Midwest Regional Rail Initiative

[Centropolis]

the fastest train i’m seeing is still 5:25 STL to CHI in august.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the fastest train i’m seeing is still 5:25 STL to CHI in august.

While the driving time between St. Louis and Chicago is reported as 4 hours and 27 minutes by Google over the 296 miles or 476 kilometers.

https://www.google.com/search?q=driv...hrome&ie=UTF-8

Car averages 65+ mph, the train averages 53+ mph.
If you really want to see ridership grow on the trains in relation to cars, the train's average speed needs to be faster than by a car.
That applies to any and every route you wish to discuss.

[Busy Bee]

Again, I don't care what the Google machine is telling you, it takes longer to drive between downtown Chicago and downtown StL than 4 hours and 27 minutes.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Again, I don't care what the Google machine is telling you, it takes longer to drive between downtown Chicago and downtown StL than 4 hours and 27 minutes.

yeah depends on the time of day. historically on a friday afternoon/evening it was still faster to take the train to chicago. its taken upwards of 7 hours to get to logan square from stl in the past via car on a friday.

[jmecklenborg]

Speaking of St. Louis and Chicago, a few months ago I observed something in the railroad vs. interstate highway networks of note.

There is still a railroad that runs directly between St. Louis and Cincinnati and there was a railroad - now partly a paved rails-to-trails bike trail - built in a straight line between Chicago and Cincinnati.

The interstate highways between these three cities, by contrast, are distracted by Indianapolis, which was a minor city in the 1800s. The driving distance from Cincinnati to both St. Louis and Chicago is 30-40 miles further than the railroad distance.

Amtrak's Cardinal used to run on this straight-line "Cardinal" C&O line until it was partly disassembled and turned into a bicycle trail in the late 1980s. It's unlikely that it will be rebuilt even if the U.S. were to unexpectedly throw big money at passenger rail.

There is however, more potential in the operational line between Cincinnati and St. Louis. The driving distance is 350 miles via I-74 and I-70 but the railroad distance is about 315 miles. The small towns that line travels through do not have direct interstate/state highway connections to either city since they were bypassed by the interstates, so a train would be an attractive choice for those populations.

[Busy Bee]

So much potential indeed. The midwest is loaded with routes that could rejuvenate struggling regional cities and enable the midwest to function as a more unified economy. If you've not read Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism, do so.

[ardecila]

Why would you bypass 2M people in greater Indianapolis? I agree with the need for service that doesn't go through Chicago, but there's no reason to avoid big cities if they're on the way.

Southern Indiana is also quite hilly, so that either means slow speeds/twisty track (if using the existing railroad) or higher construction costs (if building new HSR). The line from STL-Indy is much straighter across farmland, except short sections in the Wabash and Ohio Valley areas.

The railroad in question (fmr Ohio & Mississippi) was built before the Civil War, so it's not exactly built to the latest engineering standards either.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Why would you bypass 2M people in greater Indianapolis? I agree with the need for service that doesn't go through Chicago, but there's no reason to avoid big cities if they're on the way.

It's a shorter distance, there is a lot less freight rail traffic, and it gives access to/from a lot of towns that don't have direct highway access to St. Louis or Cincinnati. It also runs over the corridor where Indiana commuter rail has been planned for 20 years (a station was built in the early 2000s in DT Cincinnati but has never been used), so upgrading the line for two purposes makes more sense than just the commuter line.

I don't expect people to be familiar with Cincinnati's freight rail situation but nearly all of the traffic is north/south, which makes getting out of Cincinnati to go anywhere - Indy/Chicago, Dayton/Toledo Detroit, Columbus/Cleveland, a total mess. Getting anything other than primitive service levels is going to require big-time investment - hundreds of millions if not more than a billion dollars - to build a fourth mainline approach, flying crossovers, and a mile-long tunnel under the rail yard's shipping container cranes to the two remaining Union Terminal platform sites.

Getting to St. Louis via the shorter line wouldn't require any of that since there isn't much traffic on the line and if it uses the Transit Center rather than CUT, it will avoid the big rail yards entirely. The line is Class 4 so there is a max speed of 80mph for Amtrak. If it averages 70mph with stops then it gets to St. Louis in 5 hours.

[Busy Bee]

In the 2 hours we've been discussing this, China built 500 miles of 220mph high speed rail.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Getting to St. Louis via the shorter line wouldn't require any of that since there isn't much traffic on the line and if it uses the Transit Center rather than CUT, it will avoid the big rail yards entirely. The line is Class 4 so there is a max speed of 80mph for Amtrak. If it averages 70mph with stops then it gets to St. Louis in 5 hours.

Cincinnati to St. Louis is around 350 miles, assuming a similar distance by rail, here's how long it would take at various average speeds.
70 mph = 5 hours
60 mph = 5.8 hours
50 mph = 7 hours
40 mph = 8.75 hours
Comparing the Lincoln Service average speeds Chicago to St. Louis, which has basically all brand new tracks and 80 mph max speeds to date, taking around 5.5 hours to travel 284 miles, is averaging only 51 mph.
Don't you think averaging 70 mph speeds over 350 miles is unrealistic on older tracks not recently upgraded. That 5 hour train trip you are proposing will most likely take 7 hours, or longer.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by electricron

Don't you think averaging 70 mph speeds over 350 miles is unrealistic on older tracks not recently upgraded. That 5 hour train trip you are proposing will most likely take 7 hours, or longer.

Coal traffic has dropped in Kentucky and West Virginia since 2010. Around 2016 CSX to threaten to downgrade the C&O mainline along the south side of Ohio River upon which The Cardinal travels. The hope, from CSX's perspective, is to get Amtrak to subsidize the annual work necessary to maintain a Class 4 track.

I see this sort of thing as an opportunity. I doubt we'll see anything like this in the infrastructure bill, but there has to be a way for Amtrak to incentivize freight railroads to not only maintain Class 4 but rather upgrade to Class 6.

If you look at the St. Louis - Cincinnati route, about 200 miles of it is straight enough to easily support 110mph operation, with the exception of brief slowdowns as it travels through numerous towns. There is also opportunity for Louisville - St. Louis trains to share much of that upgraded section.

I have ridden The Cardinal once and it serves as a pretty valuable link for people who live in the small towns and cities along its route. There is of course plenty of capacity on the line for more passenger trains. The Cardinal needs to be upgraded to two trains per day, per direction. The every-other-day schedule makes it very difficult to use, especially since it travels through Indianapolis and Cincinnati in the middle of the night.

Cincinnati - St. Louis with 5-6 trains per day, per direction, would be transformative.

[Busy Bee]

The US needs to get in the business of nationalizing rail routes that are unprofitable/undesirable/underutilized for freight service but hold great promise for passenger connections. The remainder of freight business could be leased access to one or more freight railroad concessions. I just don't see how there is a way forward to modern higher speed or high speed passenger service when the rail infrastructure is being held captive by private freight railroads who's priorities are nearly completely incompatible with modern passenger service, i.e. degraded track classification limiting speeds, an industry wide resistance to scheduled trains, outrageous demands in order to accommodate passenger trains that are more like extortion, resistance to electrification, and the list goes on an on.

If this makes me a socialist, well I guess I'm a socialist.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

I just don't see how there is a way forward to modern higher speed or high speed passenger service when the rail infrastructure is being held captive by private freight railroads who's priorities are nearly completely incompatible with modern passenger service, i.e. degraded track classification limiting speeds, an industry wide resistance to scheduled trains, outrageous demands in order to accommodate passenger trains that are more like extortion, resistance to electrification, and the list goes on an on.

Yeah, it doesn't work for passenger traffic. The freight railroads are in the habit of letting mile-long freight trains sit for an hour or more before entering yards so that a later train can enter the yard first. The computer calculates that the overall classification time will be reduced if the later train enters the yard first, which is why it happens.

But this practice mires Amtrak's low-priority trains like The Cardinal, which must tolerate this nonsense in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. It's pretty much a straight shot to Washington, DC after that, although my one trip on that train suffered the ignominy of seeking refuge on a freight spur (not a passing siding!) in Virginia. Yes - on an Amtrak train just 100~ miles from the capital of the wealthiest nation on Earth - we pulled into a spur, waited 30 minutes for a freight train to pass, and then backed back onto the mainline. A guy on the crew had to get out and wave a flag at the rear of the train.

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

In the 2 hours we've been discussing this, China built 500 miles of 220mph high speed rail.

And they displaced 10,000 peasants, didn't perform one environmental impact study, didn't relocate one turtle, and didn't care one bit.

[Busy Bee]

Buddy, it's for dramatic effect. I'm aware of the political and ideological differences between the United States and the Peoples Republic of China. Plus I know there's no way they could literally build 500 miles in 2 hours, it's more like 400.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

The US needs to get in the business of nationalizing rail routes that are unprofitable/undesirable/underutilized for freight service but hold great promise for passenger connections. The remainder of freight business could be leased access to one or more freight railroad concessions. I just don't see how there is a way forward to modern higher speed or high speed passenger service when the rail infrastructure is being held captive by private freight railroads who's priorities are nearly completely incompatible with modern passenger service, i.e. degraded track classification limiting speeds, an industry wide resistance to scheduled trains, outrageous demands in order to accommodate passenger trains that are more like extortion, resistance to electrification, and the list goes on an on.

If this makes me a socialist, well I guess I'm a socialist.

It would be much cheaper if the national government build all brand new railroad corridors for faster trains from scratch so passenger trains will never ever have to meet freight trains.
Take metros and light rail trains across America, all of them run on their own tracks in their own corridors without freight train conflicts. If cities, metros, counties, and states can see that, why not Amtrak as well?

I have been watching a few youtube videos recently posted by TrainThor in and around Oslo. I like his videos because he lists the speed limitiations
on the video for the track he is on. Norway has been spending lots of money on railroads recently, and you can see what infrastructure is needed for the trains to go fast, and what exists where the trains go slow. Just about all the videos of intercity trains have fast and slow sections. If you study them just casually, you should be able to see the conditions of the slow sections in Norway matches pretty well with most of America's tracks.

Whether or not Uncle Sam buys up all the abandoned or lightly used railroad corridors or not, much more infrastructure improvements are needed to go fast. Like road overpasses and underpasses, broader curves, better built tracks to tighter or better tolerances, electrification, etc.
To do so on a national scale, not only would the Federal government have to nationalize all the railroads, they would have to nationalize all the highways, roads, streets, telephone, electric, and water utilities. Just nationalizing the railroads would not be enough.

And for those who take the time to watch the videos I suggest, here are some conversions you should be aware of.
200 km/hr = 124 mph
180 km/hr = 111 mph
130 km/hr = 80 mph
100 km/hr = 62 mph
40 km/hr = 25 mph
When in rural areas with grade crossings, rarely is the speed limit higher than 130 km/hr. Which matches the USA's 79 mph very closely.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by electricron

Whether or not Uncle Sam buys up all the abandoned or lightly used railroad corridors or not, much more infrastructure improvements are needed to go fast. Like road overpasses and underpasses, broader curves, better built tracks to tighter or better tolerances, electrification, etc.

Reducing the point-to-point time for multiple routes is as much a matter of improving slow city approaches as it is increasing speed in the open country. Multiple routes often enjoy the improvements enabled by modifying approaches. This work can improve commuter rail as well, where applicable.

In most of the Eastern United States, there isn't a need for 220mph HSR because the distances between the cities are so short. The real point-to-point speed gains are achieved by maintaining a Class 4, if not Class 6 speed across the terminal city metro areas.

As for private ownership, you omitted from your list the tyranny of airline deregulation. The Midwest used to have hubs in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Now the only hubs are in Chicago and Detroit, and that's unlikely to change.

Since Delta moved its secondary hub from Cincinnati to Detroit after 2005, there is now no direct flight between Cincinnati and St. Louis, Cleveland, or Nashville. No rail service connects them either. You're either driving your own car, renting one, or taking Greyhound.

Amtrak won't be competing with airlines in those corridors because the airlines are never coming back.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Reducing the point-to-point time for multiple routes is as much a matter of improving slow city approaches as it is increasing speed in the open country. Multiple routes often enjoy the improvements enabled by modifying approaches. This work can improve commuter rail as well, where applicable.

In most of the Eastern United States, there isn't a need for 220mph HSR because the distances between the cities are so short. The real point-to-point speed gains are achieved by maintaining a Class 4, if not Class 6 speed across the terminal city metro areas.

As for private ownership, you omitted from your list the tyranny of airline deregulation. The Midwest used to have hubs in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Now the only hubs are in Chicago and Detroit, and that's unlikely to change.

Since Delta moved its secondary hub from Cincinnati to Detroit after 2005, there is now no direct flight between Cincinnati and St. Louis, Cleveland, or Nashville. No rail service connects them either. You're either driving your own car, renting one, or taking Greyhound.

Amtrak won't be competing with airlines in those corridors because the airlines are never coming back.

I did not include airline competition earlier because I do not think 125 mph or slower trains can compete with 500 mph jets. 80 mph trains do not compete with automobiles either because the average speeds of the trains are too slow. Amtrak averages around 70 mph on the world famous slow NEC and looses market share to automobiles, with maximum speeds at 125 mph on Amfleets, and 135 mph on Acelas between DC and NYC.

In the Midwest area, with major cities 150 to 350 miles apart, not the 60 miles apart on the NEC, you need rail corridors built to a modern standards of the NEC to compete with automobiles, and the fastest speeds of the new Acelas to compete with airlines.

Again, I repeat, watch a few of TrainThor's videos observing what the tracks conditions are relative to maximum speed limits. About the fastest speeds you see trains running in Norway on single track lines is 130 km/hr (80 mph). Where they go faster, double track corridors, grade separations, and cab signaling are obviously present and in use.

New low cost airlines using even smaller planes than the Airbus 320 and Boeing 737 are entering service every decade, airlines that will replace those leaving relatively small markets. Just give the intercity air market time to adjust. Two new airlines entering services soon will be Avelo and Breeze. While Avelo plans to fly 737-800, Breeze plans to fly Embraer ERJ-190. The necessary infrastructure, the runways and airport terminals, already exist in many smaller cities seeing a loss of airline services. No new expensive higher or high speed rail corridors are needed to build and maintain.

The driving time between Columbus and Indianapolis over 176 miles is 2 hours and 43 minutes. There is no passenger train in service at all. If a 80 mph maximum speed Class 4 trains was built between these two cities averaging 50 mph, the train would take 3 hours and 30 minutes to travel the 176 miles.
The automobile is 45 minutes faster. Northeast Regional trains on the NEC with max speeds of 125 mph average around 70 mph, it would take that higher speed train on a fully grade separated corridor 2 hours and 30 minutes to travel that 176 miles. Barely faster than the automobile.

But the Midwest Initiative is not even planning 125 mph max speed trains, they are planning 80, 90, and 110 mph max speed trains. So the automobile will still be faster.

Likewise for Columbus to Cincinnati, Columbus to Cleveland, Columbus to Pittsburgh, Columbus to Louisville, Columbus to Detroit. Getting the full picture yet? More than one new passenger rail corridor is needed in the Midwest for trains to replace automobiles, even between fairly large metros.

Meanwhile, the freeways and airports already exist, which both provide faster intercity services.

[seabee1526]

https://theconversation.com/why-trac...ht-rail-103690

Good for Detroit?

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by electricron

In the Midwest area, with major cities 150 to 350 miles apart, not the 60 miles apart on the NEC, you need rail corridors built to a modern standards of the NEC to compete with automobiles, and the fastest speeds of the new Acelas to compete with airlines.

Several city pairs in the Midwest are much shorter than 150 miles. Leaving Chicago out of the list to clarify that there are a lot of other people and places in the Midwest aside from Chicago:

Indianapolis > Louisville = 115 miles
Indianapolis > Cincinnati = 110 miles
Indianapolis > Dayton = 115 miles
Cincinnati > Louisville = 100 miles
Cincinnati > Columbus = 110 miles
Cincinnati > Dayton = 55 miles
Dayton > Columbus = 75 miles
Cleveland > Akron = 40 miles
Cincinnati > Lexington = 85 miles
Louisville > Lexington = 80 miles
Toledo > Cleveland = 115 miles



Trains never compete directly with aircraft because there is almost no such thing as a train station next to an airport. Any train station in the Midwest would be in the downtown or right next to it, not out in the suburbs, or in the case of Cincinnati, across a river and in another state. Trains are more comfortable, you can bring way more luggage, and there is no tedious boarding process. You can usually buy a ticket the day of your trip without a significant price spike.

Moreover, the upgrading of intercity railroads in the Midwest would allow alternating express and local trains and so long-ignored small towns situated far from airports would suddenly have convenient service to regional cities.