Speculation about New York-Chicago Overnight Service

Imagine a future where high-speed rail networks radiating from New York and Chicago have expanded until they meet and can provide a 10-hour NYP-CHI trip. A new New York-Chicago overnight service will be introduced.

What sort of equipment do you imagine the service using? Feel free to consider passenger accomodations (veiwliner- or slumbercoach-style sleepers? coaches? private/shared/no showers?), on-train services (table service? vending machines? on-train abattoir/steakhouse?), off-train services ("day hotels", first-class lounges, etc) or any other aspect of the service that interests you.

And just for fun, what names would you suggest for the service?

This "future" should have happened 20 years ago...

>>What sort of equipment do you imagine the service using?<< probably 727, 737, airbus etc cause thats only thing getting around those CSX freights.

Restoring formerly four-track lines to four tracks again wouldn't help? How about rebuilding the old PRR Fort Wayne division, and old Erie and B&O main lines too...?

There isn't a lot of speculation necessary for the services to be provided for passengers on high speed rail trains on heavy rail lines such as you have suggested.

Current high speed rail trains in Europe offer about the same services as once offered on most of the premier trains in the U.S. in pre-Amtrak days. So, it is not unreasonable to expect that many of the services and amenities once offered on first-class passenger trains will be provided on high speed rail trains on major rail routes. Included are full-menu dining car, snack service/lounge car, sleeper compartment, personal compartment services (for the business traveler), and coach seats.

Will the high speed trains have names or numbers? Who knows? The pullling of names from the past is very likely. Or, perhaps to include descriptive names such "The Overnighter", "The Speedster", "The Flying Yankee", yada,yada,yada.

So, kick back, and let your mind roam loose for awhile.....!

ACLfan

Since we're speculating, I think for the US as far as high-speed rail is concerned, we're barking up the wrong tree. The idea of having to bring together 150 or 500 or 1000 people to travel together to a destination is not what Americans *want* to do.

And the inherent physical, engineered structure railroads require to transport people isn't something that's economic. Things often turn on politics, but the US gave up leadership of rail passenger technology decades ago. The government sees advances in aviation as being important to our future. Boeing's new plane is designed for more customized point-to-point trips rather than mass hub and spoke movement.

For land travel, I think something like Skywebexpress has future legs. It doesn't require as much structural cost, and allows for individual trips. It's something that can have an American stamp on it. The US is not Europe or Asia.

As for New York/Chicago passenger rail, what I would like to see is an impassioned operator having put together a SERVICE that captures the "human touch" that only rail travel can attain. It's not contrived. It's something that lives; something that exists because of its instrinsic value. It doesn't have to be fast, but it has to be good. I think a lot of people would be attracted to that, and to operate that between two of the wealthiest, highly-populated regions in the world would give it a good chance to prosper.

What do *you* hear in Steve Goodman's, "City of New Orleans" (sung by Arlo Guthrie)?:
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

max wrote:Since we're speculating, I think for the US as far as high-speed rail is concerned, we're barking up the wrong tree. The idea of having to bring together 150 or 500 or 1000 people to travel together to a destination is not what Americans *want* to do.]

Surely air travel relies on these numbers of people wanting to travel as well . If they can get together 100 -200 people several times a day to travel by air between major US cities , why would they not want to do the same thing by train ? .

Because 2 hours NYC to Chicago is not the same as 10. There are meeting rooms available for rent at O'Hare Airport, inside the security area, so folks can fly in for a 10 am meeting, fly out at 4 and be home in time for a late dinner. That's more attractive for most than two overnight train trips. Unfortunately.

The idea of having to bring together 150 or 500 or 1000 people to travel together to a destination is not what Americans want to do

As it stands, the long-distance trains that run nowadays are not running empty—in fact, they are short on capacity. How much more popular would they be if you cut their running time by two-thirds?

Anecdotal, but I recall back in '01 in Hoboken, NJ, at the second-last "Try Transit Festival" that NJ Transit hosted, that there were a lot of people looking at the Acela Express trainset on Track 3. One person remarked, "it would be great if we could go to Florida on this train"...so to assume that a market does not exist is extremely short-sighted.

Ken- I guess the short answer is that it doesn't have to be attractive to most people... a few would be sufficient. Assume that the train goes via Philadelphia; on an average the total number of people that fly from Chicago (Midway & O'Hare) to either New York (EWR, LGA, JFK) or Philadelphia is more than 10,000... and 10,000 more other direction (I can't find my original source for this-- it's buried somewhere on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics site). Just capturing 2% of the air market (200 passengers each way/day) is enough to fill 5 Slumbercoachesque sleepers. Add power cars and a cafe/diner/etc, and there's a daily train each way.

Is 2% achievable? Maybe...

A quick point about SkyWeb Express; this particular implementation is meant to compete with local Transit options (city bus, light rail, etc), not with long-distance operations. While I suppose it's not impossible, I am not currently aware of any company that is developing a long distance Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) technology. At any rate, it's premature to say that it will necessarily be cheaper, being it that no such long-distance systems have ever been built, or even seriously proposed.

I don't disagree concerning full long distance trains. However, very few of the passengers are business purposed (if that's a word ) and increasing speeds would in my opinion not be likely to woo many more business trips. It might attract some non-business traffic, though, and more importantly, might result in better timekeeping.

When I started this topic, I wasn't really trying to propose the advocacy of a high-speed Chicago-New York line per se. It was more like I imagined an eventual future in which it became obviously desirable and easily attainable. Let me try to explain:

Start with the goal of trying to link major city pairs with four-hour rail trips. Four hours is where tains can at least start to compete with air trips for door-to-door travel times.

New York could be linked to Pittsburgh via Philadelphia-- though carving a new channel across the Alleghenies means major engineering costs. (I remember seeing a report in the early 90's that proposed a system with a 2:45 PHL-PGH time... for something like $25 billion)

Chicago-Cleveland is similar, but less heavily traveled and less complicated/expensive to build.

The Capitol Limited takes 3:13 to travel from Cleveland to Pittsbugh now. With no infrastructure improvements to this segement, were at just over 11 hours for the through trip-- reasonable time for an overnight train.

...but yeah, every part of this is still far, far away from reality.

Current high speed rail trains in Europe offer about the same services as once offered on most of the premier trains in the U.S. in pre-Amtrak days.

What exactly do you mean by "services" when you say that? Surely you're not talking about speed, since Europe has high speed trains running at about twice the speed of US trains pre-Amtrak, and that kind of speed in the US would attract all kinds of passenger patronage to the rails.

I suspect that on-board services are meant. Those are something that certainly have diminished as the years have passed, on US rails.

NY-CHI high-speed will not be a goal in and of itself. Rather it will be a dividend from achieving high-speed on all segments of the market, i.e. NY-Buffalo, Buffalo-Cleveland, Cleveland-Chicago.

Once these corridor segments are upgraded, operating athrough, fast overnight train becomes feasible, although I envision a 12-hour schedule vs. 10 hours.

A deluxe service (sleeping cars, dining cars, concierge services) should be able to siphon off a small segment of the business travel between those cities. You'd only need to sell 200 - 240 spaces on a train carrying 10 sleeping cars, so you could afford to be a niche player. You'd have to focus on the downtown-downtown market and stress the advantages of being able to sleep en route (one less night in a hotel, no having to get up at the crack of dawn to make the 7 am flight).

But there's a bigger market for coach travelers who avoid train now because a 20-hour trip is too much for them while 12 hours might be tolerable. This segment shouldn't be ignored. That's one reason the Auto Train works; you're only on the train 16 hours or so.