Perfect Duluth Day

Northern Lights Express Passenger Rail: Stimulus or Boondoggle?

There have been a number of posts on PDD in the past regarding the Northern Lights Express passenger rail project, which would create a 155-mile train corridor connecting Duluth to Minneapolis. With Congressman Jim Oberstar’s loss to Chip Cravaack in Tuesday’s election, and Cravaack’s stated lack of support for the project, the subject of the NLX seems worth revisiting.

However, I’d like to provide some special guidelines for commenting on this post, because we’ve seen in the past that there are some pretty passionate supporters and opponents of this project, and its pros and cons tend to get lost in personal attacks and partisan silliness.

So, let’s try a little experiment. What I’d like to see is three different types of comments.

1) Simple links to news and information related to this subject, without any commentary whatsoever.

2) Comments labeled “Pro” at the beginning, which list one good thing about the project.

3) Comments labeled “Con” at the beginning, which list one negative thing about the project.

Keep it brief, resist the urge to respond to other people’s comments, resist the urge to make multiple pro or con comments, resist the urge to bash Cravaack or Oberstar, resist the urge to comment about these guidelines.

Ready. Set. Go.