GRAND FORKS — For a town like Rugby, North Dakota, where the population is about 2,400 and the nearest commercial airports are roughly an hour away, the local passenger train is a point of pride and a part of daily life.
“We’re very proud of our Amtrak station, the fact it’s still a stop here and the train does stop here,” said Laurie Odden, the director of the city’s Chamber of Commerce and visitors bureau. “I think as family members, friends, we love to be able to drop someone off at the train station, or pick them up, or what have you, or entertain them between the times it picks up and drops off.”
Later this year, Amtrak will cut the ribbon on interior and exterior improvements to the town’s historic train depot, including a new heated outdoor platform. It will also unveil similar upgrades at the Devils Lake station. The Grand Forks station has been upgraded in recent years as well, and renovations at the Fargo station are expected to wrap up later in 2025.
Amtrak and some city officials hope the multimillion-dollar updates will attract even more passengers to its Upper Midwest lines, which have seen ridership grow every year since 2021. Although Amtrak ridership in North Dakota still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, ridership in the state has roughly doubled in the past four years. Ridership in Minnesota has nearly tripled, surpassing pre-pandemic numbers.
Nationwide, Amtrak spokesperson Marc Magliari painted an even rosier picture.
“Our ridership is above and beyond what it was before COVID,” he said. “And that’s pretty much the picture across the country.”
In 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, North Dakota and Minnesota saw annual passenger rail ridership numbers of 101,119 and 131,973, respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In 2021, those numbers hit their lowest point at 44,950 and 65,827.
In 2024, the most recent data available, 85,199 riders took the train in North Dakota, an 89.5% increase since 2021. In Minnesota, that number was 181,716, a 176% increase.
Minnesota ridership was boosted last year by the introduction of Amtrak’s new Borealis route between St. Paul and Chicago. It exceeded ridership expectations — Amtrak and MnDOT initially projected annual ridership on that route would be around 125,000. Instead, Borealis saw 100,000 riders in just its first 22 weeks.
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The uptick can be attributed to several things, like population growth, pent-up desire for travel left over from the pandemic, and even milder winters the past few years, which frequently translates to higher ridership in the winter months, Magliari said.
But in the numbers, he also sees a demand for “other options that are more comfortable, safer, more reliable than driving.”
“People are looking for options besides, you know, an 18-wheeler in their rearview mirror, and someone next to them yacking on the phone that they’re holding, or people in the car on the other side shaving or putting on lipstick,” he said. “I mean, driving is not as wonderful an experience as maybe it once was, and I think you’ll hear the same thing about flying.”
Dale Niewoehner, a former Rugby mayor who has lobbied to Amtrak for more than 35 years, said the value of regular passenger service to a small, rural community like Rugby can’t be overstated.
“A lot of people want to bring up the fact that it’s nostalgic or history,” he said. “Well, that’s fine, but it’s still a method of transportation here in rural America.
“You know, Grandma wants to go to Seattle, she can come up here, get on this train, and nobody’s going to frisk her or anything,” he continued. “She can sit herself down in a chair or in a sleeper and safely get to Seattle without any hassle. And she can leave her car at the depot, and when she gets home, she can jump in her car and go home. And I think that’s really important.”
And where the train stops, economic and tourism benefits follow, Odden added. Current Rugby Mayor Frank LaRocque said that judging by the license plates that frequent the depot parking lot, many Manitobans travel to Rugby to catch the train. So do people from across neighboring counties. Last year, 3,361 people got on or off the train in Rugby, according to Amtrak data.
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“They use the hotels if they have an early morning train. … They eat in the restaurants,” he said.
Magliari heard similar feedback in a recent visit to Red Wing, Minnesota, one of the stops on the new Borealis line.
“Folks in that community were very, very clear about what a great improvement that’s been for business in Red Wing, to make it easier for people to go back and forth between Red Wing and Chicago and St. Paul, for new business and for tourism,” he said. “So there’s certainly a great Midwestern example.”
In North Dakota, for decades, the only passenger rail line has been the Empire Builder, which travels from Fargo to Grand Forks and west through Williston on its way between Chicago and Seattle and Portland.
There are hopes for that to change in the coming years. On Dec. 20, the federal government published the Long Distance Service Study, which included aspirations for more long-distance routes across the country, including the North Coast Hiawatha line. That line was decommissioned in North Dakota in the 1970s, and today is operated in Montana by the Big Sky Rail Authority.
The hoped-for expansion would connect Chicago and Seattle through Fargo, servicing the bottom half of the state. There has also long been interest in extending service to St. Cloud and Fargo, Magliari added.
Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, meaning it operates like a private business but is government-owned. In Niewoehner’s experience, the federal government can be fickle at times — investments and projects can come through one day and be discontinued the next. He still remembers a time decades ago when there were discussions of ending daily Amtrak service in Rugby.
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Still, he has high hopes that Amtrak’s multimillion-dollar investment in the state in recent years means passenger rail service is here to stay.
“I hate to think of the time that this train is not going to stop here, if it just goes whizzing by,” he said.
As for LaRocque, he hasn’t taken the train in many years. When it comes to travel, for LaRocque — a state trooper of 20 years — it’s tough to beat his love of driving.
Recently, though, he’s been thinking it might be time for a trip.
“I was just thinking about it yesterday. I should go for another train ride. It’s been a while,” he said, adding that he would like to go out west, perhaps to see the famous Pike Place fish market in Seattle. “And I’d like to go through the mountains — just ride out there, spend a couple days, and jump back on and ride back to Rugby.”
Following are year-over-year numbers for stations along Amtrak's Empire Builder in North Dakota and Minnesota, comparing 2024 numbers to 2023:
- Devils Lake: 3,092 (2023), 3,922 (2024)
- Fargo: 17,545 (2023), 19,986 (2024)
- Grand Forks: 9,863 (2023), 13,018 (2024)
- Minot: 19,962 (2023), 22,680 (2024)
- Rugby: 2,718 (2023), 3,361 (2024)
- Stanley: 2,440 (2023), 2,960 (2024)
- Williston: 17,213 (2023), 19,192 (2024)
- Detroit Lakes: 4,182 (2023), 5,580 (2024)
- Red Wing: 5,609 (2023), 11,031 (2024)
- St. Cloud: 8,169 (2023), 9,358 (2024)
- St. Paul-Minneapolis: 77,597 (2023), 130,328 (2024)
- Staples: 5,931 (2023), 7,977 (2024)
- Winona: 10,847 (2023), 17,442 (2024)
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