One of the biggest things holding back the development of the downtown FM area is the dual railroad tracks going through on the south and north sides of downtown. Moorhead has it even rougher as they tracks begin to converge as they go through downtown. We should do what Los Angeles did with their railroad issue. They dug a 20 mile trench to subgrade the trains on the Alemeda Corridor. It eliminates 200 at grade crossing in that particular city.

Of course we would never need anything that large, but I think we at least lower the grade as the trains go through downtown and then come right back up to grade. It'd probably be sub-grade for no more than two miles. Sure it'd cost probably over $100M easily, but I think the value the metropolitan area would get from consolidating the two lines into a single trench would be worth it. Especially when one considers how much it would cost to route the tracks completely around the city. Also Fargo is nowhere near as dense as Los Angeles so costs would be a fraction per mile of what they were for the Alameda Corridor.

It would also present a unique opportunity to add new infrastructure into the two downtowns.

A fun fact is that at it's peak, the Alameda Corridor handled 17,824 a year in 2007. That's 49/day. Downtown Fargo puts up with upwards up 88 trains per day crossing through. I think we could work with the DOT, Fed, railroads and the state of North Dakota/Minnesota to make this a reality...