Slice of Life: Historic High Speed Rail

The current plans to bring high speed passenger rail service to the Midwest aren't bringing us anything news.  In fact, they're just restoring something we once had, but let fall apart.

This is a photograph taken in 1943 of the Midwest Hiawatha as it cruised past Bensenville near what we now call O'Hare Airport.  It was operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul, and Pacific Railroad.  It originated at Union Station in Chicago, where you can still see "Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul & Pacific" etched on a door on the South Canal Street side of the old building.  The train split in Iowa and terminated in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Omaha, Nebraska.

The last "Midwest Hiawatha" run was in 1955.  Over the years it was merged with other runs and other railroads.  Its ghost lives on in Amtrak's California Zephyr route from Chicago to San Francisco.

If you've never taken a train across the country, you really must.  I did it for the first time back in March.  I rode the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle.  It's quite a little adventure.  But be sure to go first class.  The people in coach looked like they were having a bad time.

Midwest High Speed Rail: Part 4: What it Means to Chicago

This is the final part of a four-part series of articles about the plans for high speed rail in the Midwest. 

Chicago is at the epicenter of this rail revolution.  It is the body of the spider whose legs stretch across the corn, hay, and soybean fields of the region.  But it is not the only hub in the network.

Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Cincinnati are also seen as minor hubs in this project.  Each is expected to handle thousands of passengers a day pretty early on, and many more once the endeavor is completed.

It is predicted that if the midwest high speed rail network becomes a reality, there will be ten daily trains from Chicago to Detroit.  Right now, Amtrak offers just three.

The same story is true between Chicago and Cleveland -- 10 trains a day are predicted each way.  Again, there are only three plying the route right now.

And as more passengers use the service, the tickets become cheaper.  Right now that trip from Chicago to Detroit runs $70.  The Cleveland run can be as high as $61.  But with trains in common use, the anticipated price of a ticket is $18 to $50, depending on the time of day.

But more than money, there is a reality about transportation in Chicago -- there will never be another highway built in the city.  You can build ring roads and bypasses to your hearts content in the collar counties.  But unless you're prepared to move a few skyscrapers or kick tens of thousands of people out of their homes, you simply cannot build another freeway in the city.  The rail lines are already here -- they just need to be upgraded to handle increased flow.  Something that can't be done with existing highways.

Even if you were to double-stack the highways like I-35 in Austin, Texas you couldn't get I-290 through the Post Office.  And one rail line can handle the same number of people as ten lanes of new highway.

The result of a real regional passenger rail network like the one proposed is that you end up with a miniature Midway airport right in the heart of downtown Chicago.  But without the jet noise or the congestion.

The City of Chicago wants the new high speed rail station to run beneath Canal Street, connecting with the CTA, Metra, and water taxi lines.  There are even visions of having baggage check-in at the high speed rail station so people coming in from laces like Joliet, Normal, Lafayette, and the Quad Cities can transfer directly to Chicago's airports.

A conservative estimate of the impact the midwest high speed rail program would have is 15,260 construction jobs and 57,000 permanent jobs.  And if there's one thing the midwest needs right now, it's new jobs.

Midwest High Speed Rail: Part 3: How Fast is Fast?

This is part three of a four-part series of articles about the plans for high speed rail in the Midwest. 

In some countries high speed trains shuttle thousands of people each day between cities at 200 MPH or more.  High speed rail is coming to the Midwest (see parts one and two of this series).  But when it pulls into the station here, the maximum speed will be a comparatively paltry 110 MPH.

To be brutally honest, it's because Midwesterners, for the most part, aren't ready for 200 MPH trains yet.  Sure, there are any number of futurists and hard core city dwellers and Tokyo fanbois who think that in a place of such wide open spaces there is no reason to compromise.  But they are vastly outnumbered by those who see trains as a waste of time and money.  Who think getting around in a shared space is stupid.  And who will give up sitting in freeway gridlock only when you pry the Christmas tree air freshener out of their cold, dead hands.

Geographically speaking, the Midwest and Texas are the locations in America best suited for the fastest trains.  But there isn't the political leadership or the public support to make it happen.  And without those, the money hose trickles, rather than flows.

In order to reach the kind of speeds achieved in places like Korea and Belgium the rail lines have to be electrified.  Installing an overhead electrical system along the thousands of miles of track envisioned in the Midwestern high speed rail plan is massively expensive.  So instead, the high speed trains that will plow through the plains will run on plain old diesel.  The idea is for America to learn how to walk before we run.

Also, keep in mind that the 110 MPH figure is a maximum speed, not an average speed.  You won't get from Cincinnati to Cleveland in an hour and a half.

But for anyone who's traveled by rail knows, door-to-door rail is faster than air travel at midwest distances.  And high-speed rail is expected to beat cars in the same measurement.

That's an important factor when it comes to travel and speed.  While it would be great to have trains going 300 MPH, 110 MPH is enough to beat cars on most trips in the midwest.  And once trains become better than cars for traveling between cities, it doesn't matter how much you beat them by -- people will start using the train.  So there's no need to invest all the extra money into pushing the trains up to 200 or 300 MPH.  110 is the sweet spot; the compromise between speed and cost.

So, if rail travel is so great, how come it hasn't worked before?  Well, a big part of that has to do with how rail travel is regulated.

For the most part, passenger rail and freight trains share the same tracks.  Lots of people have experienced what happens when a lumbering freight train clogs up the works.  I, personally, spent an hour sitting on a siding in New Westminster, British Columbia waiting for a Canadian National freight train to clear a track so the Amtrak Cascades train I was on could get into Pacific Station in Vancouver.  I know lots of people who have been stuck behind freight trains while trying to get into Saint Louis, before the new passenger station was built.

Under federal law, freight trains are supposed to get out of the way of passenger trains.  In practice, they don't.  The freight train companies see their cargo as the priority and don't care if they inconvenience a few hundred people on a passenger train.  The problem is there has been no way to enforce the right-of-way law until now.

A new law has been passed which actually fines the freight companies if they block passenger trains.  Since it was enacted, the on-time performance of passenger trains has increased nationwide.  With additional passing sidings and better signaling systems, passenger travel is already getting faster and easier in America.

Some cities are already getting ready for the passenger train revolution.  As mentioned above, Saint Louis built a new intermodal station that links Amtrak trains with city buses, city light rail, and inter-city bus service.  I've used it, and it works really well.

In 2005 Milwaukee built a new Amtrak station at its airport.  In 2007 it built a new one downtown.  As much as the naysayers like to say nay, the rail revolution is becoming a reality.

Midwest High Speed Rail: Part 2: Who Gets It First?

This is part two of a four-part series of articles about the plans for high speed rail in the Midwest. 

One of the miracles that came out of recent meetings between midwestern governors was an agreement about who gets rail first.

Not surprisingly, Chicago is one of the places that will see fast trains first.  But interestingly, Chicago is actually the hub of what is essentially a massive hub-and-spoke rail system, supplemented by a few minor hubs in places like Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

In phase one of the plan, the following high speed rail routes will be established:

• Chicago - Fort Wayne - Toledo - Cleveland
• Chicago - Normal - Springfield - Saint Louis
• Chicago - Milwaukee- Madison - LaCrosse - Saint Paul
• Chicago - Lafayette - Indianapolis - Cincinnati
• Chicago - Kalamazoo - Detroit

These will be supplemented by regional high speed rail rotes:

• Cincinnati - Columbus - Cleveland
• Milwaukee - Green Bay

In phase two of the plan, secondary routes are opened up:

• Chicago - Quad Cities - Iowa City - Des Moines - Kansas City
• Saint Paul - Duluth

And then later, the tertiary routes come online:

• Chicago - Joliet - Champaign - Carbondale
• Chicago - Quincy
• Chicago - Kansas City
• Detroit - Port Huron
• Saint Louis - Jefferson City - Kansas City

All of this seems rather ambitious, and a lot of people, myself included, would be happy to see just the first part completed.  But linking the bigger cities isn't possible without also promising to expand to the smaller cities.  That's how politics works.  And having dozens of smaller cities, states, and regional organizations backing the Midwest rail plan makes it more likely to win federal funding.  And there are even visions of expanding the network all the way to the Dakotas.

Of course, the big question is will it work?  Shaking the magic 8-ball yields a blue triangle reading "All signs point to 'yes.'"  It is estimated that increasing the frequency of the trains and moving the speed up from the current 70 MPH maximum to 110 MPH will increase ridership anywhere from double to quadruple its current levels.

Another sign of this comes from France, one of the pioneering high speed rail countries.  SNCF, the company that runs the trains in France has indicated it is willing to run the Midwest high speed rail system.  It believes that it an make a profit on the routes.

Of course, there are a couple of catches.  First, it wants the federal and state governments to build the network; it doesn't want to shoulder any of that burden or debt.  And second, SNCF wants the trains to go 200 MPH, not just 110.

With trains in the Northeast already going 100MPH and trains in Europe and Asia passing 200, why is the Midwest setting its goal at 110?  That is answered in the next part of this series: How Fast is Fast?

Midwest High Speed Rail: Part 1: Overview

This is part one of a four-part series of articles about the plans for high speed rail in the Midwest. 

Recently a meeting was held to explain the status and possibilities of high speed rail in the Midwest.

I've been on high-speed trains from Korea to Japan to Belgium to Italy, and even the Eurostar underneath the Channel Tunnel.  I like rail transport in general, and high speed rail specifically.  But I've never had much hope for it in the United States.

That may be because I've been exposed to so many doubters and naysayers that I've actually started to believe that it's not possible.  At the meeting in the Loop it was made abundantly clear -- High speed rail is coming to the United States.  It's just a matter of which states will get it.

According to Kevin Brubaker, deputy director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, $1.3 billion in federal stimulus funds have already been set aside for Amtrak to make upgrades.  Another eight billion dollars is being made available for the states to implement high speed rail.  And the House of Representatives is considering adding another $50 billion in high speed rail funding over the course of five years.

But it's that eight billion dollar figure that's the key.  The various states are competing for slices of that pie.  Already $50 billion in proposals have been made by the states, and there are a lot of people who think that the Midwestern states have a good chance of getting some of it.

That's because the governors of the Midwestern states have actually managed to come together and decide how to spend it.  Which cities get rail first, second, and third.  Also on board are various mayors of cities large and small, their chambers of commerce, universities, and whatever other clout the flyover states can muster to turn high speed rail into a reality.

Although there are a number of other networks that will share the funding pool, the main competition comes from cities on the west coast.  Rail service is already pretty frequent there compared to most of the rest of the country, and based on my observations riding it, there is plenty of demand.

In the Midwest, people are still very much tied to their cars.  That makes sense since the distances between most of the cities are too small for efficient door-to-door plane travel, but far enough that regular trains don't get it done.  But there are signs that is changing.

Just as Chicagoland is dense enough to support both CTA and Metra service between cities, other smaller towns are realizing that they can shrink the gaps between them and the big city by enhancing train service.

For example, in 2006 the state of Illinois coughed up the dough for Amtrak to double its passenger rail service in the state.The result wasn't merely a doubling of the number of passengers.  It surpassed that.  And today the trains are fuller than before the 2006 funding.

Anyone who's lived in a small Midwestern town (I did five years in three different small towns) knows that they've been struggling for decades.  Adding enhanced rail service between themselves and Chicago is a way to improve their towns and open their local businesses up to new opportunities.  They'd rather be Lake Forest than Oshkosh.  "Bedroom community" is no longer a dirty word.

So, where does it all start?  That question is answered in part two of this series: Who Gets It First?