Saturday, January 17, 2009

Wish List 2

Please, Mr. Obama, while you are printing more money, please fund the following:

1. All-rail passenger service from Chicago to Green Bay.
2. More than one train each day out of Chicago to each and every route end, including the long ones.
3. Buy up enough nearby real estate to increase the capacity of Chicago stations for Amtrak. As fantasies go, this is a big one. It would require one or all of a) increasing the number of available tracks in Union Station; b) spreading out Amtrak among the several stations (only Union Pacific has northbound tracks), which would also require; c) improved light rail (non-CTA) between Randolph, LaSalle, Union Pacific (all Metra) and Union (maybe a light rail circulator on dedicated elevated right of way?).
4. While we're fantasizing feeders, new ones from O'Hare and Midway right to Amtrak! Now there's a transportation concept. As it is right now, you can't do this via rail alone.

More next time

© 2009 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rebuild the 28 miles of track necessary to resume passenger rail service between Scranton, PA and Hoboken, NJ/New York, NY.

Christopher Parker said...

Chicago Union station has northbound tracks. Mostly used by ex-Milwaukee Road commuter trains, but also by the Hiawatha route. There's one (or maybe two) through tracks. Used by the Empire Builder.

The UP (ex C&NW) station is very close to Union Station. If you really wanted to spend some money, you could link them and add more tracks under in tunnels.

You could also increase the Capacity of Chicago Union Station by through-routing trains so passengers from Detroit to St. Louis or Milwaukee to Cincinnati (and so on) didn't have to get off. There is track capacity and there is people capacity in the station.

Another way to increase people capacity is to board Amtrak trains earlier.

Christopher Parker said...

Here's my wish list for the midwest:

Order talgos or some other low-level boarding double deck car and install self-service at-seat ticket validators and now you can run trains with only a conductor and engineer (plus food service).

Since it costs less to run each train, you can run more. So lets double service, which my back of the envelope calculations could be done for the same financial resources as now being spent (Each train costs 1/3 less in labor costs and each new train adds lots of new revenue but not so much new expenses since stations, etc are already there).

So . . . My wish list:

MICHIGAN:
1. Grand Rapids-Detroit, through routed with a via train to Toronto [state supported]
2. 4th Chicago - Detroit train, through routed to Toronto
3. Extend 2 trains now terminating in Pontiac north to Flint and Bay City MI
4. Extend an Empire Service train overnight to Detroit and on to Chicago for a 5th CHI-DET train.
5. Increase CHI-DET to 110 mph (which lowers crew costs while increasing the price Amtrak can charge for tickets, since their product is more desirable)
6. Capital Limited section to Detroit and on to Grand Rapids.

ILLINOIS:
1. new Decatur-Champaign-Chiago train
2. 5th and 6th St. Louis - Chicago train. Increase this route to 110 mph (see above)
3. new train from Quad Cities of Des Moins to Chicago and another from Chicago in the morning out to Omaha and vise versa. Via rebuilt Iowa Interstate.
4. Waterloo Iowa - Chicago train
5. 3 trains Madison WI - Rockford IL - Chicago

OTHER
1. Extend 2 Milwaukee trains to Madison, WI.
2. 3 trains, Chicago - Cincinnati
3. 1 train Chicago - Louisville
4. Extend 1 Carbondale train to Memphis.
5. 4 trains Cincinnati - Columbus - Cleveland
6. 1 train CHI-Cleveland-Pittsburg (and overnight to Philadelphia and New York)