Glimmer of hope for Northside residents stuck at one of cityβs worst rail crossings
Can you remember the last time you got stuck at a railroad crossing?
For many people, itβs an occasional hassle β an inconvenient obstacle on the way to work or to pick your kid up from school; five minutes of watching train cars roll by and admiring graffiti.
But for residents in north Minneapolisβ Camden neighborhood, blocked railroad crossings are a way of life β a near-daily occurrence that will eat up 15 minutes on a good day and often many more than that.
The blockages regularly make it hard for kids to get to school on time. Even more concerning, they stop ambulances and fire trucks responding to emergencies, leading to some of the slowest response times in the city. And they occasionally drive bikers and pedestrians to take the dangerous step of trying to climb across the train itself.
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Itβs a problem that residents say has plagued the area for years. But recent β if slow β cooperation between local and federal government means it may not be a problem forever. Local officials recently got the wheels moving on up to $2 million in federal grant funds, to be buttressed by $500,000 from the city and railroad company, to survey the area and plan improvements to solve the problem once and for all.
Still, hoped-for infrastructure changes are years away. So for now, Northside residents will wait β¦ and wait β¦ and wait β¦ and wait.
Hundreds and hundreds of delays
Open up a map and itβs immediately apparent whatβs driving many of these issues: Humboldt Yard, a railyard that splits the Camden neighborhood in two.
Canadian Pacific Kansas City, a Canadian railway holding company, runs an average of 25 trains a day through the railyard, according to the cityβs application for a federal Railroad Crossing Elimination grant. The trains often slow or stop to manage their movement through the bottleneck.
To the east of Humboldt Yard are three railroad crossings β four tracks at North Humboldt Avenue, two tracks at 45th Avenue North and a single track crossing the busy four-lane thoroughfare, North Lyndale Avenue.
While all three streets are often blocked, itβs Lyndale that sees the most vehicles β nearly 11,000 a day, almost twice as many as the other two crossings combined.
When Minneapolis logged data at the crossing for one year between Sept. 1, 2023 and Aug. 31, 2024, they found 559 instances in which the crossing was blocked for more than 15 minutes, 52 times that it was blocked for more than half an hour and 10 instances in which the crossing was blocked by a train for more than an hour. An extrapolation of 10 days of data at the Humboldt Avenue crossing estimated 1,275 delays of more than 15 minutes or longer.
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In the single longest instance during the study, the crossing at Lyndale was blocked on Jan. 20, 2024 from 4:12 a.m. until 7:26 a.m. β more than three hours.
βI want to share that CPKC makes every effort to keep trains moving efficiently and to minimize the amount of time it occupies a road crossing during normal railway operations,β said a Canadian Pacific Kansas City spokesperson in a statement.
R: Rail cars sit stationary at Humboldt Yard in the Camden neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minn., July 28, 2026. The rail yard splits the neighborhood in two, and nearby crossings are frequently blocked by trains for extended periods, at times delaying emergency responders and school buses.
ββ¦a tragedy waiting to happenβ
βI donβt know anybody who hasnβt been impacted by it,β says Jeanne Burns. Theyβve lived in Camden for seven years and said the threat of blocked crossings informs much of their travel.
If drivers have the misfortune to be on Lyndale when the crossing is blocked, there are few opportunities to turn onto a side street, which can also become packed. If they can get out of the way β or risk a U-turn β theyβre still looking at a 15-minute detour to circumvent the railyard and get to the other side of the tracks.
Sarah Heller, whoβs lived in the neighborhood for two decades, said she knows parents whoβve transferred their children out of Olson Middle School rather than deal with the delays that school buses often face; pet owners whoβve missed appointments at the Camden Pet Hospital; and residents whoβve been late to their own appointments at North Memorial Camden Clinic.
βItβs incredibly disruptive,β she said.
When Minneapolis officials applied for the federal grant in 2024, they included photos of Metro Transit buses and ambulances stuck at the crossings.
The tracks are especially challenging for the firefighters at Minneapolis Fire Station No. 20, located about 200 yards north of the Humboldt Avenue crossing.
Between 2019 and mid-2024, Station No. 20 reported 307 times in which their response to an incident was delayed by a train. The other 15 fire stations in the data reported a combined total of 153 delays across the same time period. As a result, trucks leaving Station No. 20 must regularly take detours that increase travel distance and delay response times, according to the application.
And then there are people who become frustrated by the delays and decide simply to cross anyway, whether by driving their car around gates before a train arrives or by climbing through the train itself.
The grant application notes βnumerous incidentsβ of this, in some cases with bicyclists trying to shove their bike under a train car before leaping over the coupling.
Heller says sheβs seen it before. βThat is just a tragedy waiting to happen,β she said.
In a statement, the railway spokesperson warned against such activity, calling it βillegal and dangerous.β
Relief still years away
Humboldt Yard and many of the neighborhoods near it are in Ward 4, represented by Council member LaTrisha Vetaw.
Sheβs happy that the $2.5 million for a planning study has finally gone through, which will allow stakeholders to determine a solution serving both residents and the railway, likely through an infrastructure project like an overpass or underpass.
βWe had a really strong application,β Vetaw said, βbecause [the problem is] so terrible.β
She knows it well. Vetaw lives south of the tracks while her mother lives north of them. And her old office used to have a view of the Lyndale crossing, she said, giving her a front row seat to the delays and the road rage that sometimes resulted.
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Sheβs quick to point out that CPKC has worked with the city on the issue β including a $50,000 commitment toward the study β and has βdone a lot of work to help make it better.β
So have many others. Attached to the grant application were letters from Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Rep. Ilhan Omar, the heads of the Minneapolis Fire Department, Minneapolis Police Department and Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, neighborhood associations, local businesses and many others.
But a guaranteed quick trip for someone from south of the tracks who wants to eat dinner at the Camden Social or City Afrique is still a ways off. Assuming everything goes smoothly and the city wins a corresponding design and construction grant, construction could get underway by 2031 or 2032.
Itβs a wait. But thatβs something the Northside is used to. So for now, drivers like Burns will keep idling their cars, texting βSorry Iβm lateβ to friends and family and watching trains crawl by. Or, rather, theyβll try their best not to.
βI do anything I can to avoid going over those tracks,β Burns said.
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