A new Minnesota rail plan assumes "a wildly unrealistic premise" that the Upper Midwest market will support eight commuter trains daily between the Twin Cities and Chicago, a statewide passenger advocacy group said this week.

The group was responding to a Minnesota Department of Transportation plan, which was released in December. It named several possible routes over which faster trains would travel between the two metro areas.

The Legislature last year requested the draft plan, the most sweeping in state history, in part to settle parochial disputes and set a vision for Minnesota's rail future. Minneapolis and St. Paul are seen in the plan as major train hubs with trains someday running to Duluth, Moorhead, Mankato and Eau Claire, Wis.

The Minnesota Association of Railroad Passengers, in responding to the plan, said that pressing for more than three daily trains to Chicago only adds to infrastructure costs without serving customers. Running fewer trains would be more practical and adding an overnight train would get business executives to Chicago in time for morning meetings, wrote Andrew Selden, president of the association.

"This service pattern is a real-world solution in a low-density, 400-mile market," he wrote to the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Overall, the draft state rail plan that was issued in December is "seriously flawed" and needs substantial changes, Selden wrote. But he also applauded MnDOT for undertaking the study as a first step toward rail revitalization in Minnesota.

Dave Christianson, MnDOT project manager for the rail plan, said Friday that the agency has received "a landslide of comments" from individuals and groups. The final plan goes to MnDOT commissioner Tom Sorel on Monday, Christianson said.

"It sort of calls into question how seriously they're taking public comments," Selden said Friday of the deadline. He submitted his comments to MnDOT on Thursday.

Criticism of the rail plan from Selden's veteran passenger association -- credited with helping to bring Amtrak service to Minnesota -- wasn't unexpected, Christianson said.

"They feel in a lot of ways it's not aggressive enough," he said. "We're trying to do something in a 20-year horizon that's realistic."

Selden's 10-page response to MnDOT contains sharp criticism, at one point chiding the rail plan for "displays of odd or mistaken judgment that undermine its credibility."

Specifically, Selden's association said the rail plan:

• Uses the "wrong yardsticks" to measure rail passenger services. Measuring rail performance based on ridership, or tickets sold, "is fundamentally flawed and misleading" and should instead be determined by "revenue passenger miles." A passenger carried 8 miles on a light-rail line is not the same as a passenger carried 35 miles on a regional rail train, or another carried 850 miles on an interregional passenger train, Selden wrote.

• Depends heavily on city-to-city train "corridors" instead of envisioning a network of transportation services. "As with telephones, the internet, hub airports or highways, rail passenger service will perform best in a network setting."

• Considers Minneapolis the ultimate destination despite passengers' preferences to travel back and forth across the metro area. "Yet the report treats downtown Minneapolis like a giant brick wall: trains come there and disappear."

• Ignores long-distance service such as trains from Minnesota to Des Moines, St. Louis or Kansas City. "This is the single greatest shortcoming of the report," Selden wrote. Amtrak's overnight Empire Builder, he said, more than pays for itself and is continually sold out. "This is Minnesotans voting with their wallets for where and how they want to use rail."

Christianson said the final rail plan will represent "a lot of voices" but said Minnesota's rail resurrection remains in its infancy.

"We're really in the baby steps of a brand new travel era," he said.

Kevin Giles • 612-673-4432