New York-Chicago

IT seems that the Chicago-Albany-Buffalo-Cleveland-Toledo-Chicago Corridor would make for a prime corridor for the next High Speed Rail corridor in Amtrak. To Support the trains though, 6 daily trains would have to run from Chicago to New York, as well as corridor trains along the route to further justify federal investment. There is traffic density to support it, lets do it. I'm from California, and I support something like this, High Speed Rail needs to Start Somewhere.

Great idea - but do you have the $$$ to come up with such a service, let alone to bribe CSX - et al - into the act, or to construct a new right of way?

With out a massive change of heart at FRA the only way this could be done is on a dedicated line with out grade crossings. This would be enormously expensive. It would have been a whole lot easier if we had not let the RR's abandon so much line in the east. We could have then turned one of the routes into HSR and done all of the work to retrofit it by eliminating grade crossings.

I wonder if anyone has gotten adventurous enough to figure out what share of the traffic Amtrak could get between these two points if it had current generation HSR running at 300 KM/H or higher? I bet it would be enough to heavily use a two track main.

The suggested route is roughly the distance in air miles between London and Rome. Even Europeans don't do high speed trains for that distance. Cheap flights are much more convenient. Studies have shown that high speed rail is competitive with other for a distance of about 500 miles. While I'd like to see more trains between NY and Chicago, I don't think it will be HSR.

The DOT high-speed plan calls for HSR between New York and Buffalo and Cleveland and Chicago. That leaves only the 187-mile stretch between Buffalo and Cleveland, which the eastbound Lake Shore Limited is scheduled to cover in 2:55.

If the DOT plan ever comes to fruition, it might make sense to have a few trains cover the entire NY-Chicago run. However, even if the run could be cut to 10 hours, a 96 mph average speed, I doubt it would draw much NY-Chicago traffic out of the skies. It's real appeal would be for overhead traffic, e.g. Rochester-Cleveland, Toledo-Buffalo. Given that this route runs through Rust Belt cities with declining populations, I'm not sure it's a growth market.

Currently there are high-speed proposals on the NY end (Empire Corridor High-Speed Rail), the Chicago end (Midwest High-Speed Rail) and the Ohio section (Ohio Hub system).

There are proposals which are much closer to fruition to upgrade NY-Albany (being done piecemeal now) and Chicago-Porter, IN (CREATE and related projects).

I don't think we're going to see bullet trains along this corridor, but they could get a *lot* faster than the current trains without being 'true [tm] high speed rail'.

Eventually upstate NY pressure will lead to Albany-Buffalo upgrades; CSX is the biggest problem here, but if NY ever finds funding, something will happen.

In Indiana, there's lots of spare rail ROW, and the 79-mph South Shore Line from suburban Chicago to South Bend.

I'd expect to see piecemeal line upgrades starting from both ends. The right of ways on this route are wide, and there should be capacity for both freight and fast passenger tracks, if not 'true[tm] high-speed rail', if the states or the feds ever decide to budget for it.

Personally, I'm predicting a resurgence in population around the Great Lakes (thanks to water shortages in the drought-plagued south and southwest, which we don't have problems with up here), and that might give rail along this corridor a boost. However, Canada's likely to upgrade Windsor-Toronto well before anything in Ohio gets upgraded, so if the US ever relaxes its very slow border controls, NYC-Niagara Falls-Toronto-Windsor-Detroit-Chicago might become the 'fast route'.

Over that distance, it doesn't matter if the train is 10 hours, 12 hours, or 18 hours. Most will still fly.

Why not invest in rail where it's CAN attract marketshare, as opposed to pie in the sky dreams that will never be built and even if they are, won't ever attract real ridership anyway. People aren't going to spend 10 hours on a train to go to Chicago - you can fly from NY to LA faster than that....

You guys are nuts if you think that a NYP-Chicago run will be HSR. First the flight from EWR,JFK and LGA to ORD is only about 2-3 hrs. Most of everyone I know want to fly. They will not waste valauble time on a slow Amtrak Train HSR or not because most Americans don't get enough vacation time to waste on a train otherwise they'd take the train everywhere. Most will fly. The only ones you'll win over are those driving in their cars and SUVs. You will see more regular trains before you see and HSR Trains. Plus the money used can be better spent upgrading tracks, signals, equipment and facilities. Even the Europeans don't have HSR Trains go that far as one poster mentioned. I don't think there are even sleeping car or shower facilities on board.

Let's say this HSR does take off you will not get it to go anywhere near as quick as the plane.

A better idea would be to put HSR on coridoor routes like Detriot-Chicago-St Louis, Intra California runs, Las Vegas-LA and SF and intra Texas along with Atlanta to Miami and Orlando. Anything beyond the HSR Coridoor is wasting money.

I agree with nearly everybody else here, it would be a gross waste.
Noel Weaver

Current generation HSR has a top speed of around 350 KM/H. The Ny-Chi route is about 1000 miles which means that with a average speed of 300 KM/H the trip time is 5.5 hours. The drive how ever is 800 miles, so if we had a rail route that was as direct the current generation HSR could cover it in 4.5 hours. The direct flight time is just over 2 hours, plus a hour in the airport get you to over 3 hours. If we had direct routing rail would be very time competitive with air

The Paris - Bordeaux TGV covers the 360 miles in 3 hours as it's very best timing. If one made a 900 mile route from Chicago to New York then that translates to 7.5 hours. Keep in mind that the eastern half of that route is a far greater topographical challenge than Paris - Bordeaux unless you simply replace the old NYC main line (and miss Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in doing so).

I won't speak for anyone else but I know I wouldn't spend many billions of dollars of my own money when after it's all said and done the travel time would still be 3X what it takes to fly.


edit: It's worth noting that the Paris - Bordeaux timing is for non-stop service. Adding in just four stops in the 360 mile route adds about 30 minutes or so to the timing. Now we're down to an average of 105 mph and that train doesn't go through any major cities along the way which always causes even slower running.

I can certainly see the aforementioned "corridors" being HSR...i.e. Chi-Cle, Chi-Det, Chi-Stl (milw), and possibly Cle-Col-Cin, as well as NYP-Alb and Alb-Buf. Were those ever done, certainly "through" trains could operate on those corridors at higher speeds overall.

While I agree that the "500 mile or less" rule of thumb makes a lot of sense, there is no reason why longer runs couldn't take advantage of HSR infrastructure as built.

I, for one, would certainly welcome a true 'door to door' NYP-CHI overnight train that gets in end points by 8:30am each portal and leaves after 8pm from origination point. Beats the hell outta the airport hassles for business meetings that last more than 4 hours. While I have flown many times to Chicago for 'quickie' meetings, it's still up before crack of dawn, arrive home by midnight type of exhausting operation. Also if the total NY-CHI run time/s were under 12 hours, during the daylight hours, I'd bet you'd get a huge increase in daytime travelers end points and mid points.

Although hard to believe, an arrow-straight, high speed rail line was proposed and even partially built 103 years ago! That is NOT a misprint---one-hundred-and-three years ago!!

The Chicago New York Electric Air Line (not to be confused with airlines..eg, airplanes) was started with great fanfare...but...alas...fizzled.

See the attached Wikipedia info...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-Ne ... e_Railroad

Back then, land was vacant, land was cheap, and the first NIMBY wasn't even =born= yet!!!

bratkinson wrote:Back then, land was vacant, land was cheap, and the first NIMBY wasn't even =born= yet!!!

Off topic Mr. Atkinson, but whileMoses may have parted the Red Sea; Moses found that the NIMBY's were not so easy to part.

The NIMBY movement was well in place by the 1930's; I can recall my Grandmother relating stories how NIMBY's influenced the Merritt Parkway, CT 15, route through "back Greenwich', and I can personally recall during the '50's, the fights and the 'banner' headlines in theGreenwich Time as the route for "the Thruway", aka I-95, was battled over.

Oh well, I guess the "Greenwich Gauntlet" on I-95 today (Otto et al knows well of what I speaketh) is 'revenge' against the grandchildren of those who did the fighting at Town Meetings (yes, Greenwich is organized as a Town) and on the pages of the Time.

LI Loco wrote:The DOT high-speed plan calls for HSR between New York and Buffalo and Cleveland and Chicago. That leaves only the 187-mile stretch between Buffalo and Cleveland, which the eastbound Lake Shore Limited is scheduled to cover in 2:55.

If the DOT plan ever comes to fruition, it might make sense to have a few trains cover the entire NY-Chicago run. However, even if the run could be cut to 10 hours, a 96 mph average speed, I doubt it would draw much NY-Chicago traffic out of the skies. It's real appeal would be for overhead traffic, e.g. Rochester-Cleveland, Toledo-Buffalo. Given that this route runs through Rust Belt cities with declining populations, I'm not sure it's a growth market.

A french TGV train can use specially built high speed lines, and also older lines, at a slower speed. This would be the only practicable method. Though the traditional routes would probably have to be improved and electrified.