Amtrak considers extending Wolverine line from Chicago to Toronto via (VIA?) Detroit

I don't know what the ridership potential is like but it seems like a logical route based on the map and existing infrastructure. If they could make customs a little quicker and friendlier than it is for the other cross-border routes that would help, but I guess why would it be any better? One thing the route has going for it which the other Canada routes don't is decent trackage with high speed running on both sides (110 mph in Michigan, 95 mph or 100 mph on VIA Rail to Windsor).

"So you're telling me that you drove from Chicago just to have Dinner in Canada"?

"Indianapolis Thursday, Cleveland Friday, now here".

"What for?"

"Indianapolis Dinner with a 40 year friend, Cleveland for the Cleveland Orchestra".

"And you're doing what in Detroit"?

"Going to the Detroit Symphony".

"Where are you staying"?

"Up there" (pointing at Marriott Renaissance Center).

Returns my Passport

"Have a good evening".

Just how necessary was all that? If this were a train with, say, 150 passengers on it, it would never get to move on.

Amtrak asked Congress for funds for a CBP pre-clearance facility in Windsor to avoid the inspections at the border.

See my post on Adirondack thread about customs.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:"So you're telling me that you drove from Chicago just to have Dinner in Canada"?

"Indianapolis Thursday, Cleveland Friday, now here".

"What for?"

"Indianapolis Dinner with a 40 year friend, Cleveland for the Cleveland Orchestra".

"And you're doing what in Detroit"?

"Going to the Detroit Symphony".

"Where are you staying"?

"Up there" (pointing at Marriott Renaissance Center).

Returns my Passport

"Have a good evening".

Just how necessary was all that? If this were a train with, say, 150 passengers on it, it would never get to move on.

Yeesh. You’re lucky you didn’t get a border patrol agent with an “extra dose of ‘tude”.

But I agree some of the questions they can ask you are as pointless as making small talk. My cross country train trip in January ‘23 had me being asked at Pacific Central if I live with roommates and how do I know them. As if *that* was going to raise any red flags as a holder of a valid US passport indicating I was born in CT... Then on the 2nd trip in November a different agent at the same station asked me why I was taking the train instead of flying and I thought to myself “Are you serious?” And then in between the 2 train sojourns when I drove to the Maritimes back in August the border agent in New Brunswick asked me “What were you doing out in BC?” I ended up giving the guy a sales pitch on taking the “Canadian” before the equipment is replaced.

In hindsight I’m surprised I wasn’t asked in November, “How can you afford to do all these things?!” (The answer is by not doing anything next year)


As for where to put the clearance center wouldn’t there need to be 2 separate facilities? In Detroit for westbound trains and Windsor for eastbound trains? I don’t see the point in either Canadian border agents checking passengers in Detroit & US agents checking in Windsor or agents from both countries sharing the same building. I suspect there would be major jurisdictional issues involved in such a proposal.

Isn't the facility at Niagra Falls one facility? Certainly last time at Pacific Central station it was one facility. Why not put combined facility at Michigan Central where isolation fencing can be easily built on restored platforms?

The idea with a pre-clearance facility is that there are separate waiting rooms, restrooms, and other amenities so that passengers can enter the facility as they arrive (by bus, taxi, other public transport, etc.) and people using the pre clearance facilities are not subject to long queues to clear customs, so it makes sense, if Amtrak is running a cross border service with 1 stop in Canada and 10 in the USA, to use a pre clearance facility in Canada. Were such a facility to be built at Michigan Central, the sensible thing would be to have Canada Border Services Agency establish pre-clearance there, but that benefits people traveling to Canada on VIA, not people traveling from Canada on Amtrak (and suggests that VIA trains would be extended to Detroit, not Amtrak trains extended to Windsor).

In the case of taking the direct flight from Dulles to Ottawa, that means dealing with customs only in Ottawa, which means walking the ~600 ft through customs from where the taxi drops me at the airport (I fly this route relatively frequently and the longest line I've encountered was 4 people ahead of me) instead of queuing through customs in Dulles with 500+ others as my flight and two or three international wide bodies all land at roughly the same time.

There's actually a "thing": the US has a long standing policy that "no foreign potentate" shall hold sway in our great land. That's why there are American pre-clearance facilities in other countries but none for other countries in the US. Hence, the shared facility being in Canada.

Another rotten idea.

WHY. CAN'T. THEY. FOCUS. ON. RUNNING. THE. EXISTING. TRAINS. LIKE. NOT. SHIDDY.

To enumerate why,
(a) the Wolverine is poorly run in its current state
(b) another host, another country is not going to help
(c) via already runs trains to windsor
(d) see above border commentary

It would make a lot more sense to run Via trains into a Detroit terminal. SW Ontario is pretty sleepy. Meanwhile Chicago is a 12-ish hour ride away. Folks fly that distance. The >1pct that refuse to fly can transfer to Via.

Tadman wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 4:31 pm Another rotten idea.
It would make a lot more sense to run Via trains into a Detroit terminal. SW Ontario is pretty sleepy. Meanwhile Chicago is a 12-ish hour ride away. Folks fly that distance. The >1pct that refuse to fly can transfer to Via.

That really does make more sense. IMO riders to the last stop in Ontario would be less than DTW.

markhb wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 2:36 pm There's actually a "thing": the US has a long standing policy that "no foreign potentate" shall hold sway in our great land. That's why there are American pre-clearance facilities in other countries but none for other countries in the US. Hence, the shared facility being in Canada.

Except it's not a thing. The agreement between the USA and Canada allowing US pre-clearance facilities to be in Canada allows Canada to establish pre-clearance facilities in the USA if it so chooses. It's just that the economics of flying between Canada and the USA are such that no Canadian pre-clearance facility has been built at a US airport.