Ridership and revenue forecasting for Northern Lights Express

From 2013 to 2015, Steer conducted a ridership, revenue and economic benefits study of a proposed high-speed train service between Minneapolis-St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. Steer worked with the Minnesota DOT to provide realistic and transparent forecasts that could be accepted and defended as the project applied for federal funding.

How we helped

Steer was responsible for collecting data, conducting a stated preference survey, developing ridership and revenue forecasts, and communicating them to a variety of clients and stakeholders. We used our standard practice of developing a discrete choice logit model for diverting existing long-distance auto, bus or air travel to the proposed high-speed rail mode, Northern Lights Express (NLX). We used regional travel demand models for the Minneapolis and Duluth metropolitan areas to develop zone based existing and future trip matrices and travel times at different times of day, for the purposes of comparing to the travel times of the NLX service. Our forecasts stood up to extensive external review and critique.

Successes and outcomes

Previous forecasts of NLX ridership had been less transparent, and believed by many to be unrealistically high. Steer communicated all its modeling assumptions in a transparent way and prepared several additional deliverables to address external concerns. This helped build confidence in our forecasts as they were communicated both to Minnesota media and the FTA. The project has completed Tier 1 and Tier 2 Environmental Assessments with no significant impact found.