2019-10-13

Sort of High-Speed Rail from Chicago

I don’t think I would surprise anyone if I pointed out that rail service leaves something to be desired in the United States. Anyone who has been to Europe or East Asia can sing a song on how the trains are cleaner, faster, and more punctual than the trains here in the States. However I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that train service isn’t a total catastrophe here in the Midwest.

First off let’s be clear that the Midwest has the strongest rail network in the US outside of the Northeast Corridor. (Northeast Corridor is everything between Washington DC and Boston.) Chicago Union Station is the busiest station outside of New York. Most cross-country trains either begin or end in Chicago. The only way to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast by bypassing Chicago is one measly train via New Orleans that travels 3 times a week. Still today there is only one daily non-stop train between the Bay Area and Los Angeles that takes a crazy 12 hours to travel 464 miles. That is an average speed of less than 39 mph. Clearly in the graphic below you can see how Chicago is a really important rail hub for Amtrak:

High-speed rail the Midwest has a lot of potential. Here are some advantages:

The Midwest around Chicago is really flat. No need for expensive bridges or tunnels through mountains and valleys.
Public transportation is decent not only in Chicago but in many other cities around the Midwest. For example St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Paul all have trams which leave from the Amtrak stations. This is important because people are more apt to take a train to another city when they know there is good public transportation when they get off the train.
For rail to be competitive with the airlines the travel time should not exceed 4 hours. An airline flight itself is less than 4 hours within the Midwest. However because of going through security, having to drive to the airport outside the city center, and generally having to arrive at the airport a couple of hours before the flight makes flying more time-consuming.

It may come as a surprise to many but is some aspects Amtrak has actually gotten better in the last decades. Since the time Amtrak was founded in 1971 ten destinations have been served consistently from Chicago. They can neatly be separated into medium-distance and long-distance destinations. Long-distance trains travel at least one day overnight and have sleeper cars. Medium-distance trains don’t leave the Midwest and don’t have sleeper cars and can be considered day trains.

Long-distance	Medium-distance
New York, Washington DC, New Orleans, Seattle, Bay Area, Los Angeles	Detroit, Carbondale (Illinois), Milwaukee, St. Louis

Note: For the Bay Area the final destination was Oakland until 1994, since then Emeryville in California.

In the graphic below you can see the development of the train speeds since Amtrak was founded in 1971. For all the years except 2019 I took the first of the year Amtrak timetable available on www.timetables.org. For 2019 I used the current timetables available on the Amtrak web site. I took the fastest train available in the timetable.

As you can see most long-distance trains have gotten slower as the decades have gone by. This is somewhat unfortunate but this is the direction Amtrak seems to be going toward. Amtrak seems to think the future is in medium-distance trains. The Wall Street Journal has a good YouTube video on how Amtrak wants to concentrate on medium-distance trains instead of long-distance. Just this month Amtrak has begun to kill “traditional” dining service to trains that leave east from Chicago. Just to prove a point look at the photo of the pasta in the press release. It looks more like a TV dinner from the 1980s than anything exclusive. Considering people pay more than $1000 round-trip to travel in an Amtrak sleeper I consider it an outrage, but I digress…

However the medium-distance trains that connect Chicago are almost just as fast or much faster. The greatest improvement is with Detroit which I have marked in red in the graph above. Work began in 2002 to increase the speed of trains to Detroit to 110 mph. Today the fastest trip takes just 5 hours and 5 minutes whereas in 1971 the same trip took 50 minutes longer.

Even if Detroit has been a success story the same cannot be said yet for trains to St. Louis. St. Louis is marked by the thick gray line in the graph above. An Amtrak train from Chicago to St. Louis travels through Illinois the entire way until the last mile when it crosses the Mississippi and reaches Downtown St. Louis. Chicago Magazine had an article on how delays and cost-overruns have prevented faster trains to St. Louis. According to the article we should see faster service soon even if it has not been reflected yet in the schedules.

Even if you could consider Amtrak service to Detroit a success it could still be a lot better. Remember above to be competitive we need a train trip to be less than 4 hours but Detroit is a little bit more than 5 hours away. If we had real high-speed we could easily make the trip in less than 4 hours. As a thought experiment let’s say we would have a French TGV or Chinese Maglev from Chicago to Detroit. How fast would that be knowing Chicago-Detroit is 281 miles?

mode of transit	average speed	travel time
fastest trip on Amtrak today	55.4 mph	5:04
car trip according to Google Maps	65.9 mph	4:16
speed based on French TGV trip Paris -> Bordeaux	96.9 mph	2:42
speed based on Maglev in Shanghai	151 mph	1:41
flight from O’Hare to Detroit	176 mph	1:20

Please note for the TGV and Maglev this is average speed, not top speed. For example the top speed of the TGV in regular service is 198 mph but total average speed is less because the TGV having to travel slower when pulling out of Paris/Bordeaux, making stops along the way, and buffering for irregular operations.

My Take:

Clearly for the United States the Midwest has good rail service but it could be a lot better. I would be interested in seeing what happens to Chicago-St. Louis in the near future. Considering how many people there are in Chicago who choose not to drive better train service is a plus. Clearly Chicago - Detroit could be a lot more competitive with faster rail service.