, who currently works out of the station. “Every day there is a new story about someone’s father who was a conductor or an uncle who was a Red Cap [Amtrak service agent].”
With the rise of the automobile and increased popularity of air travel, passenger rail service took a nosedive in the middle part of the last century. “There just wasn’t a lot of traffic in and out of these large train stations,” McCoy said.
Union Depot shuttered its gates in 1971 and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The renovation wrapped up in 2012, priming the depot for the modern resurgence of train travel and multimodal transportation.
For the time being, the Empire Builder out of Chicago will be the only passenger train passing through Union Depot—a somewhat fitting start, considering James J. Hill, known as “The Empire Builder,” was a major motivator behind the station’s initial construction.
McCoy says feasibility studies are underway to explore additional trains running between the Twin Cities and Chicago, and the MN High-Speed Rail Commission is also looking at options for a more rapid connection.
Adult rail fares for the Empire Builder start at $66 each way to Chicago and $164 each way to Portland and Seattle. The RCRRA and Amtrak will host a free event celebrating the return of passenger rail service on National Train Day at Union Depot, Saturday, May 10.
Kyle Mianulli