Amtrak proposal to create new rail passenger connections for major cities
 

Amtrak released a new map yesterday to coincide with Biden's infrastructure program.

https://i.insider.com/60659ef0daf0f10018f9966d
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/map-...re-plan-2021-4

New routes between major cities:

• Los Angeles-Riverside-Las Vegas
• Los Angeles-Riverside-Indio-Phoenix
• Dallas-College Station-Houston
• Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati
• Detroit-Toronto-Toledo
• Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta
• Louisville-Indianapolis

The most interesting ones to me are L.A. to Vegas and Detroit to Toronto. Detroit to Toronto would almost certainly mean that rail service is returning to Michigan Central Station.

Just like in 2009?

Yawn, Trains do not make sense in 90% of the USA no matter how much I like them aesthetically.

planes are cheaper and faster outside of a few regions.

^ Agreed. This is a pipe dream

chicago hub makes sense to concentrate on in the middle of the country. stl, detroit, indy - these are the cities that make sense to tie to chicago with faster trains. severe inbound traffic, o’hare, all these things make a faster train worth it. minneapolis if they can get something through wisconsin...

they are still messing with the control systems as far as i know between stl-chi. the upgraded tracks, smoothed turns, and concrete ties are done.

i have no clue where the passenger car fiasco sits - i think they are still pulling the old carriages with the new locomotives which is depressing.

110 mph is still too slow for all the effort.

The LA to Las Vegas route looks to be the Brightline West plan, which they hope to start construction in a couple of months. It's likely Amtrak will just share the ROW with Brightline.

I hope they eventually use Michigan Central, but they'll likely do a turnback from New Center station to get to Toronto.

Biden announced yesterday $80 billion for intercity rail, and Amtrak envisions only needing $25 billion for their 2035 rail proposal. That still leaves $55 billion for a lot of other plans, such as true high speed rail along certain corridors

Amtrak is pretty much useless as it is. We need high speed rail.

the obama plan ended up effectively making amtrak worse as i use it since they have spent a decade piddling around in illinois, using busses around construction. its so bad that i stopped using it even before they revealed that they fucked up the passenger car build. it really has been a disaster.

How would that work?

Oh Biden is going to (attempt) to throw money at it??? Oh well then everything is solved. Maglevs will rain from the sky! and we will all take green 0 emission trains to Mars for work in the vegan-egg farm!

In 2009 I also believed in high speed rail, but since then I’ve grown up

Passenger rail between cities is worthless if the cities are more than, say, 150 miles apart

Just drive your soon-to-be-mandated electric cars or fly. Creating high speed rail between Chicago and LA is just idiotic. Completely redundant and unnecessary when we already have a third dimension (flight) that is heavily managed by the private sector.

it makes a lot of sense for people living in regions that matter.

LA to Vegas is interesting because I thought a private group was already planning to build a high speed train to accommodate that route (Brightline West?). Would Amtrack compete with the private option?

Very Edgy :tup:

Please explain to me how the Northeastern US could function without the raw materials and consumer base of middle America.

I wont because you are either trolling or have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works.

Also outside of Manhattan and the San Francisco Peninsula most of the NYC metro and Bay area are positively suburban and useless for trains

Isn't Amtrak a privately owned corporation, just government subsidized?

The same in Florida.

Just look at some of those routes. Nashville on a spur not connected in any way to the two financial hubs of the USA that use it for business? the lack of connections through the intermountain west is obvious with the only lines existing on the very routes humans have been using for centuries to cross the mountains and deserts when its again cheaper and quicker to fly why add a new line up to Phoenix but maintain a line from Tucson to San Diego? Sandpoint Idaho gets a stop....

What? Why? Its all nonsense. unsurprisingly

They should really include transit-oriented housing as part of their transportation infrastructure strategy. Make it make sense for people to use.

Madrid to Barcelona is 313 miles straight line.

Milan to Rome is 297.

Both corridors used to be air dominated (and amongst the top 10 corridors worldwide) and now are ~80% rail dominated.

While a national Shinkansen doesn't make economic sense, there's plenty of those natural high speed rail corridors in the US, beyond those with current projects:

Seattle to Portland
Boulder to Pueblo (even Albuquerque?)
Chicago to Minneapolis, St. Louis, Detroit
Chicago to and in between the Ohio Cs
St. Louis to Kansas City
Atlanta-Greenville-Charlotte-Raleigh
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh
The Empire Service as HSR
Actual HSR on the Northeast Corridor
Memphis-Nashville-Knoxville

Let's make regional flights (<1 hr) a thing of the past, aside from islands.

It's setup as a private corporation but fully owned by the federal government.

Does this mean Amtrak employees are federal employees?