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Amtrak facilities in Chicago.
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Did you know? In 2010, President Obama announced almost $8 billion in funding for improved intercity train service in the U.S. Three-and-a-half years later, the progress is slow. Illinois put faster service into commission on the route between Chicago and St. Louis, but only at a speed increase from 79 to 110 mph (hardly high-speed by international standards), and only over a distance of 15 miles. California’s plans for a connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles, which remains only partially funded, inched closer to implementation, but construction has yet to begin.
Talking Transit is supported by Bombardier.
During the same period, Brazil, India, Russia and Thailand committed huge sums to planning 200 mph service over long routes, while Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey began construction on their own projects and will soon open new lines. Spain’s and France’s new lines are designed for running trains at 200 mph. And travelers in China can now shuttle between Beijing and Shanghai, two cities 819 miles apart, in less than five hours.
For comparison, a trip between New York and Chicago—790 miles apart—currently takes 20 hours at minimum by train. And there is virtually no chance of significant improvement in the next few years.
The United States, whose investments in high-speed rail already seemed slow just a few years ago, feels more and more like it’s been left behind at the station. That’s a disappointing fate for Chicago, which could serve as the center of a national network. What went wrong? And how can we pull ahead?
Problems and delays
Half a century ago, Chicago served as the nation’s rail passenger hub. Trains left at least three times a day to Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, Washington, New York and Boston. Today, none of those routes have more than one train a day. The city remains the nation’s freight rail leader, but its roughly three million annual intercity train travelers are a tiny minority compared to 85 million fliers. A national policy of historic underinvestment in the rail system is surely at least partially to blame.
Truly high-speed rail services, like those increasingly present across the globe, are far from implementation in the U.S. Acela Express trains, which operate between Washington and Boston, have the ability to travel at up to 165 mph—but they average only 80 mph because of track limitations.
At the heart of the issue are several interlocking problems. One, the Obama Administration’s support for rail investment has made the transportation mode politically toxic for politicians on the other side of the aisle. As a result, both the U.S. Senate and House have been unwilling to dedicate significant new funding for intercity rail projects since 2010.
Two, the sheer size of the country and the multiplicity of interests from different regions means that no one rail project has received a concentration of funding from Washington. If all federal dollars were committed to making the Chicago-St. Louis line as fast and effective as possible, for example, politicians from the east and west coasts would likely criticize the government for ignoring their needs.
Three, the federal government’s regulatory regimes make investment in high-speed rail expensive and difficult. The Federal Railroad Administration’s rules about train weight force American trains to be heavier than their European and Asian counterparts, making them costlier and less efficient. At the same time, “Buy America” rules, meant to encourage job creation, make purchasing components and trains from manufacturers overseas impossible. The latter rule effectively killed the Las Vegas-California high-speed rail project last month.
These circumstances at the federal level make the implementation of 200-mph trains in the Chicago region—such as the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association’s proposal for two-hour service to St. Louis—sometimes seem downright utopian.
High-speed rail’s role in Chicago
Even so, the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) has been a strong supporter of increasing investments in intercity rail service. These programs offer the potential to revitalize communities with new and revived stations, and can be combined with improved freight rail services, which, in turn, encourage economic growth.
Moreover, the U.S. government’s High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program offers some hope for a rail revival, despite its slow speed of implementation. More than a billion dollars in investments in Illinois will speed travel times between Chicago and St. Louis from 5 hours and 15 minutes today to 3 hours and 45 minutes by 2017. Thanks to federal grants and a state contribution, this 284-mile corridor will feature several new stations and renovations of existing stops. Since 2010, 237 track miles of rail and more than 600,000 concrete ties have been installed.
At the same time, Michigan is upgrading tracks between Chicago and Detroit, improvements that will reduce the journey time by half an hour. Previous experience suggests that improvements in rail service—even if not achieving 200-mph speeds—will produce higher ridership.
As the hub of a growing Midwest network, Chicago will see increasing use of its primary stop—Union Station. In association with MPC and other groups, the city has been working for more than a decade to plan for improvements to the often-overcrowded and aesthetically underwhelming underground facility. An early vision for the station projected a four-level underground stop, but the more recent Master Plan suggests more economical ways to improve the building, including better use of platforms, a new bus station and more efficient allocation of outside street space.
Faster train service planned for Chicago and potential improvements for Union Station will make a difference for the region’s intercity travelers. But those improvements will require more time and funding. In the meantime, MPC is working to improve the quality and usefulness of Union Station through placemaking. MPC’s Activate Union Station contest received 25 entries from artists around the world. Projects submitted included a blow-up “Blah Blah Blob,” a series of huge floating balloons and two “yards” in the main train hall.
A way forward for high-speed rail
In the face of stringent federal rules and limited funding, MPC has been working with the city, Amtrak and other partners to explore alternative mechanisms that could improve intercity rail service into and out of the region.
MPC is coordinating a study to find out whether and how value capture financing can fund expanded concourses at Union Station and other potential improvements to the transportation hub. These techniques have been successful in cities like Denver and San Francisco, where increases in property value resulting from a capital investment fund upgrades. New York City’s Municipal Art Society recently released a study on creating a similar revenue capture district around Penn Station there.
With new approaches to finding revenues, the avenues for the development of improved intercity passenger rail in the U.S. are expanding. The course may be slow, but the rewards, in terms of faster travel times and improved economic development around stations, could be tremendous.