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I realize St. Louis is only just one neighbor, but isn't the HSR line already under construction between Chicago and St. Louis at this point? Granted, the whole thing is going through Illinois until it crosses the river into St. Louis, so maybe STL is a poor example.
They're just doing upgrades to the existing track, there are no plans for HSR anywhere in this part of the country.
The fastest stretches of track would be up to 110 MPH, but that would just be for a few short stretches.
I don't really get why there would be a need for a "West Loop Transportation Center". There are already four (arguably five) rail terminals downtown, which is too many, and there's tons of capacity right now.
Honestly the following adjustments (some of which may happen) would already improve the Midwest services dramatically:
* New fleet. The Michigan routes are slated to get these within a year or so from now. This means double decker trains outfitted with Wi-Fi and probably greater capacity.
* Not only improving speeds up to 110 MPH, but reduce the number of delays & bottlenecks already in the system. Some of this is due to freight traffic. Any reduction in these type of delays will improve the service.
* Get as many of the routes double tracked as possible. This will help to alleviate some of the bottlenecks I referred to in the previous point.
* Increased frequency on certain corridor routes (ie. Chicago to Metro Detroit, more late night trains on Chicago to Milwaukee, etc.)
* Better crisis management practices. Amtrak's methods of dealing with equipment failures right now is absolutely abysmal and usually leads to inexcusable delays & irate passengers. They need some outside entity to come in and whip them into shape. Amtrak would be a good case study for the folks at business schools & consulting firms. Sadly, Amtrak gets a pass far too many times when it screw up because of its monopoly and backing from the government. When an airline like JetBlue screws up and strands passengers for hours, there are usually lawsuits, huge media stories, and real changes that result. Not the case with Amtrak.
All of these issues above need to be addressed ASAP and are far more important than simply pipe dreaming for true HSR throughout the Midwest. Unlike the Northeast Corridor, most of the other Midwestern cities have pathetic public transportation options (besides Chicago of course).
Within Chicago, I think a centralized transit center or a seamless connection between Union Station & Ogilvie stations, along with some sort of CIRCLE line around the suburbs, and speedier rail service to O'Hare could revolutionize Chicago's status as the premier Midwestern transit hub.
Within Chicago, I think a centralized transit center or a seamless connection between Union Station & Ogilvie stations, along with some sort of CIRCLE line around the suburbs, and speedier rail service to O'Hare could revolutionize Chicago's status as the premier Midwestern transit hub.
outstanding!!!!
actually i think the transit center actually would be the filler of the doughnut hole between Union Station and Ogilvie in 3 part package. Ogilvie would continue as is with the 3 UP commuter lines. Union would continue to hold all its commuter lines and perhaps Amtrak service and the new transit center would include high speed rail, cta rapid transit (and, if it were to be developed cta light rail) and possibly Amtrak service.
certainly this complex would be far more ideal to house an express CTA service to O'Hare and Midway than the proposed Block 37 station could do.
actually i think the transit center actually would be the filler of the doughnut hole between Union Station and Ogilvie in 3 part package. Ogilvie would continue as is with the 3 UP commuter lines. Union would continue to hold all its commuter lines and perhaps Amtrak service and the new transit center would include high speed rail, cta rapid transit (and, if it were to be developed cta light rail) and possibly Amtrak service.
certainly this complex would be far more ideal to house an express CTA service to O'Hare and Midway than the proposed Block 37 station could do.
...there is no money to pay for anything like this. Further, with the contracts for new locomotives going not to a company with US roots there is very little reason to think that there will really be any support from the kinds of companies that traditionaly use their lobbying power to shake things up...
Not that this makes me sad, as I think Union Station is perfectly adequate for the sort of incremental improvements that are the only outcome of the recent silliness over rail. Similarly though the "on paper" benefits of improved intra-regional commuter rail would seem to be a good thing the problems that would plaque such a huge investment in the real world are likely enough to keep in from ever flying -- folks that currently live in quiet areas would fit any increased rail traffic, commute patterns that allow for profitable strip centers would find those same real estate and retail interests opposed to anything that hurts their business, heck even the currently gung-ho transit advocates inside Chicago might be opposed to something that knocks them off their special place at the top of the "car free living pyramid"...
Here in Boston, at South Station, near the Financial District, we have:
The Red Line for the Subway, running north-south
The Commuter Rails , running south and west, to Providence and Worcester
The Interstate Bus sytem, running north towards Montreal and Portland/Bangor, south towards NYC, and west towards Albany, and eventually to Chicago
Amtrak, running south to Wash DC, and west to Chicago
To be honest, the buses run out a building next door, but you get the point. Besides, the bus terminals are jam packed with people trying to board the multitude of buses headed for NYC...especially now that the dreaded Fung Wah buses are back in operation..
San Francisco is currently well on the way to building what may arguably be the most magnificent public space in the United States with its Transbay Transit Center (Transbay Center)
Designed to tie the city's various transit lines together (although strangely BART won't have a direct connection), the highlight of the system and the one part that is truly essential is the SF terminus of California's high speed rail system.
But one would have to note that the SF station is not central to the system and offers no more centrality than the other key stations in LA, SD, and Sacto.
In other words, San Francisco's part in high speed rail is rather typical of most cities that will be on these systems that are designed for various parts of the United States.
That would hardly be the case for Chicago. Chicago, far more than any city, is the central focus for its HSR, the most "all roads lead to Rome" city in the nation in this regard (just like Chicago was in terms of the original rail system that blanketed the nation).
Yet San Francisco is well on the way (construction began in 2010) for its HSR center while Chicago, that most important point, based on design, in the nation's HSR future, has gone nowhere with its West Loop Transportation Center which is so little prioritized that it doesn't even have a major league, highly detailed and flashy website that shows what such a terminal could look like.
Why?
Why is Chicago lacking in the one area that it may arguably have an edge over all cities in the United States: the centrality of transportation, the rail hub. We rue the fact that Chicago is not #1 in finance (NY), entertainment (LA), government (DC), yet in this one area where we lead, we don't seem to be heading for the future……something that can't be said for San Francisco, a city that was once famous for its paralysis of action, its inability to get anything done in a place where competing interests often led to gridlock….a city that seems to have made a 180 degree swing to what may well be the exciting city in the US when it comes to how it is redeveloping itself.
Here in the midwest, we are aware that our rust belt heritage has left us behind much of the nation as so many of our cities decay (Chicago, IMHO, is hardly one of them, a city very much in tune with the other dynamic metropolises in the US, all the others being coastal or near coastal). Yet nothing could serve this region more than a high quality, high speed rail system, largely tied to Chicago and impacting Milw, M/SP, StL, KC, Det, Clev, Cin, and Ipls.
We thought of the Olympics as the spark we needed, counting on infrastructure from it being the basis for redevelopment. Yet this rail project would offer much more bang for the buck and spill off from it would lead to massive redevelopment. Indeed, it would create a hot bed of construction in the West Loop and would offer a transportation facility to match O'Hare in a new age when rail may challenge air the way the later did the former around the middle of the 20th century.
I'd like to think Daniel Burnham gave us the west loop transit center in the form of "make no little plans". we seem to get that in the form of an ever expanding McCormick Place, a masterpiece Millennium Park, etc. Isn't it time we make high speed rail a part of the mix, encouraging its development with the US government and in building our own grandest of central stations?
I don't know what planet you are on, but a recent court ruling stopped California's high speed rail nonsense dead in the water, or rather dead in the valley
I think the answer lies purely in the politics of your neighboring states.
Any public infrastructure projects right now are viewed and promoted as a waste of taxpayers dollars and "money we can't afford". This is especially true of public transportation projects and investments. In the eyes of some, it just creates more people working for and depending on the government as opposed to an investment in the future.
Look no farther than the Wisconsin governor as the person to put to brakes on the most promising HSR route to Minneapolis/St. Paul. That one route would have set things in motion for the whole region and then the country to invest in HSR.
The exhortation was not just to dream but, as the full quote implicitly states, to have a coherent plan that was so comprehensive as to ensure that it would in fact be adopted and completed -- Make No Little Plans The fact is that HSR itself is one big stupid mess as proposed in the US and it is such a silly disorganized effort that firms that would be hurt if it were to be successful (like those in business of building airplanes or running airlines, both of which are HQ'd in Chicago...) don't really even need to flex their considerable influence to throw things off.
I agree that the HSR plan between LA and SF is not well-planned and the oversight on it is likely lacking, though the idea of HSR between LA and SF itself makes a lot of sense as both metros are becoming denser, more populous, and with more and more people using transit (part of what can make HSR useful is that you can hop on and off in the middle of the respective cities with transit options available to get you to your final destinations).
The points I disagree with is the idea that the Bay Area has more colleagues in Bangalore and Shenzhen than they do in LA--at least in any meaningful way. Those colleagues are colleagues in a very remote sense and it is going to be a very, very unlikely commute for throngs of people working in the factories to require a trip back and forth to the Bay Area--that simply isn't how it works. Meanwhile, the actual business done between LA and the Bay Area is significant and actually increasing with LA especially making fairly large inroads in the tech scene (mostly in regards to leveraging technology in LA's usual bread and butter industries) and travel between the two, as I have personally experienced, is substantial and will be increasing. Not only that, but LA and the Bay Area have far larger links than that with many people having family in both regions (me included!) who would appreciate not having to drive every time as well as a very large statewide higher education system that continually sends people for generally four year periods from one area to the other.
Also, high speed rail deals with a lot of externalities that simply looking at profit margins doesn't work so well. They are also investments for nations to have greater liquidity for human resources and skills and are capable of off-setting large amounts of environmental pollution which unfortunately has no full accounting in profit margins. Their ease of use and the travel they induce also leads to many additional economic benefits that are much harder to calculate. Even without including any of that (which shouldn't be the case), high speed rail lines can be profitable though dependent on the line and how much graft was done to get those lines done. Certainly the Tokaido line and Paris-Lyon line have turned a substantial profit that by only looking at the ledgers and no other benefits have more than covered their initial capital costs and to this day are turning a great profit. Meanwhile, many other high speed lines consistently turn in operating profits though have yet to completely recoup their capital costs (with interest) completely (though I might be wrong on this, maybe other lines actually have).
A quick read of your link to the Bloomberg article shows there are some pretty important points hidden under its ominous for HSR headline. Some of the salient points/factoids in there is that this new challenge from budget airline carriers that high speed rail is facing is that they have less than 1% of the ridership of the high speed rail lines. Not surprising since these low cost airlines are more of a hassle being further out from the city cores (understandably necessary for airports), have to go through a longer boarding procedure, are very cramped in comparison to trains, generally have minimal to no time savings or actually take more time for most passengers compared to the same hsr route (unless your starting point and destination are close by two both the starting point and destination city airports and there is not matching high-speed rail stations located near/in those airports) for the same city pair and with tickets that cost more than three times the cost for the same hsr routes for the same city pair.
Now, that "for the same city pair" part is also really important because that's crucial to the growth of these low cost airlines--it's because they are growing by serving city pairs that currently do not have direct high speed rail connections which makes sense. The expert quote in there of “You want to be picking off those other city pairs that aren’t served well. If the bullet-train operators are smart, they’ll try to head it off more.” points to the smart move for the bullet train operators to expand to greater coverage and pick off those routes which they aren't currently directly serving. That's a good idea in certain places, though I think Japan's mountainous topography makes this criss-crossing not that great of an investment unless there's an incredibly well-planned route/trunk line that can serve multiple metropolitan centers (generally something crossing into the western seaboard of Japan, but the issue being those metropolitan areas generally being less populous--the eastern seaboard has fantastic coverage). There are currently three routes that traverse the interior mountainside and one main line on the western seaboard currently under construction with one or more as yet undecided additional traversals of the interior mountains, so that is happening which is going to probably be bad business for the airline carriers. For the Midwest though, there isn't too much of mountains to cut through. Kind of neat.
Anyhow, some competition is great as it does mean that the railways have to cut cost to compete for the routes that meander to get from start to destination. Competition in this form is really healthy and would be great impetus for the railway companies to further expand their network since it gives them a real world model for ridership between currently not directly served city pairs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chet everett
Part of me does agree that there is value to looking out to future transportation options but the fact that in the US it is going to be a lot easier to have some kind of infrastructure to support personal vehicles that run either directly or through electro-conversion on some kind of liquid / gaseous "fuel". The plentiful supply of natural gas as well as the advanced infrastructure that already efficiently delivers piped gas around the country can be built out to include a whole range of options that might include fuel cells -- ClearEdge Power or advance hydrogen reforming facilities -- FCT Hydrogen Production: Natural Gas Reforming
The bottom line is that firms that grow out of the work of researchers at Argonne National Labs are almost certainly going to have a bigger impact on the future of transportation than the dreams of those infatuated with the false promise of HSR -- Techno-Economic Analysis | Argonne National Laboratory
Awesome. From my point of view, biased because I had colleagues who currently work in these fields, it seems that graphene and supercapacitors could be far more economical ways of being a good part of the solution as far as transportation goes. Generally larger power plants are more efficient overall in converting to usable energy and much of the issue with electrical vehicles has to do with the batteries which are bulky, not particularly environmentally friendly and take a terrible amount of time to charge. As for generating the elctricity itself, solar and nuclear forever--an economical solar option probably a lot sooner in coming than an economical nuclear option given actual factoring in the externalities involved (though if we're doing that, I guess that's not really externalities anymore).
Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
I don't consider Ohio a neighbor.
True, but going through Ohio would be pretty crucial to getting to a lot of other places where HSR stops make sense--including three pretty large Ohio cities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichiVegas
They're just doing upgrades to the existing track, there are no plans for HSR anywhere in this part of the country.
The fastest stretches of track would be up to 110 MPH, but that would just be for a few short stretches.
I don't really get why there would be a need for a "West Loop Transportation Center". There are already four (arguably five) rail terminals downtown, which is too many, and there's tons of capacity right now.
Yea, I don't get it either. Also, why are they all terminal stations? I don't understand not having through-running tracks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by reppin_the_847
Honestly the following adjustments (some of which may happen) would already improve the Midwest services dramatically:
* New fleet. The Michigan routes are slated to get these within a year or so from now. This means double decker trains outfitted with Wi-Fi and probably greater capacity.
* Not only improving speeds up to 110 MPH, but reduce the number of delays & bottlenecks already in the system. Some of this is due to freight traffic. Any reduction in these type of delays will improve the service.
* Get as many of the routes double tracked as possible. This will help to alleviate some of the bottlenecks I referred to in the previous point.
* Increased frequency on certain corridor routes (ie. Chicago to Metro Detroit, more late night trains on Chicago to Milwaukee, etc.)
* Better crisis management practices. Amtrak's methods of dealing with equipment failures right now is absolutely abysmal and usually leads to inexcusable delays & irate passengers. They need some outside entity to come in and whip them into shape. Amtrak would be a good case study for the folks at business schools & consulting firms. Sadly, Amtrak gets a pass far too many times when it screw up because of its monopoly and backing from the government. When an airline like JetBlue screws up and strands passengers for hours, there are usually lawsuits, huge media stories, and real changes that result. Not the case with Amtrak.
All of these issues above need to be addressed ASAP and are far more important than simply pipe dreaming for true HSR throughout the Midwest. Unlike the Northeast Corridor, most of the other Midwestern cities have pathetic public transportation options (besides Chicago of course).
Within Chicago, I think a centralized transit center or a seamless connection between Union Station & Ogilvie stations, along with some sort of CIRCLE line around the suburbs, and speedier rail service to O'Hare could revolutionize Chicago's status as the premier Midwestern transit hub.
Yea! I think another one is making through-running and border-crossing into the Windsor-Quebec City rail corridor in Canada as simple as possible. Chicago (or further out?) to Quebec City with Detroit, Toronto and Montreal in between should be an important corridor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
I don't know what planet you are on, but a recent court ruling stopped California's high speed rail nonsense dead in the water, or rather dead in the valley
Seems like it's still going forward. Honestly, they needed to start at at least one of the terminal cities. A high-speed rail line that at least goes into some of the 2 million+ population mid-sized cities from one of the majors, even if funding gets discontinued or becomes a start-stop-start-stop affair, would at least be of some use. Having it connect to one of the majors would at least get some of the people of that major metropolitan area to vote to ensure the construction gets completed rather than becoming a complete waste because then they can actually feasibly use it. Starting and ending in the Central Valley in the first phase? Jesus. And why does it seem like there are little engineering issues that just weren't thought through just popping up for a state that churns out quality engineers like ground meat in a sausage factory?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-09-2014 at 03:45 PM..
I don't know what planet you are on, but a recent court ruling stopped California's high speed rail nonsense dead in the water, or rather dead in the valley
Construction is well underway. Currently buildings are being demolished and piles/bridge work is u/c from Bakersfield to Madera. Once that is done, they will start on the next segment.
Last edited by enigma99a; 07-30-2014 at 01:05 AM..
San Francisco is part of essentially one line, entirely within one state.
For Chicago to be a hub, it would need multiple lines, originating or terminating in multiple other states. While this seems like it could be of use when it comes to seeking Federal dollars, in practice it makes organizing planning and negotiating funding and implementing any lines far more complicated. The most straight-forward line, from Chicago to St. Louis, would serve far fewer people than a San Francisco-Los Angeles line, and would cost billions of dollars that the State doesn't have and that the Feds have been reluctant to actually spend. Would it be good for the long-term benefit of Illinois? Possibly, but neither Chicago nor St. Louis are high-growth cities, nor is any other town served by the proposed routings. And that's just one line, and arguably the easiest of the lines to construct (although Chicago-Cincy is almost as easy). Going to Minneapolis, which makes more sense from a business standpoint, is harder because the terrain is more varied along the most direct and useful routes. Wisconsin doesn't even want to play ball very much, despite the fact it'd be great for Milwaukee and Madison.
So I'm confused as to how you could even ask why - the answers are many and obvious.
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The idea is fine, the probably is basic --
