Potential Route For Toronto - Chicago

It has been reported in the Windsor, Ontario newspaper that plans are being made to abandoned the VIA owned (xCN) track between Chatham and Windsor and reroute all trains to the CP line which would be double tracked and grade separated to increase speeds.

A new VIA station would be constructed on the CP line which leads directly to the Detroit River Tunnel and a potential connection with Amtrak. Currently VIA cannot access the tunnel without a very circuitous move.

I would really be interested in seeing something like this done. I would really like to get to Chicago by train and the Lake Shore Limited takes just tooo much time, so that's out of the question.

An extension through the Windsor tunnels would be great, because it provides a better link to Detroit than taking a cab across the Ambassdor Bridge!

I don't know what will happen here but, if VIA does extend its Windsor trains across the border, I don't expect they will run through to Chicago once again. The Customs and Immigration difficulties have become too big a burden.

What I can see are facilities established in Detroit (or possibly Windsor) where passengers are cleared by U.S. officials upon arrival, or by Canadian Customs before boarding. Connecting Amtrak passengers would change trains here.

Would the new station be closer to the Ambassador Bridge or would the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel still be the way to go to the new train station?

On the other topic, since Amtrak moved its train station to the New Center area of Detroit, wouldn't a direct Toronto ->Chicago via Windsor line's first stop in the U.S. be Dearborn ? Due to customs scrutiny, I think that cross border trains are unlikely unless people would be willing to put up with a longish stop at Detroit/Dearborn or Windsor.

1. The new Windsor station location is yet to be determined, but will be somewhere along the line through the Detroit River tunnel. I hope it will be downtown, close to Huron-Church, but who knows?
2. The Amtrak station in Detroit is not on a direct route to Canada and would not fit in with an end-to-end Chicago-Toronto train.

The second reason is why I envision a train change in Detroit, with Customs facilities in the station, instead of a through Toronto-Chicago train. This would also allow VIA and Amtrak to try to keep to their own schedules without worrying about what happens on the other side.

Ken V wrote:The second reason is why I envision a train change in Detroit, with Customs facilities in the station, instead of a through Toronto-Chicago train. This would also allow VIA and Amtrak to try to keep to their own schedules without worrying about what happens on the other side.

The VIA train would be on time; the Amtrak train probably late. That means the cross border passengers going east might be left in the station looking at an empty platform.

Going west, maybe the passengers for Chicago would be all right. My trip on the International showed that the VIA side was on time, but the train was delayed by many hours going to Chicago.

I don't understand why customs should be such a problem. Why can't a European approach by adopted (eg like Eurostar?).

andrewcook wrote:I don't understand why customs should be such a problem. Why can't a European approach by adopted (eg like Eurostar?).

Eurostar's procedures are crippling. The British Home Office insists that every Eurostar station in Britain must have the full customs and immigration - especially immigration - facilities. These are expensive both to set up and to run.

First it means there must be secure fencing and gates. There have to be personnel to check passports. Admittedly Customs is now confined to looking for drugs and terrorist devices as there are no tariff barriers between Britain and other members of the EU. But non-citizens of the EU have to be processed (my wife, a US citizen, was given a hard time at Waterloo after we returned from a weekend in Paris before we were married).

The result of these expensive arrangements is that the north of London trains never occurred because the immigration department never worked out how to process immigrants. Also there can be only a few qualified stations. At present there are three: St Pancras, Ebbsfleet and Ashford. The last may be closed.

After crossing the channel there are no more checks in normal times. There are no cross border checks within the Schengen Zone. Canada and the US don't have that type of treaty.
Britain has not joined the Schengen zone and may never do so.

Eurostar is OTT but it does work with a 30 minute check in time - it can be done.

Even within Europe, there are still some checks - go from the Netherlands into Germany and the German border police do random checks.

It's all do-able with the right effort.

andrewcook wrote:Eurostar is OTT but it does work with a 30 minute check in time - it can be done.

Even within Europe, there are still some checks - go from the Netherlands into Germany and the German border police do random checks.

It's all do-able with the right effort.

For someone who is not a US or Canadian citizen the US-Canada frontier is very difficult. The only border where I have ever been put in a cell was the border post between Maine and Quebec. (But I was treated well, fed a hamburger and put on the next day Greyhound to Quebec). It was in 1963. There are few frontiers in Europe where they are so thorough going through the baggage and stamping the passports. No, it's not "do-able", especially not during this period of terrorist paranoia.

I'd say make Windsor a Pre-Clearenece station like with Vancouver.

If you fly between Canada and the US, you clear US Customs/Immigration (or whatever they call it now) in Canada before you board your flight so you are "essentially in the US" even before leaving Canada. When your flight arrives in the US you just walk off the plane at a domestic gate and are on your way, no further customs checks.

So I don’t see why Pre-Clearance wouldn’t work for VIA/Amtrak and this would be similar to what is already done in Vancouver. Pre-clearance could be done in Montreal (just eliminate the St. Lambert stop) and it’s a straight run to the border. Northbound the Adirondack could run direct to Montreal without a stop in at the Border and passengers would clear Canadian Customs/Immigration in the same facility in Central Station.

Trains from Toronto to New York (and potentially Chicago) would be more difficult as there is substantial on/off VIA traffic in Canada before reaching the border.

I for one, would love to see CHicago-toronto service restored, and now that Bush's anti-passenger rail admin is on it's way out, I hope change is in store the "securtiy" issues with the tunnel go away in January. with the present scheduling between via trains to windsor and amtrak to detroit, there is only ONE window of opportunity to connect to trains across the border/day.. if either train is late, you will miss your 4 hour window and end up staying the night in detroit of windsor. i would love to be able to get on a train in chicago and ride to toronto, georgraphically toronto and chicago are like sister cities..

I always thought the better option was running a train from Chicago via Detroit/Windsor to Toronto. Once on the Canadian side, you can then figure out what route is faster in getting to Toronto - via the old Internationl's route via Kitchener or via Aldershot etc.

AgentSkelly wrote:I'd say make Windsor a Pre-Clearenece station like with Vancouver.

Once again, compare Eurostar procedures. Once you get on the train, from a platform within the immigration Security area, the doors are locked and the law says they cannot be opened except at another Security area. In normal times that's no problem but if a train is delayed between authorised stations passengers cannot be let out. I am not sure what happens if there is serious emergency, especially on a train entering the country with people who have not been through immigration.