It’s a crisp December morning, and the crowd commuting on the Northstar commuter rail hop down the stairs at Target Station with a more lively energy than you might expect. The time is 8:11 a.m. sharp, and the train car is buzzing with friendly goodbyes to Don, a conductor working the morning flip. During Don’s 11-year tenure with the Northstar, many of these passengers have become close friends.
“We used to have a happy-hour group that would go out once a month,” Don remembers. “We either meet at Cowboy Jack’s or Tootsie’s. Some of the people were close to being family. I've been invited for Christmas and Thanksgivings and graduations.”
The Northstar commuter rail and its accompanying bus service, the Northstar Link, opened on November 16, 2009, and its ridership remained high and steady for a decade, maxing out in 2017 at 793,796 riders. From 2009 to 2020, the Northstar operated 12 trips per weekday from Big Lake to Target Field, six trips each weekend, and special service to Minnesota sports events.
But like many commuter lines in the United States, the Covid-19 pandemic forced Metro Transit to scale back. Weekday service was reduced to a quarter of the trips; weekend service was terminated. Even after Covid restrictions were lifted and people returned to the office, the Northstar never did make it back to its pre-pandemic service levels, resulting in service schedules that worked for fewer people and in turn reduced ridership.
The Northstar’s final ride took place on January 4, 2026 with service to and from the Vikings vs. Packers game at U.S. Bank Stadium. According to Metro Transit, the rail will be replaced by an express bus. The Northstar Link will terminate service altogether. With Minnesota’s first and only commuter train having reached the end of the line, hop on the rails to connect with the people who know the commuter line best: the people on board.
A mechanic for the Northstar who asked to be called "John" drives from Princeton to Big Lake in order to take the commuter rail to Target Field to operate the trains there. He now has a choice between taking a $15 an hour pay cut to return to his previous job as a printer, or drive from Princeton to St. Paul to work with the light rail—an entirely new job to learn with only four years left before retirement.
“I want to retire at this wage,” says John. “I always worked in Princeton for a low wage, and now working for this wage, my SSI is livable. I can survive on it and make my house payment.” After a moment, John sighs and looks out the train car window at the passing towns. “It’s alright. It makes the years go by faster I think, learning new stuff. Driving down to the cities sucks, but I’ve done it before. But this is so much better. I don’t know why more people don’t take it.”
Kurt, a conductor, will pivot to freight. He too has become a beloved member of the community of Northstar commuters. “It’s been a humbling experience. I’m pretty shy for the most part,” he says. “This has been a good experience and made it a lot easier to talk to people.” After January 4, the community Kurt interacts with at work will be reduced from hundreds of familiar daily commuters to just one other person: the engineer with whom he will conduct the freight train.
Todd, that very engineer, has worked freight for years, but found a passion for the commuter rail after its opening. “I'm like a kid in the candy store,” says Todd. “This is just better. I like to go fast. This is kind of my social life. There's a group that rides in the afternoon: five ladies and one guy, and I always BS with them every day.”
None of the alternative options to working on the Northstar resonated as much as the job Todd has now. “I don’t want to go back to freight. I've been here since we opened,” he says. “I'm probably going to retire, and I don't want to retire! But I don't want to go back to running the train up to Fargo and back. I'm starting to get old.”
On Vikings game days, the crowd shifts to Minnesota sports fans. Zeke, age 10, and his grandfather Al have been driving down from Alexandria to ride the rail to Vikings games since Zeke was only three years old.
“Whenever I go on here, I pretty much go through all these places that I like to be,” Zeke grins. “You get to see the Mississippi and all that. And once it’s summer, it’s all different. When it’s winter, it’s completely different. It’s basically like a road trip.”
Jacob is 27 and has been taking the Northstar to Vikings games since he attended his first game ever at age 12. Ever since, he’s been rallying friends in his hometown of Brainerd to make the trip down to Big Lake station and ride into downtown to watch the Vikings play. He remembers his first ride on the Northstar vividly.
“The first year I did it, it was 2009,” he says. “I took this train to my very first Vikings game with my grandpa. I’d never been on a train. It was the Lions, 2009, week 10. They won the game 27 to 10, and Sidney Rice was nine yards away from the Vikings’ single-game record at the time. The games I went to from 2009 to 2012, over 10 years ago, these trains were packed. Every car was full, upstairs and downstairs.”
Patty, age 70, lives in Osceola, Wisconsin, and makes the two-hour drive to Coon Rapids station for every home game to make good on her season tickets to the Vikings. Patty has her train routine down pat: coffee and breakfast in her SUV at the station, board the Northstar, then connect with other fans. She describes how, on her trip to U.S. Bank Stadium that morning, the fans on the train sang 'Happy Birthday' to a woman celebrating her 40th. “I’m telling you man, it’s like a party bus!” Patty says. “Even if we lost really bad or something, there’s still a lot of communication and talking with each other. That’s one reason I like public transportation. These years, with everyone on their devices, we need that. We need that interaction between people.”
Patty’s journey from Osceola was second in length only to Caleb, a 27-year-old video journalist from Boston, whose sole purpose in Minneapolis was to ride the Northstar before it closed. “It was a pretty crazy itinerary,” Caleb says. “I took a redeye overnight from Seattle to Minneapolis, slept in a hotel for a couple of hours, then came out to ride the train.”
Caleb’s work as a video journalist focuses on transit of all kinds all over the world; his time in Seattle had him covering a grand opening of an extension of their own light rail.
This past August, after posting a video about America’s least used commuter rail system, Nashville’s Music City Star, fans in Caleb’s comment section encouraged him to cover the closure of the Northstar. “It got more views than any other videos on my channel,” he says. “A lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, you gotta do Northstar because Northstar is the second least used commuter rail system.’ I saw it was closing, and I saw that there was a train today.”
While people Zeke, Don, Todd, and Patty mourn the Northstar’s convenience, familiarity, and community, for many, the closure of the Northstar marks a much more serious transition. “It’s gonna screw me big time,” Shawn, a 50-year-old food service worker for the University of St. Thomas, says of the Northstar’s closure. Eleven years ago, Shawn moved from Illinois to her current home in Anoka because of its access to commuter rail. Her choices in employment since have been shaped by her access to public transportation.
“I worked for Target Field for five years,” she says. “I worked at U.S. Bank Stadium for almost three years. I worked at Allianz for a year and a half. I worked at St. Catherine's, Macalester, those places. It was easy to get in and out. I’ve lived in Anoka the whole time. I’ve worked all over this city, and a lot of people ride the Northstar. When I would take the 5:21 a.m. train, it was packed. I would have to watch the whole train go by to see what car had the least amount of heads in it.”
Northstar has announced a replacement bus line for folks like Shawn, but she has her doubts about adapting her commute. “How is the bus going to work? No one’s really explained that. How is it gonna pick up all these people at all these stops and then get out onto the highway and get you there on time? I have no other way to get in on time for my job. It’s gonna be a huge hassle, as it is for most of the people here.”
In the case that the replacement bus service doesn’t work for her, Shawn describes a nearly two-hour commute containing three transfers between three different transit programs: the light rail, an express bus line, and the local 10 bus route. “So many people have banked on the Northstar,” Shawn says. “I have been able to be successful because of the train, jobwise. Otherwise I would have nothing.”
Emymy, a 25 year old who moved to Minneapolis in May, first heard about the closure while she was taking the train with her infant daughter to visit family on Black Friday. Together, they ride the whole line to St. Cloud, including the Northstar Link.
“This is her first time seeing her family since she was two weeks old,” Emymy says, waving at her daughter in her stroller. “I don’t have any other means of transportation to make it that far. I’m not sure how it will look any other way.”
Grace, 35, has been commuting daily from St. Cloud to downtown Minneapolis for four and a half years, utilizing both the Northstar and the Link twice daily. “I was able to get a job in my field outside of the city where I lived. It pays way better, and I just take public transit every morning.”
Grace has a few options to choose from once the Northstar suspends service, but worries for folks who aren’t as lucky. “It’s definitely gonna make it hard for people who already don’t have equitable access to transportation options, which is unfortunate. Even if I’m not gonna struggle to the same extent, I am really upset about that.”
