Chicago Hub Network High Speed Rail Corridor

Looking at the planned high speed rail corridor surrounding Chicago, Illinois in the Great Lakes region of the United States. What does this 9 state plan look like? What is a better way to do high speed rail here? What will it cost? How fast will it be? This is the second in a series looking at all of the 10 Federal Railroad Administration high speed rail corridors. There are currently about 35 miles of high speed rail in the United States all in the Northeast Corridor on the Acela line. However, in the coming decades high speed rail could expand dramatically in the United States. Chicago Hub Network would be one of the most dramatic expansions of the U.S. high speed rail network if built.
0:00 Introduction
0:13 The Chicago Hub Network Region
2:32 Challenges
5:19 The Network As Independent Parts
10:08 Applying High Speed Rail Principles
11:30 Cost Estimation
12:12 My Theoretical Chicago Hub Network
12:50 A Travel Time Sampling
13:57 Key Differences With The FRA Corridor
15:30 Expanding The Chicago Hub Network
18:05 Fully Connected Chicago Hub Network
18:21 Next Topic and Outro
Video clips continue to come from Pexels.com, which is a great site for free images and video. I also used Pixabay.com on this one and it is also really good.
Topics:
Minneapolis
St. Paul
Madison
Milwaukee
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Chicago
Illinois
Iowa
St. Louis
Kansas City
Missouri
Indianapolis
Indiana
Michigan
South Bend
Detroit
Ohio
Cleveland
Columbus
Cincinnati
Toronto
Canada
Grand Rapids
Louisville
Tennesee
Chicago Union Station
Texas Central
Southeast Corridor
SEHSR
NEC
Northeast Corridor

[@toniderdon]

The US should start building now. It will get more expensive with every wasted year. 100 billion a year for these projects would help a lot and the government easily has that amount of money.

[@LucidStew]

I agree. Due to the bureaucratic process I don't think they could break ground on this in less than 10 years, but sooner the better. If its going to happen, it needs to be a national endeavor, like the Interstate Highway System, with strong federal leadership that incentivizes the states to join in. Otherwise, I think it will be upgrade to 110mph while Brightline cherry picks an HSR route here and there.

[@toniderdon]

@@LucidStew Correct. In Germany that's mostly how we do it. The states and every city all want a piece of the cake, so they are happy to join as long as the federal government provides the funding. Cities and towns with good HSR connections have also seen a lot of growth while poorly connected cities are not doing too good.

[@LucidStew]

@@toniderdon People in the U.S. are stuck thinking about the familiar and ignore the data for the new. Too many look at the expense and don't think of it as an investment. It has its place. There's no reason not to have it where it makes sense outside of lack of political will.

[@mic1240]

Republicans do not support anything related to transit, won’t happen in states like Indiana or Iowa. The suburbs have for many decades been where most people in US live, not cities. Metro Chicago dwarfs all the other cities in area, makes sense to have more there. More people live in metro Chicago than entire populations of states like WI, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, etc.

[@yolo_burrito]

If you factored in all the airline bailouts over the last 15 years this would be cheaper.

[@andykillsu]

Funny that you put this out, and just 2 days later, Amtrak announced it can finally travel at 110 mph between Chicago and St. Louis. So at least that section of the Chicago Hub is finishing!

[@LucidStew]

Do you know if they've revised the schedule? I've been curious how much time they're going to be able to knock off.

[@andykillsu]

@@LucidStew The change is effective after June 26, seems to be 15 mins quicker.

[@LucidStew]

@@andykillsu cool, thanks. I'll check it out. Might slip that into my next Stew's News

[@brandonbollwark5970]

The Midwest just seems like the best place for HSR for me. It's flat, has very little challenging geography, cities are fairly close together and were mostly founded along rail right-of-ways that exsisted at the time, routes are/can be mostly straight lines, cities still have dense downtown cores, and the whole region is in need of economic investment that HSR would provide.

[@LucidStew]

I lived in the St. Louis area for a year and this dawned on me while there. The area has most of the ingredients and is probably the cheapest place to greatly expand the U.S. HSR network. Beyond that, in terms of social justice this would be an enormous benefit to cities with large black populations. Not just in terms of service, but you're talking about pumping $200 billion into these economies over a couple of decades with massive demand to train local talent into union jobs with good pay and benefits. The knock-on effect would make the investment in the region all that more effective. Also, this area is heavy with swing states! This is a politically expedient carrot for politicians on the national level. I'm surprised no one has picked up on this.

[@brandonbollwark5970]

@@LucidStew I did my transportation planning final project on this very topic, the existing right-of-ways being as flat and straight as they are would mean that in theory, it would be easier to have trains like Acelas actually reach closer to their tops speeds unlike the NEC. The economic benefits would jumpstart the process of bringing these cities and the whole region back. I can't believe we have try and convince people that investing in our own country would improve it.

[@LucidStew]

@@brandonbollwark5970 I think especially connected to a built out Southeast Corridor, NEC via Keystone, and a Via HSR system, this idea would be supercharged. 67 million people. This is a major region of the United States and deserves major investments.

[@mikelehman4229]

It's level not flat

[@boarini2003]

It also has fewer conservatives

[@Gaiaphage]

as a brit i just wanted to mention how beautiful those shots of downtown chicago are, you dont often think of america as a country with beautiful cities but there are some real gems

[@LucidStew]

I haven't been there, personally. I lived 270 miles away for a year, but when I had a chance to take a big trip, I went to Kentucky instead. :) San Diego is probably the nicest major U.S. city I've experienced, but I honestly haven't been to many. Of the major cities I've visited globally, I'd say Sydney, Australia was the nicest. Melbourne a close second.

[@gwtietz]

Chicago is definitely America's most beautiful urban center.

[@jonmeadows9756]

We need to rethink the permitting process for rail projects, permitting is one of the main reason US HSR cost is so high because it significantly increases how much time it takes to build

[@LucidStew]

Need more federal leadership overall on this subject I think. Even if not getting the funding to build, creating the organization to ease building and cross state lines makes sense. Regulating interstate trade is in the Constitution! This should be one of the things they're doing consistently right.

[@georgewhite8118]

I think the important thing (other than Amtrak's existing ownership) of the Chicago-Detroit route through Michigan is it also doubles up on parts of the track for the Chicago-Grand Rapids and Chicago-Lansing/Port Huron routes, which would assist in speeding up those services. Also the population in the Michigan rail corridor to Detroit is higher than the corridor of Chicago-Toledo. I do believe that there are also benefits of connecting through Toledo though, notably the quicker service to Cleveland, connectivity/possibility of routes from Detroit to Cleveland and potential lower cost due to the lower population requiring less infrastructure upgrades for grade separation

[@georgewhite8118]

Also, the route from Chicago-Detroit passes directly by DTW, the third busiest airport by passengers in the Midwest, 18th busiest in the US, and a major Delta hub for international flights

[@georgewhite8118]

Also sorry, Michigan is my wheelhouse as I am from here, but although sheer number of Michiganders is low, such a high % of the population lives in just Grand Rapids and Detroit (combined by most estimates those two metros are 60% of the states population, add in the minor metros along the corridors between them like Kalamazoo, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Jackson and more and you are looking at least 70-80% of the state) Serving both cities, particularly with service between the two at least on a regional rail speed of 110mph would garner great policitical support from the state government as even many republicans in the state house have signaled support for statewide highspeed rail between Ann Arbor and Traverse city in an effort to put the tourism industry Up North on steroids. I think there could be a value of having regional rail speeds between Grand Rapids and Traverse City for the same purpose, but to allow for those in the Chicago metro area to take the train to their lake house

[@georgewhite8118]

overall though, excellent video!

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. I don't dislike that Wolverine Service route and it has its advantages for sure. The I-90 route is a fantasy suggestion purely based on speed, cost and population served combined. I don't think it could happen independent of other things, like Michigan getting more, as suggested near the end. My main issue there is the hub and spoke nature of the corridor and the parallel lines they currently have in that area. They're not going to build both of those to 200mph standard, its just too expensive for what you get. If we pick one or the other, I picked neither with the idea they could be 110mph regional rail. But neither the Kalamazoo nor the Fort Wayne route are BAD choices. I also did come up with a $3 billion option to serve DTW as a "nice to have" that I left out of the video. Actually I left ALL of the airport service out of the video. whoops! 😂

[@tonywalters7298]

@@LucidStew The Chicago Main Line between Toledo and South Bend is one of the longest stretches of straight track in the country

[@sniper.93c14]

If you wanted to calculate some figure for ridership, (assuming similar total cost for a traveller) 5 hour travel time between city pairs means 20% of airline passengers become rail passengers, 4 hours is 40%, 3 hours is 65% and 2 hours is around 80%, so the longer travel times to KC from other parts of the system while not ideal at 4 hours, you would still attract substantial numbers of airline passengers - around 200k from Chicago alone each year - or 400 trainloads (assuming 500seat capacity or so)

[@LucidStew]

Cool. That would be interesting to add once I refine my production process. Do you have reference for that methodology? What about road traffic?

[@FrederickJenny]

This is a great video and I really appreciate the information you provided. The only thing that rubbed me the wrong way was saying that Cincinnati is the largest metro in Ohio, its actually Columbus. Speaking of Columbus i feel as though connecting Chicago to Columbus directly would be most valuable. I would do that via Ft. Wayne or Indianapolis. Just food for thought.

[@LucidStew]

I'm aware of the technicality where part of Cincinnati's metro is in Kentucky and willfully ignored it. :) I originally had things going from Indianapolis to Columbus via Dayton, and then south from Dayton to Cincinnati. I later concluded Indianapolis to Cincinnati was better due to difficulties in the Dayton area, slow speed between Dayton and Cincinnati due to development along I-75, and quite fast direct connection between Cincinnati and Columbus along I-71. There are many different ways to handle that triangle down there and most are pretty good.

[@tonywalters7298]

@@LucidStew The median on I-75 in many segments in Butler and Warren county is quite wide

[@LucidStew]

@@tonywalters7298 I did notice that. I theoretically utilized it best I thought I could. However, those wide parts are in a couple of 12-15 mile stretches, so I figured somewhere in the range of a 125mph average through there. You still have a lot of sub 110 to deal with, though. When I say "slow speed" it is relative. I have Dayton-Cincinnati averaging 106mph, and Columbus-Cincinnati 145mph.

[@FrederickJenny]

@@LucidStew To be honest, I wouldnt complain either way as long as they just built it! @Amtrak needs to push states to move faster.

[@dejanb109]

Great and interesting video by the way. Thank you very much.

[@Altranite]

Just watched about five of these videos, really interesting to watch and fill in gaps in my own funny ideas haha. Thanks!

[@LucidStew]

Yeah, it gets interesting as you dive deeper and deeper into the details. You can see why there is difficulty when they get around to actually trying to build something. Every little obstacle and decision in the EIS is something for someone to potentially object to.

[@trademark4537]

I'm doubtful that the Midwest will ever get a lot of true high speed rail but I could see most of this network being upgraded to 110-150 with some shorter sections over 200. As for the Mpls to Chicago route, the gag order for high speed rail between St Paul and Rochester was lifted this year, and with Mayo Clinic being a huge ridership draw I would expect any high speed rail to go through there. Also the Hiawatha corridor between Mke and Chi is one of the few Amtrak routes that breaks even consistently and even has secured a profit in recent years. Considering there is only 26 grade crossings between Milwaukee and Lake Forest, IL , I don't think that they would need to limit themselves to 120. A local service can handle commuting services. If they closed a third of the grade crossings, building 16 or so grade separations is very reasonable and could make that trip lightning fast.

[@LucidStew]

There are a lot of areas where they can get away from existing freight ROWs and utilize the interstate ROWs between cities pairs. It's always about funding, but in terms of doable concepts, I think this region has the most. With my speed estimates, grade separation is assumed. The main limiting factor is the time on shared track, which is mostly whenever the train is in an urban or suburban area. The relatively slow estimated average is mainly due to the relative lack of space between metros to cruise at top speed. This condition exists between Milwaukee and both Madison and Chicago. The relatively short distance between overall also plays into that. For both of those I have about a 30 mile segment where a high speed train would be able to cruise at roughly 185-200. The rest would be < 110mph. The estimates are rough and I will concede they could be off by a moderate percentage.

[@goldenstarmusic1689]

Thanks for mentioning the lift on Rochester ZIP Rail! That's a true high speed rail plan, 185+mph fully electrified HSR that could be built along the Highway 52 alignment and will connect to the full Twin Cities to Milwaukee and Chicago route. I think getting 90-125mph on the Chicago to Twin Cities route is entirely possible, the plans are currently Amtrak will service two alignments, between the existing Empire Builder right of way and a new one going through Eau Claire and Madison. Don't forget the TCMC/Great River train starting soon from amtrak!

[@timnewman1172]

Regional rail would be a huge boon to many of these areas and 100-110mph speeds are nothing to sneeze at...

[@TriegaDN]

4:16 gotta love my home state of Michigan It's great the state is at least this interested in intercity rail projects, now if the same could be said for regional transit in metro detroit

[@torikicklighter1191]

Yes on the Midwest HSR…especially a southern route from Detroit-Toledo-Dayton/Cincy-Lexington-Knoxville-Atlanta!!!

[@LucidStew]

I don't think I mentioned it in the video, but that Indianapolis-Columbus-Louisville triangle is home to about 9 million people. I find that being on a Y point of this broader idea to be very intriguing longer-term for that region.

[@stickynorth]

It's long overdue. Turning Chicago into the hub of a megacity is also what it what is already is so this would just cement the cities status as the heart of the Heartland... Even if it was just 125 mph/200 kmh service, it would be amazing!

[@LucidStew]

Illinois and Michigan are working on it slowly but steadily. It's more getting up to the 110mph(more like Brightline Florida style) FRA "hsr" standard, but better than nothing I suppose. I'll be covering some news on that on Friday.

[@pauld6967]

West Michigan Connector is a good proposal. Grand Rapids used to be a major rail stop in the 19th and 20th Centuries. No reason that it shouldn't be once again.

[@StLouis-yu9iz]

Great video, I totally agree! Thanks for sharing

[@LucidStew]

What do you think about going to Indianapolis via I-70 to connect to the system instead of the current Lincoln Service route that roughly follows I-55?

[@StLouis-yu9iz]

@@LucidStew I think that's an absolutely wonderful idea! I have to say that as much as I like to poke fun at K.C., I do think building a lHSR ine from StL to there (also following I-70) is definitely worth it and should happen as soon as possible if we want to address climate change. especially since there is a decent sized city right in the middle (Columbia) that would provide some decent ridership as well. I have also been thinking about how to connect Memphis and StL better and while a straight shot seems feasible, I think a transfer station in Effingham, IL. (On your new HSR route) to get on the current Amtrak route to New Orleans is a good placeholder until that new alignment could be planned someday.

[@LucidStew]

@@StLouis-yu9iz I don't have anything against Kansas City as a municipality, it's just in terms of ROI, hooking KC up ranks WAY down the list. I think that would probably have to be a state initiative like CAHSR. It's a tough sell in Missouri as conservative as it is there. I lived in Creve Coeur for a year and always wanted to do a day trip to Kansas City, but it never made sense with the distance. With HSR something like that would be possible. And I do also think connecting Columbia is worthwhile as well. Even the STL suburbs to downtown. Traffic isn't bad in STL, but imagine 25 mins to a Blues or Cardinals game from Wentzville.

[@StLouis-yu9iz]

@@LucidStew Oh wow! That is very cool you lived in the StL Metro for awhile! It is true that our state government is very conservative now, but the tide is turning and I think we can easily go back to being a swing state like we were until the late 90's. Speaking of our backwards state government right now though; did you hear they are planning on expanding I-70 in the exurbs of StL, K.C. & through Columbia. Terrible waste of money of course, but the one silver lining I see is that it may make a HSR route on this corridor easier someday. Regarding trains from Wentzville, I really hope metrolink can run some commuter trains into St. Charles Country (then Franklin, Lincoln, & Warren counties [where I grew up] someday too of course!) However, I'm not sure what the cross-MO HSR line has to do with that unless you propose making it quad track to Wentzville and running the slower commuter trains on separate rails, so it doesn't interfere with the HSR trains. I feel just getting some sort of rail station near historic downtown St. Charles would be a great start. :]

[@LucidStew]

@@StLouis-yu9iz Coming from southern California, STL area was like a mini version of it from a transportation perspective. I'm so used to everything being car-centric it didn't phase me at all. They'll keep expanding those roads until they run up against the same problem. I live in an area that is 70 miles from Los Angeles. A few years ago they expanded the freeway here and there is stop and go traffic HERE. Roads have their role, but they can't be the only solution. From everywhere to everywhere design overburdens the system at large scales. As far as Wentzville goes, my assumption is that any HSR line would necessarily need to break free from existing freight rights of way and that utilizing interstate right of way is the most efficient alternative. Otherwise you're stuck with the FRA 110mph line, which will be fully 110 some time in the 22nd century. There may be exceptions, but I don't think Missouri is one.

[@thetrainguy1]

High Speed Rail is a investment. People don't understand how life changing an investment like this would be. All you have to do is hop on a train and you're there in hours. Investment into downtowns again, you can live 150miles away from where you work and still get to work in the same time it would take you to drive 50 miles.

[@LucidStew]

Yes, and it has a role to play in a complete transportation picture so it is a GOOD investment with careful consideration.

[@thetrainguy1]

@@LucidStew Yes. Building HSR and upgrade at the same time. Not separately. They'll work best together to create a reliable network.

[@ndginla8125]

We need federal leadership for HSR. A program like the Interstate Highway System

[@LucidStew]

Absolutely. Something reliable even at a rate of $5-10 billion a year would be better than the current paradigm of maybe getting meagre amounts when the right party has adequate clout. Also need better top-down planning and coordination between the states.

[@michaeljones7927]

There is a real difference between the Interstate Highway System and high speed rail. The Interstate Highway System connects all 48 states. HSR will never be able to economically serve very many city pairs and most of them will be in a single very populous state, such as Texas or California or Florida, or two or three populus contiguous states within a "culturally related" geographical region, ...e.g., Illinois-indiana-Michigan, Georgia -North Carolina, Washington-Oregon, etc. Many states will forever be excluded because of distances and population density. The inability of many states to participate in high speed rail development means that hope for large scale federal funding for viable HSR projects is wholly unrealistic. That means California and Texas ought to forget making an effort to get federal financing for HSR.

[@LucidStew]

@@michaeljones7927 You might be able to get around that by having it be part of a broader "alternative transit" fund(sidewalks, trails, bike paths, grade separation, public transit, etc), of which HSR would be a part. That would be something reps from non-HSR states could still get a piece of.

[@PLDC1]

The best line is Milwaukee-Chicago-Indianapolis-Louisville. Close to straight line in flat land.

[@toegunn4905]

That doesn't account for ridership though. The Chicago Toronto line would have the most ridership between Detroit and London Ontario, but a solid amount going through each major city along the way if it goes north through GR, Lansing, Ann Arbor then Detroit.

[@PLDC1]

@@toegunn4905 Detroit is dead and Toronto, the train need to cross an international border.

[@toegunn4905]

@@PLDC1 Demand projections still outpace your proposed line. But I guess you can just make things up because lines go straight or something

[@PLDC1]

@@toegunn4905 For HSR straight line is very important. The HSR train need to slowdown significantly in a curve , then you don’t need high speed train. What about maintenance projections with Canada long and hard winter s? Why you need HSR when the train going to stop in the middle for costume in the border? How that line going to compete with the airplanes?

[@jonlebeau5859]

Got to agree with this. Do a new build Ind-Louisville to avoid the horribly crowded existing line between those 2 cities.

[@AaronSmith-sx4ez]

Great video! Something I would suggest would be to start with smaller loop routes. For example a NW Illinois and SE Wisconsin loop: Chicago Union Station > O'Hare > Rockford > Beloit > Janesville > Madison > Milwaukee > Mitchell Airport > Racine > Kenosha > Chicago Union Station would be fantastic. This would be a 300 mile loop that would include the majority of Wisconsin's population, the two state's largest airports, and could connect to other routes in the future. Loops are great because then the train doesn't have to turn around which can improve frequency.

[@LucidStew]

Thanks. Although, with twice the track you have twice the cost. One idea behind all these videos is talking about getting SOMETHING up and running when the U.S. is fairly HSR averse and the topic is used as a political football. Much like the idea of ring rail bypass, a loop is a good idea, but it may be something that needs to be phased in later. The hope is that developments in various places eventually change the conversation so maybe we are talking about this loop rather than just Union Station or connecting O'Hare.

[@JTR253]

Is Wisconsin ready for such rail investments? We would have much higher speed service today if Walker hadn't torpedoed the Illinois proposal for increasing the speed and frequency on the Hiawatha line. He rather would spend money on widening highways. GOP still has a lot of control in the legislature of Wisconsin.

[@Keikdv]

02:40 A Swedish (SJ) steamtrain to portait Chigago's rail history... 02:47 Wauw! 4 Amtrak locomitves with 4 different looks!

[@LucidStew]

Accurate free footage is difficult to come by. Sometimes one must settle for what is illustrative rather than correct. I'm surprised no one mentioned that Amtrak train is going the wrong direction when I use it again at 9:09

[@furl_w]

A neat, slightly intangible thing about using interstate ROWs is passenger drivers get to see the trains pass them and then wonder why they decided to drive.

[@LucidStew]

Right. I spent a little time on this in one of my Brightline West videos. Will be something to be stuck in traffic in the middle of the desert and see a train zooming by @ 150mph

[@alexverdigris9939]

@@LucidStew To be honest... if you're stuck in trafic in a start-stop every 3 mins situation, (hello from the UK), even seeing a train zooming past you at 100 mph is kinda enough to make one shout profanities.

[@LucidStew]

@@alexverdigris9939 I've run into this many times in southern California with trains only going 60-80 mph. :)

[@alexverdigris9939]

@@LucidStew Right. When you're stationary in trafic, anything that moves past you, at any speed, rubs salt in the wound. Ouch.

[@noname-nd8ec]

Same as Australia, HSR in the US will not go ahead because it can't correctly answer politicians main question "what's in it for me?"

[@LucidStew]

It does not help us that we are extremely politically divided and the feeling about our country is generally negative. A lot of the time when I am researching this I think how we used to be able to get things done and we used to believe in the power of accomplishments. Now we seem to mostly focus on the negative before the benefit.

[@mjohnson9563]

what you left out is operating costs, fares and time comparisons with respect to vehicle and air travel. HSR in Europe does not compete with the airlines as it creates a brand new travel market based on cost and time of travel. The reduced travel cost of HSR compared to airfares encourages people to travel to a nearby city with the understanding that the travel time is greater than air travel but HSR fare is less than half of airfare, especially when HSR travel times are under three hours. This is the equation that the Texas HSR is looking at with Shenkansan speeds of around 200 MPH. It takes over two hours to drive from Austin to Houston when it can be done with HSR in 45 minutes at a cost of around $25 each way. It would encourage many to travel between both cities when they would think otherwise. You could say the same thing from Madison to Chicago. But Mnpls to Chicago is just too long. It wont work. Another route that I like is Houston to New Orleans via Beaumont, Lafayette and Baton Rouge. The one thing to remember is to start out small and then go from there. Europe's HSR was not built in a few years. TGV in France was the only HSR system over there for decades before other HSR systems were built. One thing at a time.

[@johnweber6612]

You are speaking typical government propaganda.

[@goldenstarmusic1689]

Definitely an interesting breakdown. However, I would like to provide some upper Midwestern context and even make the case for a greater hub-and-spoke Midwestern HSR system, using cities outside of Chicago to act as hubs for high speed, and higher speed regional+intercity rail. For starters, Minnesota is going to play an immense role in passenger rail expansion. Wisconsin has historically blocked high speed rail and passenger rail expansion before, even so far as to reject free train sets and federal money back in the 2010s with already built rolling stock from Talgo. However, presently there is an Amtrak service scheduled to launch 2023-2024 called the Great River, or Twin Cities-Milwaukee-Chicago line. The Great River will add only one extra round trip in the corridor, but it will be a far more instrumental line in the future. Presently, MnDOT and WisDOT have been finalizing plans and requesting funding from Corridor ID to support a secondary alignment between the Twin Cities and Chicago. This would run through Eau Claire and Madison, as highlighted in this video, and support higher speeds+capacity over the current Empire Builder alignment. However, this is just the core line of service and even a third potential alignment is in the works: Minnesota has a high speed and higher speed intercity rail plan. Firstly, after 20-30 years of advocacy and 40+ years since Amtrak served the corridor, the Minnesota Legislature put $194 million into the construction of Northern Lights Express, with $94 million extra to rolling stock acquisition+station construction, and a total project cost of roughly $500 million with a federal match in funding. This will be a higher speed rail line maxing at 90mph, average 60mph, between Minneapolis and Duluth-Superior. Four daily round trips with an estimated 2 hours 30 minutes travel time, competing effectively with road travel. Part of the NLX corridor interlines with existing Passenger rail services from the Northstar and Empire Builder, all three train lines of which will be getting a new infill station right at where the alignments split, the Foley Boulevard station. Northstar has also been funded for an extension study to St Cloud, as well as an extension study of train services like Amtrak's Great River to Fargo-Moorhead. Furthermore, the legislature overturned the study ban on Rochester ZIP Rail, a true high speed rail plan that could build its first phase between the Twin Cities and Rochester MN, running at 185mph+ electrified rail speeds on new alignment. This would then be extended along the rest of the Twin Cities to Chicago corridor, justifying further possible speed upgrades and electrification. MnDOT's lengthy corridor ID request also calls for new corridors like Winnipeg to the Twin Cities, a proper Minneapolis-St Paul station connection, service to Mankato and eventually Sioux Falls, and even new services like Twin Cities to Des Moines and Kansas City passenger rail. These lines could very much justify high/higher speed rail, especially to Kansas City in a way that running all the way to Chicago couldn't. The geography, politics, and infrastructure+ROW Potential are all here, and even if the network that gets built isn't all "true" high speed rail, the regional and intercity rail potential is massive. I think a video on something like Northern Lights Express would be awesome to see, especially for evaluating future speed potential on an incredibly straight and favorable HSR alignment. Keep it up!

[@LucidStew]

I had an exchange with someone from France that got me thinking about things a little differently. The idea of bypassing metros and not worrying so much about linking inner city stations, like Paris with its rail ring and 6 main terminus stations. Now, trying to get around Chicago is a hefty proposition compared to Paris, but Minnesota taking some initiative to Rochester is intriguing because that could open up a path to Chicago via Iowa. That lowers the dependence on Wisconsin. However, integrating the European model means it makes sense to bring rail into the hub(Chicago) at any angle as long as it intersects a hypothetical bypass. There actually already is one, but unfortunately the Chicago suburbs have mostly consumed it. Anyway, I'll be revisiting these theme from that angle at some point, so I'll try to bone up more on what Minnesota has going on.

[@goldenstarmusic1689]

@@LucidStew hell yeah! I think you've got a good point about using the France model since the geography in both regions is shockingly similar, however, I think there is a value to more links to even smaller Metropolitan areas in the Midwest. In particular, there's been a private-public partnership line plan for years between Eau Claire and the Twin Cities that would eventually be expanded to Chicago. The Rochester ZIP Rail alignment certainly has huge potential to go with a number of routes to Chicago, including a southern alignment through the Northeast of Iowa. I would also say one of the most underrated passenger rail corridors is the Twin Cities to Winnipeg, as there aren't even any Intercity bus lines between the areas despite roughly equivalent distance between MSP and Chicago. I appreciate the consideration and love the insight!

[@ericbruun9020]

please see our (Goetz, Perl, Bruun and Zimny-Schmit) recent study about building HSR connecting to O Hare for Midwest HSR Alliance. Unfortunately the city of Chicago is building a new terminal for 7 Billion rather than making an HSR connection.

[@LucidStew]

Will look into it. Thank you!

[@thomasblyth7539]

I''m always sad that every HSR map always leaves out Charleston SC, especially when you occasionally see service to Savannah GA included, which is a smaller city

[@LucidStew]

There is also a pretty straight existing ROW between the two. Maybe in the distant future when Atlanta or Jacksonville connect to Savannah. I personally like the Atlanta-Charlotte option that ran through Columbia, so that would package things nicely, but they're not going with that route.

[@mattpotter8725]

I think the biggest problem is that a huge amount of existing track isn't owned by Amtrak but by the freight companies. I remember 20 years ago taking the Amtrak from NYC to Chicago and it took forever, mainly because it had to pull over for freight trains (often that it took half an hour for them to actually come past), so apart from where they have right of way (does this mean they own the tracks?) you would need new tracks. I do agree that Chicago would need to be the hub, maybe you could have connectors before getting into Chicago if you wanted routes bypassing it, but it is the biggest city in this proposed HSR area so that makes sense. I don't think you'd ever have each of these branches being started to be built concurrently, one would probably have to go first to convince others that it was worth it, and I still think there is a big road lobby that will act against this ever happening. It is though a very well thought out concept and this video explains it well. I'm just sceptical that it will ever happen, unfortunately, for reasons mentioned in the video and I think that red states like Indiana would never want so much of their budget going on something the majority of people just don't think they'd ever use.

[@LucidStew]

Yes, that is very much an issue. Amtrak really only owns ROW in the NEC and in Michigan on the Wolverine route. That's part of the impetus behind cutting new rail ROW in or near the interstate ROWs. Once its there, you have that much more for something else tapping in to utilize. It's like if someone were to propose building a freeway from A to B without the Interstate Highway System existing. Now take the same proposal with IHS in place and interfacing with it... For the rust belt, this is a proposition for all parties. The main thing that needs to happen is getting away from the opposing lobbies. If the people understand that 1) it will pull in massive federal funds for job creation, 2) it will grow economies in ways that benefit the entire state, 3)density policies are meant to constrain sprawl and preserve farmland, 4) expand employment opportunities by enabling longer distance carless commuting, more rural people would support it. We have no problems building other transportation forms that not everyone uses. How many people fly on a regular basis? Yet, there is no shortage of funds there.

[@snoopyloopy]

Seems reasonable, though I would note that whatever the trip to Omaha turns out to be, it might as well go all the way to Lincoln as that's the state capital.

[@LucidStew]

Regardless of what happens with HSR, it would be nice to see the country work toward getting all routes up to the 110mph standard. Passenger rail as a mode of travel and alternative to flying or driving is a lot less good than it could be for relatively minimal investment.

[@gumbyshrimp2606]

I could imagine that it terminates in Omaha with a regional 110 mph connection to Lincoln. That regional connection would already be superior to the hour drive between the cities.

[@rebeccawinter472]

I definitely think your proposal strikes a good balance. The gravity of KC, Omaha, Grand Rapids, or Louisville just don’t warrant High Speed Rail, relative to their size/distance to the rest of the system. That doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t be connected by “conventional” rail, upgraded from 50 mph speeds. 🤦🏻‍♀️ I realize that’s with stops, but that is super slow. Most standard modern locomotives should be able to handle 110 mph on flat/straight terrain.

[@jacobl1657]

Just to throw a curveball, I think a new multimodal station next to O'hare would be a better choice in my opinion for the hub. With O'hare pushing 70 million passengers a year, you'd be opening up a huge convenience for millions of passengers to travel to and from one of the busiest airports in the world. This would essentially kill many regional airline routes and airlines could ticket you to transfer to the rail system as they do sometimes in Europe

[@LucidStew]

The problem I see there is that most of your traffic from the south will have to go through the downtown area anyway. If the country had better funding for such things, the best solution might be ring rail around most of the metro and then not worry about connecting everything together. Still would want to get to O'Hare from downtown, though.

[@jacobl1657]

I can understand that viewpoint, but if I can offer one counter it would be that in this scenario you'd be avoiding Union Station entirely (which somewhat sucks since it's so important to the history of US rail). You'd rely solely on Metra and the L to move folks from ORD throughout Chicago. This would allow the HSR to follow the 294 ROW into ORD and potentially reduce some of the more expensive viaducts and tunnels required to get past the harbors and city center. Also would be much less daunting for passengers using the rail as a way to transfer to ORD as most Midwesterners aren't as metro savvy as the east coast or Europe.

[@michaeljones7927]

I can't imagine the Texas Department of Transportation (TexDOT) allowing its medians to be used for HSR.

[@LucidStew]

That's kind of funny because a lot of the criticisms I've seen of Texas Central opine that they should have used the I-45 ROW. Cant win. I don't see how you get a train over 110mph otherwise since they don't want it to cut through farm land either, but maybe that's the idea. I personally am not a big fan of the median. I like the highway ROW for next to the freeway, well separated, or affording purchase of the land adjacent to the ROW, which should be easier than cutting through land.

[@michaeljones7927]

@@LucidStew you're absolutely right about being adjacent to the highway ROW, instead of being in the median. Sufficient width for double track. TGV planned for a private access road along the ROW. Also, earthen berm under the tracks to raise them sufficiently for animal passages and flood control. That increases the required width. If I remember correctly, they needed 200 feet of width. Whenever they split a tract of farm land, they had to provide an underpass with enough vertical and horizontal clearance for the largest farm tractor or harvester.

[@LucidStew]

@@michaeljones7927 Access between plots that CAHSR divided in the Central Valley was a huge issue. I think they're still in court over some of them. I think if a system wants to average 150mph over distance, some of that is inevitable, but CAHSR has 70 miles of it between Bakersfield and Fresno. Most of the places I'm looking at along interstates in CHN, its more like 5-15 miles to smooth out bad curves. Interstate highway ROWs in open areas are pretty straight. That was one of the things about getting to Pittsburgh at speed. Going to be a lot more expensive.

[@wavesnbikes]

But Brightline West from LA to Las Vegas using the I-15 Freeway medians in California and Nevada.

[@LucidStew]

@@wavesnbikes Once you get out past Barstow, the I-15 median is exceptionally broad. That's where the high speed part will be. The jury is also out on how well that will work in terms of construction and operation.

[@michaelengelhardt5336]

Ive always been intrigued by a MSP to KC route maybe via Des Moines and possibly Omaha (for population). Very flat and def enough room around I-35 for HSR

[@NoirMorter]

I've always thought a regional rail between Omaha and KC could do good. By highway its a 3 hour drive. But Omaha is just now putting in a street car as we still have offal buses and other public transit.

[@qolspony]

I definitely want to see more intercity and regional rail that you are proposing for these cities. At least 6 intercity trains per day (2 Morning, 2 Afternoon and 2 Evening). This should be standard throughout the entire United States. And Regional Rail in selective states like North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and California. Regional Rail should be a state operation, not a service by Amtrak. Although, i would like to see more private companies like Bright line get onboard with operations.

[@sambennett5441]

What am I missing? I know Chicago is a bigger city but why not use Indianapolis as the main hub? If you planned 250 mile spokes from Indi towards Chicago-Milwaukee, Detroit, Columbus-Cleveland/Pittsburgh (at 330 mi Pitt the main exception to the 250 mi ring but worth it as it would be the primary link to NEC), Cincinnati-Charleston WV, Louisville-Nashville/Knoxville (*300 mi to Knoxville*), and St Louis you could create roughly a 6 spoke wheel. If you connect all of the outer cities in a giant ring and you end up with a region very comparable in size and population to the Iberian Peninsula (220,000 sq mi & 60 mil people) but has the added benefit of having continued destinations, Kansas City, Memphis, Atlanta, Charlotte, D.C., Toronto, and the Twin Cities are all within the 500 mile 'compete with air travel' distance. Add a Line that connects Louisville-Cinci-Columbus and commuter style infill network and you could realistically connect about 20% of American within a couple hours. Rather than increasing the service speed to Chicago, just leap frog the whole system with true HSR that would connect so many more. Chicago is too far on the edge to be a genuine passenger hub. Let it keep the freight and then you would have less competition for passenger rail. Also, this rust belt 'Heart of America' wagon wheel shape would be closer to large population centers outside of the ring. I am in the Twin Cities and totally understand if you wanted to trade MSP for 150 miles closer to all of the state in the East and South. I can't help but notice the giant hole in Amtrak between Atlanta and Chicago.

[@LucidStew]

I would say the main reason is that the Chicago metro has a far larger gravity than any metro in the network. That's by an order of magnitude at least. Like I said in the video, I do like the idea of pulling some of the hub duty off Chicago and putting it on Indy, though.

[@sambennett5441]

@@LucidStew Don't get me wrong, I do think Chicago is an important spot on the map, just not the center. Maybe there are different ways to look at HSR. I am thinking more of the routes and less of the destination. Obviously both matter but I think traveling St. Louis to Detroit should go via Indi. I think a network stretched between Chicago, Nashville and Pittsburgh. It lends itself more to be a better starting point for true national HSR. Traveling be rail from Atlanta to anywhere in the northeast would be better served by taking HSR to Nashville - Loui - Cinci - Pitt - Philli and onward than the current option for Amtrak. Although there is direct service, it is a 16 hour once a day route. ATL to Philli is almost 700 mile (by crow) and almost 1000 going the way I suggest but much higher speed and hopefully a lot more frequent. If all trains are to or from Chicago this would never be an option. And we all know that the long slow process to see HSR expand in the US it would turn into trains traveling exclusively to/from Chicago and not a genuine network. Focusing on the triangle of Cinci-Louisville-Indi with spokes and more obvious future connections could get more people involved. Again, I appreciate your work and I find your videos very informative and entertaining to watch. You will be getting thumbs up from me.

[@sambennett5441]

@@LucidStew Admittedly, I rewatched the whole video and you do cover some of these points in more detail than I remembered. I was a little too stuck on the map at 5:11 but you explained in good detail how you would deviate. Thanks again.

[@LucidStew]

@@sambennett5441 I got some feedback from some European viewers more familiar with their style about bypasses rather than straight into the downtown areas. Eventually I'd like to redo this area with that in mind. It's a big area with a lot of variety, so its interesting for comparing the two approaches.

[@qolspony]

I would like to see HSR from Nashville TN to Atlanta GA or Charlotte NC, which is not part of the video subject.

[@LucidStew]

I'm planning to cover that eventually as part of a series on the various connector areas between the FRA HSR corridors once that series is done.

[@crnel]

I think there could be a few useful high speed or sub high speed rail routes/networks in that large inter mountain West region with 11% population. Las Vegas to Phoenix to Albuquerque . El Paso going north through a number of medium to large cities and then continuing north through Montana to connect to Canada and their Calgary to Edmonton rail. And the south end to connect to Mexico’s planned HSR route… Rail travel of whatever speed could and would be much more popular in the USA if it actually connected to more places where people want to go, plus with the right promotion…

[@LucidStew]

The issue is that the populations served couldn't hope to justify the cost.

[@Hudute]

Interesting video and all, but I cant stop looking at that cursed Ohio document at 4:14.

[@LucidStew]

It's pretty amazing how bad the photoshop work was on official documents 15-20 years ago.

[@fasdaVT]

You're missing a good corridor going North South in Colorado's front range.

[@IamTheHolypumpkin]

I once calculated that you could be time competitive with airlines on a high speed line all the way from NY Penn to LA Union at a speed of 400mph. 400mph sound insane but should be achievable. The current world record on high speed rail with a speed of 355 mph was made in the early 2000. It’s only a gap of 45mph. Especially in the Midwest as it is flat as a pancake you can go all out with extremely straight tracks. I know it’s a long shot but you can dream.

[@LucidStew]

I don't think its even necessary to be temporally competitive. All they have to do is get close. Even if you just had 150mph to Cleveland and a 110mph train the rest of the way, you already have a viable option unless someone had to be there right away. That would probably be 6-7 hour range. Right now its 20-24 hours for Amtrak, which is not a tenable business or vacation travel option.

[@michaeljones7927]

The amount of electrical energy required for sustained speed above 220 MPH makes conventional high speed rail uneconomical for long distances. Many experts believe 186-200 MPH is the optimum speed when all factors are considered, including track and equipment maintenance. Moreover, the market is simply too small to justify the investment required. Jet aircraft using hydrogen fueled turbo fan engines are the future of long distance travel. Trains are wonderful, but they have their limitations.

[@michaelneichel9543]

Even if you have slower speeds, it connects to all the cities between New York and LA. It don't need to completive for the section new York-LA, but only for city pairs in between

[@michaeljones7927]

Comprehensive preliminary analysis of Chicago hub route possibilities. Unfortunately, I just don't see any of it happening using federal funds as long as Republicans control either house of Congress (especially the House of Representatives, where spending bills originate). Going from Chicago to Detroit via Toledo is a good idea because that route can be extended to Cleveland from Toledo. The Chicago-Toledo route segment passes through the most northern part of Indiana, and would only serve South Bend, so it's almost certain Indiana would show no interest in cooperating with Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio in a four state development compact. It definitely would have to be a federal project The important thing to remember is that DOT/FRA has never done any real in-depth market research on those various corridors, and neither has Amtrak.

[@LucidStew]

A big part of what motivates these videos is the need to push back against all the "just build it" I got from following CAHSR. Ok, but there is a reality behind that, and in this case that reality needs bigger fed involvement and ~$200 billion. Yeah, its going to be very tough doing this with politics the way it is, but if people want it, that's what needs to change. On that I-90 idea, I was looking at the map knowing Michigan wouldn't like that. I also consciously CHOSE South Bend over Fort Wayne because the extra 100k people you serve isn't worth the expense.(everyone hates when you say their place isnt worth it) And this is another issue we run into in reality. If we get it, everyone wants it for them and no one wants to pay for it for someone else. But, that's how you end up with CAHSR and it goes back to: ok, but do you actually want to build it? Either way I don't think the states are doing it by themselves because... they haven't!

[@joetrey215]

Interestingly, about 5 million people visit South Bend area each year while 7 million visit Ft. Wayne. Edit: Other than Notre Dame, why does anyone visit SB, I wonder.

[@michaeljones7927]

@@joetrey215 I went to South Bend once, forty years ago, just to ride the CSS&SB, when "railfaning" the Chicago area, on an AMTRAK excursion from Texas. Notre Dame was really interesting, but South Bend was pretty bland. No offense intended.... Hoosiers.

[@LucidStew]

@@joetrey215 Really. What's in Fort Wayne?

[@joetrey215]

@@LucidStew I don't know what is in FW but it is a highly ranked place to live and perhaps the most affordable place to live in the country. It might just be a destination worth travelling to. Two-thirds the property crime of SB and one-half the violent crime rate of SB. Might be a safer place to visit as well. No one wants to travel to a dump after all or necessarily to make it easier to travel from a dump.

[@douglasengle2704]

2:50 Chicago HSR Hub map: Chicago Omaha should likely go a bit further to be Chicago Lincoln NE that being only additional 60 miles and the Capitol of Nebraska along the Union Pacific the same RR R.O.W it uses to get to Omaha. I didn't realize this is a new route somewhat parallel and north of the present California Zephyr likely making use of the old Rock Island Railroad R.O.W. going through Quad Cities (Davenport Iowa) and most importantly Des Moines and leaves the present Amtrak route that goes to Galesburg IL before that city. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qXqznnqlpKynq7ssi=NH4th3vXFHCAv7y1&t=177 Unless on flat terrain using Interstate mediums is not expected to allow HSR. Interstates have mild curves, but not mild enough for 220 mph trains and grades that frequently exceed 1.6% which the CAHSR specifications restrict to traveling down grade for train handling reasons to about 125 mph (200 kph). The LA area to Los Vegas HSR use of the Interstate medium is going to be an interesting fit. The preliminary designs place the high speed track curves outside the typical Interstate's curves. The HSR curves have to be much greater radius than the highway's. Realistically according to the CAHSR specification for 400 kph track both up and down grade the curves should be a preferred minimum of 50,000 foot radius, 25,000 foot absolute minimum radius (4.73 miles radius) with maximum downward grades of 1.6%. Being able to clime grades at 3% at 400 kph is schedule diminished when going the other way they are limited to 200 kph. That would mean on rolling hills exceeding 1.6% the train would basically be limited to 125 mph, which is the same speed that can be had on sealed freight train corridors with movable crash barrier protected at-grade crossings in the USA. Presently I been informed there are no 110 mph - 125 mph at-grade road crossings in the USA. The test moveable barrier at-grade crossing needed to allow that speed didn't always reset in freezing mid west winters so it was removed. About 0.12G overall lateral acceleration with super elevation is the maximum passenger trains work at. That is not considered comfortable. Interstates have typical curves that pull 0.1G at 80 mph, there is a lot of variation. 0.1G at 80 mph on an interstate tests the rigidity and precision of a motor vehicle. It is noticeable. Performance cars can generate 0.8G - 1.0G lateral acceleration with a practiced driver. Using the mediums of Interstates for fast Metros that can travel 60 mph - 90 mph with high grades is a much better fit than HSR. DC's Metro is specified to work at up to 7% grades which they did for an elevated station and a Metro employee at the Vienna HO model train club said they'd never do it again. With wet rails even with heavy sanding the Metro trains slip their wheels all the way up the grade. DC Metro trains when they began service in 1976 were stated to have a top operating speed of 75 mph and they seem to do that. Non mountain Interstates in the USA are limited to 5% grades. Mountain interstates are allowed 6% grades and I70's west approach to the Eisenhower Tunnel has an exception at 7% grades known as the Ike, frequently used for testing towing vehicles. It seems like better railroading in many ways when freight rail corridors are upgraded to 110 mph passenger track status provided the host railroad is compensated for that added ability. The added rail corridor requirements above 110 mph in the USA are bit questionable. In makes little sense to seal railroad corridors in wide open un populated areas or that trains traveling at 140 mph verses 110 mph through at-grade crossings are unable to provide enough crash protection to the train. Very fast passenger steam locomotives such as the Pennsylvania Railroad T1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad_class_T1 appears to have been designed to be pushed down and plow through hitting a loaded cement truck at 140 mph unlike the crash of the Amtrak P42 hit on the Southwest Chief en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Missouri_train_derailment. Reported secret speed tests by the cylinder valve manufacture of the T1 found the T1 was running frequently over 130 mph and once timed at 142 mph when trying to make up schedule to Chicago. The T1 would have been going through at-grade road crossings at 140 mph in the early 1950s!.

[@WillTheBassPlayer]

I have to admit, I am a little disappointed that Fort Wayne would be skipped. CHI‐Fort Wayne- Columbus would be a great route, and better suited for rail development than the I-90 corridor since it serves untapped communities that would be receptive to rail and growth, not to mention a much better deal for Columbus, since they wouldnt have to re-route via cleavland or Cincy, plus it'd serve Fort Wayne, the 2nd largest city in Indiana

[@LucidStew]

It was purely a numerical decision. I suspect any real-world scenario would not play out the same way as the various states would need to be placated in their specific ways in order for the system to come together.

[@jonlebeau5859]

I agree and remember this is one man's proposal. The Chi-FtW-Col line will come to fruition before this 1-80 corridor vision ever receives any investment. But It will not be true HSR it will be HrSR or Higher speed rail like 90mph-110mph. And it will have stops in Merrillville, Valparaiso, Warsaw communities as well as Ft Wayne which will get a dual connection to Columbus and another spur to Toledo.

[@meghanlarson3807]

This would be a dream! I will always vote pro-public transit

[@LucidStew]

I'm pro-efficient infrastructure investment. If a public transit project fits that bill, I'll vote for it too. I think this idea is efficient infrastructure investment, assuming I'm moderately close on the cost estimates. 😅

[@brucehain]

My new PRR (expected to begin its final phase of planing next year) would have a north leg and a south leg, just like the old one only faster. The northern one would go through Cleveland, by the lakefront, and terminate at Chicago. (this would involve a lot of new RoW in Penna. and Ohio, but I've been fantasizing about how to incentivize it, along with the old railroad tradition - Buy it up in Secret - but we know that's against the law, if you want federal funding at least.) The other leg wants to go along the original PRR right-of-way In Indiana, that keeps getting further and further subsumed (naturally it's the most direct route possible) with a tunnel under the Mississippi from East St. Louis as an excuse for getting a few things out of the way in St. Louis proper (high rises, Ferris wheels?) so that it's possible to access the terminal station that Amtrak effectively had closed down. The Cleveland-Buffalo route would always be faced with the question of who gets to use the better right of way, so I see the first E-W line as going through Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Port Huron and Detroit - to Chicago. (there's a disused but direct route bet. Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and combined with a tunnel connection to serve Downtown Buffalo and Buffalo Ctl. Sta. - fast - ((inasmuch as Amtrak's new station in Buffalo clogs the existing right-of-way irreparably A SLIGHT OVERSIGHT)) ...which takes care of Toronto too, allowing to skip Hamilton, reached by way of the bolt-straight Canadian National route through there (with a grade crossing every six feet) using the shortcut across the lake probably first developed by one of those railroads, that later lost interest, for direct service, taking off maybe ten minutes. (and the stop at central Hamilton - so maybe 15)

[@erictrumpler9652]

You have neglected the single most important HSR connection here: Chicago to Atlanta.... which should be as direct as possible and would be the most effective way of getting a lot of people off planes and into trains...

[@LucidStew]

Atlanta is not part of the Chicago Hub Network. I mention connecting to the Southeast Corridor via Nashville. Atlanta and Chicago both being large hub airports, a direct connection between the two isn't really going to make a difference in their air traffic. It might actually increase it as it would provide a means for mid-range cities to easily pick cheap connecting flights in those cities rather than fly out of their local.

[@mikelehman4229]

Build the New York-Chicago bullet train Network just like Europe 200 mph branch to Detroit

[@onetwothreeabc]

Fed should all the high speed passenger rail services in all states. This may cost $ 1 trillion or more.

[@LucidStew]

I think you could have something similar to most major projects where its shared with a hefty portion coming from the federal government. The cost is why I think we need to be very careful about deciding what to build. Chicago Hub at ~$200 billion for 1900 miles of track is a relative bargain. I also think if Amtrak or the states or the federal government don't move on this idea, and BLW succeeds, then Brightline will slowly consume all of the good routes utilizing interstate ROWs and those other entities will get the leftovers.

[@mitchellb4551]

in theory yes but this would a "socialist" crisis for all but like the farthest left 1/3 of the US so never happing

[@LaHypeDuTrain]

For a comparison the Chicago star as you draw it has the same population as France and have a size slightly comparable to France or Spain. The total length you plan here is comparable to today HSR length of France or Spain, and respectively a 2/3 of France planned work for France or 1/2 of the planed work in Spain. Nothing unreasonable here. I just do not understand Keystone corridor, a route through Cleveland Pittsburgh and DC make more sense no? It will be one of the most chalenging route to build if you want true HSR but has more potential. For distance more than 4h, Europe and US are shaped to accommodate Sleeping bullet train china's type that could travel about 1500 mile in 9h at 170mph. It start to make sens for a route to Denver/Boston !

[@LucidStew]

Keystone has a couple of issues. 1)The U.S. is quite satisfied to settle for 110mph passenger rail. 2) west of Harrisburg is probably going to be more expensive than anyone will want to cover. This situation could be different if its all that is left in closing the gap between a built out Chicago Hub and NEC. As someone who has driven between St. Louis and Denver in a single day, and also flown between those multiple times(I'm from California. I lived in St. Louis for a year), I don't think you will see a HSR connection to Denver from the east. There are a few reasons for that: it's about 600 miles between Kansas City and Denver with not much between. The midwest, with a couple of exceptions, has airport overcapacity, so its very easy to fly out of myriad metro airports to a hub like Denver. You would almost certainly fly unless you had issues with it or were a train fan. Also, it's a right-leaning part of the country. For some reason HSR is political in the U.S., and the right is the side that doesn't like it.

[@deanonesense]

a couple things. A) as far as I know, Midwesterners still don't fly, by and large. So High Speed Rail doesn't fill the gap between "too short to fly, too long to drive", fast but not HSR fast rail with stops at least every 30 miles and more frequently when appropriate is far far more important for providing service to people and does far more to support lower levels of public transit (metros, LRT, streetcars, buses, bicycle/wheelchair networks, pedestrian networks) than HSR. HSR depends on car rentals, park and rides, taxis/ubers almost just as much as airports. B) the Great Lakes Region in general, but specifically Michigan and Ontario, is going to be the best place to be when climate change starts hitting hard(er). So yeah, preparing for that population influx before it happens, would be really smart and the current population numbers isn't really relevant. C) rail can divide communities just the same as freeways, and the higher the frequency, the faster and the longer those trains are the more at grade rail divides communities. Elevation via viaducts (not berms) or burying (preferably via cut and cover) helps to keep trains from cutting towns in half or from fragmenting ecosystems. Eliminating at grade crossings is also one of the requirements for fully automatic trains, which then unlocks higher speeds, higher frequencies and nearly 24/7/365 service.

[@adamknott7830]

Dont sleep on a Chicago to Columbus route

[@IamTheHolypumpkin]

I don’t think you necessary need to upgrade Chicago Union and not just that with some optimization you could even close Ogilvie Transportation Center and LaSalle while still having enough capacity to run all Metra trains at high frequency (like at least every hour.) and having High Speed rail all at Union. 1st thing to do rebuild all the platforms at a Union to be much wider (so people can wait on the platform and not the mezzanine) make them all high platforms so they are accessible. Make all platforms through-running, no more terminals. All Metra trains are now through running, trains from Ogilvie and LaSalle all go to Union. If you want to be fancy and spend a lot you could build a loop around the Loop. Going north out of Millennium. Turning west under Ohio St (with interchanging to the Red line at Grand). Taking over this weird off-ramp of I90. After crossing the north branch of the Chicago river have a grade separated diamond to connect the UP-Lines, MD-Lines and south to Union. South of Union you could connect via the St. Charles Air Line Lift Bridge back to Metra-Electric and Millennium. Obviously a prerequisite to any change to Union would a a full electrification with 25kW 60Hz overhead of all Metra Lines and buy the tracks from the private railroads.

[@LucidStew]

I've been talking to another commenter from France about a more European model, which would leave through tracks at Chicago Union off the table. You'd utilize multiple terminal stations in Chicago, like Union, Ogilvie, Millennium(still need to connect them by walkway or metro), and then make up for it with a bypass around the metro area. I'm going to do a video about it in the future. This works great in Paris where you have open fields as close as 15 miles from the city center(and SIX main train stations). Question is: what will it cost when it's more like 35-40 miles for Chicago?

[@michaeljones7927]

Dream on regarding buying Chicago area rail lines from the "big six" Class 1s and the multiplicity of Chicago terminal companies. Most of them probably wish that Metra didn't exist and have no interest in helping HSR become a reality. The freight railroads see passenger trains as a nuisance to be avoided at all cost. Moreover, there is no need to spend enormous amounts of money in that dense area where the old Chicago stations are located. All HSR trains from the south and east can enter Chicago on the Illinois Central/Metra electrified trackage.

[@maas1208]

​@@michaeljones7927 Didn't those same Freight companies once ran passenger service themselves at one point?

[@michaeljones7927]

@@maas1208 YES...the railroad companies operated both passenger trains and freight trains since they were established in the early 1800s. Amtrak took over intercity passenger rail service on April 1, 1971.

[@mikelehman4229]

Build the sustainable electric true New York-Chicago bullet train Network

[@bbbb6066]

What would a ticket cost and can it compete with travel by air.

[@LucidStew]

The short answer is yes because government doesn't need to turn a profit. Just checked Acela rates. They're competitive from D.C. to NYC. Also just looked at flights for Indianapolis-Chicago. Flight time is 75 mins, which is what I have for travel time on that route with HSR.

[@slumpdogyt]

Give the whole project to Brightline and let them have full control over the project.

[@LucidStew]

If Brightline can get the applied for federal grant, the work on BLW will be the most interesting short-term development in U.S. HSR and could determine how we advance that. However, I think they need to get that experience in first and even then they're only going to run between certain city pairs that makes sense from a business standpoint.

[@slumpdogyt]

@@LucidStew I mean what if brightline got all the land along the tracks or stations in exchange for funding and building the whole project. I mean that is how most American towns exist today is because of the private railways who were trying to expand built towns along the tracks.

[@LucidStew]

@@slumpdogyt Might work in the west where there are still huge chunks of federal land under BLM. There isn't a lot of available public land east of the Mississippi. Most of it is U.S. Forest Service, NPS, or DoD.

[@mikelehman4229]

Build NCBT network

[@LucidStew]

I'll get right on it. 😅

[@mikelehman4229]

@@LucidStew great that's what the people really want

[@argh523]

> 400 miles = "regional rail" x)

[@BaskingInObscurity]

Though I think issuing bonds for everything generally demonstrates bad governance, designing and building out an entire network at once might very well come out costing less with bond debt than dragging out the building process. The sooner the build-out, the sooner flaws can be found and revised, and perhaps most importantly, the sooner fare and development rents revenue can commence. The longer build-out takes, the greater the likelihood of political undermining of the project or prematurely cancelling the unfinished portions due to apparent underperformance, almost guaranteed with an incomplete network. An underperforming, generation-long project makes for terrible publicity for the project genre, whereas opening the entire network with fanfare and getting through the "beta" period ASAP make for great concept demonstration. Opponents can continue to knock HSR all they want with impunity as long as the country continues to fail to bring systems online. We can't claim success before there's proof; but without proof, there's no concrete argument negating opposition.

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri are probably an overreach as they are too sparsely populated. Better to include NY, Penn, (and WV) to connect with the NE corridor. Call a city in Ohio or Indiana the "Hub" rather than Chicago.

[@LucidStew]

Of course my methodology could be wrong, but by my way of figuring Minn/St. Paul and St. Louis were as reasonable as most other parts of the system. Getting from Cleveland or Columbus to Philadelphia at high speed would be quite expensive and difficult.

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

@@LucidStew St Louis is a case where I think reasonable people can fall on both sides. Like you say in the video, KC falls on the wrong side of reasonable. The feasibility of St Louis depends on the actual alignment and I concede a persuasive case could be made. There is a lot of empty space between the twin cities and other large population centers (much like your argument against KC) so I'm skeptical of their inclusion. Pittsburgh (not philadelphia) is the Pennsylvania City I'd replace the twin cities with.

[@LucidStew]

@@MartinHoeckerMartinez As far as the two on them is concerned, STL has a very clear advantage over KC in this respect: its 240 miles closer by rail to EVERYTHING in the corridor. For the Minn/St.Paul leg, compare that to STL-KC out of Chicago. STL-KC is 270 miles for 2.8 million then 240 for 2.4 million, or 510 miles for 5.2 million. Minn/St.Paul is 90 for 1.6 million Milwaukee, 80 more for 700k Madison, 270 more for Minn/St. Paul 3.7 million, or 440 miles for 6 million. Minn/St. Paul's saving grace is that its the 3rd largest metro in the system and 30% larger than the 4th largest(STL).

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

@@LucidStew I think I was unclear. KC is definitely too far and I agree with all of your reasons for omitting it. I just think that STL is borderline for inclusion and could also be omitted (depending on the routing and connectivity of the routes east of STL)

[@LucidStew]

@@MartinHoeckerMartinez I don't really disagree with you. I have STL ranked lowest out of everything I included with the connection from Indianapolis slightly better than the one from Chicago. It's in the same league as Chicago-Minn/St. Paul. Really just depends what the pain threshold is.

[@KyrilPG]

I'm a strong supporter of *true* HSR. But it seems in the video, as in most videos from America, that HSR is still perceived as simply much faster rail. The best HSR networks in Europe, France and Spain, consider HSR differently. Their high-speed lines are not "strings of pearls" or "chains" of high-speed trunks between cities, like a faster rail network. They are "arterial" or "parallel" (as in electric circuitry), they extensively use seamless city bypass tracks for non-stop trains to completely avoid running through cities or having to slow down. Take the Paris Eastern high-speed bypass that already seamlessly links 3 of the 4 main high-speed lines radiating out of Paris. (There's a plan to extend and connect the 4th). Paris HSR bypass runs under and serves CDG Airport and Disneyland Paris Resort, with full speed through running stations equipped with separated express tracks / tunnel. Or Lyon's Eastern HS bypass that also runs and serves Lyon airport and connects the line from Paris to the extension line going all the way to the Mediterranean coast. The same principles are applied in Spain, with an interconnection of Barcelona and Sevilla high-speed lines outside Madrid and all cities in between these destinations are bypassed. A Eurostar train from London can exit the Channel Tunnel then enter the high-speed line near the tunnel's mouth, and only exit the high-speed line on final approach to the Mediterranean coast in the tunnel under Marseille. All this without ever stopping nor having to cross city centers nor substantially slowing down. Every time I see a project or concept / proposal about HSR in America, it is always thinking of HSR as merely a faster set of rail lines, following the legacy "serial" model (or "string of pearls" / chain of HS trunks and cities). And never the "arterial" / "parallel" model of modern HSR used in France and Spain. The legacy / serial model is not robust nor reliable, a problem in one station is enough to cripple the entire line / corridor or even the whole network as it's essentially a queue line where only stations offer overtaking opportunities, forcing all trains to follow each other and run through city centers. Whereas the parallel / arterial model allows a slew of different services, from all stops to non-stop. It offers greater robustness and reliability in case of a breakdown or problem in one station as trains to other destinations aren't affected. And last, but not least, it offers substantially higher average speed and higher frequency. Some HS lines in France have a train every 4 minutes each way, a frequency higher than many subway lines in the world. This arterial or parallel model, having frequent entry & exit branches or spurs, offers access to the high-speed network to more destinations along or in a certain radius along the HS line. These tertiary destinations would require a trip over the regular legacy network to reach an entry & exit branch to access the HSL. The "backbone" created by continuous HS lines following this model becomes like a collector main trunk. Really, America should consider this arterial / parallel model if it wants to build a really efficient HSR network or set of networks. A "serial" or daisy chain of high-speed trunks and cities, a.k.a the legacy model of rail from the 19th century, is not the right one for HSR.

[@LucidStew]

I had considered bypasses, but I think its a matter of needing to walk before you run. I would see metro bypasses as a sort of phase 2. Another thing to consider is that European metros are quite a bit smaller in terms of land usage. For instance, the Chicago metro example we're looking at is roughly 4 times the area of the Parisian metro. And that's not even the largest. If you look at something like Los Angeles, you essentially can't bypass it without staying outside the entire geographic region. In terms of thought process, you have to consider it has been very difficult to build ANY HSR in the U.S., so we're tending to think it terms of just getting something in place. We don't have an ability to go straight from 0 to 220. The funds won't be there. Even the $200 billion suggested here is somewhat fanciful.

[@KyrilPG]

@@LucidStew That's precisely where I disagree. The "walking before running" is a common concern, yet it is terribly detrimental. A more direct, more efficient more robust and reliable first line will be way more successful and make the next ones a lot easier to kick-start. Especially in the US where flying and driving is so culturally engraved and where the train alternative has to be even more appealing. A "meh" or "OK" HSR won't make it but a great one will. We've seen it with the many LRT projects in US cities : it was a choice to build small (outright underbuilt), yet overpriced, lines and they're not very practical, they don't have much capacity and don't attract much ridership. They get locked in a catch 22 loop of "need more ridership before infrastructure upgrades or increased frequency" while ridership will never grow without real upgrades in infrastructure and frequency. That's how LA ended up with its entire metro rail system having a daily workday ridership (175K) substantially lower than Rennes' underground automated light metro network with super high frequencies. (Rennes is a French city with 225K population in city proper or 360K in urban area and 225K+ daily ridership on the 2 lines of its metro system). I know there are many other reasons contributing to the low ridership of LA Metro Rail but that's a big one. In many US cities, LRT is there, yes, but it's so much less than what it could have been and will never be more unless there's humongous investments. Investments that would have been much less if they had built a little bigger and better from the beginning. The constant lack of ambition and systematically overinflated costs of these projects ruin their future and potential. What is viewed as a wise, cautious and measured project is in fact the death trap of any future "planned" improvements. Underbuilding, while overspending, prevents many transportation projects from reaching the "appeal and practicality" minimum threshold required to attract riders by choice, instead of only riders that have no other options. It's virtually the same for HSR, especially in the much less train-friendly American culture. It has to be way better than other means of transportation and given the extent of low density urban sprawl, the often quasi non-existence of real city centers and lack of extensive and practical transit in many US cities, any HSR infrastructure would have to perform really well to compensate. Or only the shortest and most direct city pairs will get enough riders, not the longer distances. The "let's start small" is the sure way to never ever get the upgrade later. Germany is a good example of that : They planned on building city bypasses "later" and it of course never really happened. They now have a system plagued by delays, trains blocked and queuing behind each other. To the point it's become a joke over there. Any upgrade would be such a disturbance (due in large part to the lack of bypass) and so much more complicated to build now than if it had been built initially, that they only do the minimally disturbing works. The only place where German ICE trains really run at their full potential is on the French HSL between Paris and Strasburg (siege of the EU Parliament, the European Court of Human Rights and several other EU institutions) right next to the Franco-German border. Upgrading the lines will cost way way way more than if it had been done the first time. They are now stuck with an infrastructure that can't easily evolve and becomes a real problem. Bypasses built from the get go are not overbuilding, it's future proofing with quasi instant reward because it drastically improves the level of service from day 1. As for the size of urban areas : yes European cities are much more compact, but also a LOT denser. Especially Paris, with Asian levels of density. (Official numbers of 2022 put Paris urban area at roughly 15M) The Eastern high-speed bypass of Paris is between 22 and 35 kilometers away from the center. And Lyon's Eastern bypass is approximately at 20km from the center. In Marseille or Madrid, the cross-city HSL are in a tunnel. So the much much lower density of American cities compensate for the distance. Highway medians are a lot more common in the US than in Europe, so they can be a solution to bypass the center without bypassing the whole urban area for the largest ones. And of course I'm not saying you have to start by building Chicago's bypass first, quite the opposite actually. But let's say the first corridor would be Chicago Cincinnati : Lafayette would be obviously bypassed, as the urban area is pretty compact, simply following I-65 (curves are perfectly OK). Then Indianapolis would also be bypassed, on its Southwestern side, running under the airport, a perfect location for an on-line multimodal station. And approaching Cincinnati, the HSL trunk would stop with 2 exit / entries connected to the link with the city center station and a stub (to be continued as a bypass and continuity towards Columbus) near the airport. That is a pretty good first project with which you introduce a robust, resilient and reliable high-speed backbone with bypasses while not breaking the bank for a gigantic bypass like for Chicago. Then build incrementally on that, but always put the best standard from the beginning, or it will be impossible to introduce later. HSR in the US will need extra appeal over flying and driving compared to Europe, that was the conclusion of the main HSR operators and manufacturers (SNCF, Alstom, DB, Siemens) doing studies of possible US HSR networks. If you want to see what I mean by entry / exit and stub, open Google Maps in sat view and look for the city of Perpignan in France near the Spanish border. There's the high-speed line coming from Spain that ends on the Western outskirts of Perpignan. The "stub" to be continued and the 2 entry / exit ramps are clearly visible. Another one clearly visible is the high-speed line that grazes the city of Montpellier on its South side. There's Montpellier Sud de France station (the city's 2nd HSR station, an on-line one) and if you follow the line A few hundred meters to the East, you'll see another stub and pair of entry / exit ramps.

[@LucidStew]

@@KyrilPG You have to consider the political structure of the United States. When you have a project like this, the federal, state, county, municipal government and even neighborhood groups get to have a say. So if you have a thing like "we're going to bypass your entire metro area and only put a station at the airport", almost no one in that city is going for that and its not getting built, especially when that city makes up 95% of the county and 30% of the state population like Indianapolis. I'm putting a video together that goes into my Chicago-Indianapolis idea in more detail. Maybe what I can do is follow that up exploring some of the suggestions you're making with a more European approach and we can see what the reaction is.

[@ronclark9724]

Another KZbinr named City Nerd completely disagrees with Lucid Stew about the Midwest HSR network. City Nerd uses a gravity model between potential city pairs to rank them; basically a formula of City 1 population x City 2 population / distance between cities squared x a modifier factor. All well explained. Almost all city pairs along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor valued above 20, the best in the Midwest valued less than 5. The only agreement between these train enthusiasts was Chicago to Indianapolis valued higher than the rest of the Midwest cities, which Indiana will always refuse to fund. As for average speed calculations over 150 mph by HSR trains the world over, they only occur in brand new HSR corridors with very limited stops, for example the Texas Central corridor with just one intermediate stop. I will never expect Indiana to help fund a HSR corridor between Chicago to Toledo with ZERO stations providing services to Hoosiers. So Lucid Stews proposal fails immediately on just funding.

[@LucidStew]

My formula is probably better explained than written. I started with the population of the larger of the two metros. I added the populations of the lesser metro and any significant in between metros. I then doubled the smaller of the two amounts and divided the projected cost by that. I ranked from there. I didn't consider distance beyond how that would have naturally factored into my cost estimates. I don't know where the CHN cities would rank compared to NEC because I didn't calculate the NEC pairs. I'll try to work a comparison into the NEC video when I get around to it. Before I criticize the use of distance squared between cities, what is the modifier? I actually have most routes under 150mph. More typical was 140-145mph. The range overall was 110-170mph. The higher speeds tended to have a LOT of room between cities, comparatively little urban-suburban area to traverse and I didn't spare much expense to straighten things. The times I was talking about in the video were express, but I was not assuming an express only system. In that Chicago-Toledo run I was looking at South Bend as an intermediate metro. As discussed in another comment, I also don't think either the Wolverine Service route or the route through Fort Wayne were bad. I just didn't think BOTH were ever going to be brought up to 150mph and decided to split the difference assuming those two would come up to 110mph and support the HSR. Admittedly the entire idea is politically difficult. Anything anyone comes up with is probably going to be a problem for someone else, which is why you end up with the two routes in the first place. Also on the subject, I'm working on a video that goes into more depth about how I was considering specific routes. The CHN video was very high level because I wanted to fit it all into 20 minutes and it is a very large system.

[@LucidStew]

I watched his Midwest video and I don't really see a lot of disagreement. For one thing, he is analyzing a pure spoke system and one of my criticisms of CHN is that its too Chicago-centric. I actually made routing decisions to decentralize and share the load somewhat with Indianapolis and Cincinnati. Beyond that a lot of the assumptions and conclusions are similar. He also thinks Toronto is the best expansion of the system, Omaha can be left on the table and Kansas City doesn't add much value. As far as the gravity assessment goes, that is not the only factor involved in that being good for HSR. Example is the lowest gravity pair in the NEC, Boston and Providence. They're 40 miles apart and its nearly continuous suburbs between. This is fairly worthless for HSR because it would be expensive, you'd be lucky if it averaged 100mph and driving would outcompete it. I actually left Dayton, Ohio off my route for this reason when compared to the much cleaner Cincinnati-Columbus direct. The entire reason I touted the CHN is because so many of the city pairs are 100-400 miles apart and there is space between them, which is ideal for HSR.

[@KyrilPG]

I have examples of rather short city pairs in Europe with average speeds of 140 - 150 mph... Like from my hometown, Paris, to my father's, Reims, a distance of roughly 100 miles done in 39 to 45 minutes depending on the saturation of the network and whether it serves the "off-line" city center station or the on-line station in the outskirts of the city. There are even shorter times, with even higher average speeds : 28 minutes to run from Disneyland Paris Resort station to Reims on-line station. The journey is a bit shorter in length and can be summed up to 4 minutes of acceleration, 20 minutes at 200mph and 4 minutes of deceleration. It's HSL territory all the way. And longer city pairs with 175+ mph of average speed on 200mph lines. So, the average speeds presented in the video are perfectly reachable, even exceedable. But for that, Americans really need to let go of the legacy "serial" / daisy chain model of railways dating back to the 19th century for their HSR networks. It's inefficient, unreliable and unrobust. A HSR line / network should not just be a faster line. The arterial or parallel model used in France and Spain, that bypasses cities, even the main ones and features many entry / exit spurs to connect to the regular network and to serve city centers, is the most efficient and most reliable. It offers a slew of different services, from all-stops to non-stop, the highest average speeds and great robustness. With this model, a HSR corridor is no longer simply a faster queue line of trains. It's a true backbone highway for high-speed trains where you virtually never slow down until you've arrived at your exit branch to the city center station or the on-line station in the outskirts of town.

[@dejanb109]

Why is west of the Mississipi where 11% of the US population lives where high-speed rail should never be built? Are there ways (i.e., politically, economically, etc.) to incentivize/make more appealing high-speed rail to this part of the US policymakers? I am thinking about how the war economy of the US was structured by elites to garner the support for warmaking complex in every state.

[@LucidStew]

Because it's too expensive for what you get and over those distances HSR competes poorly with air travel.

[@dejanb109]

@@LucidStewGot it. Thank you very much for the information!

[@CABOOSEBOB]

Big Dipper

[@AL5520]

There are a few things in your estimates that does not align with reality. 1. event with perfect conditions your estimated average speeds and times do not coincide with real world operating lines that are fully built for high speed and some are over optimistic. 2. Using existing ROW can save money but it won;t be fully built for HSR that requires (even in relatively flat areas), mild curves and gradient, something that existing ROW's don't offer. There is a reason why the rest of the world uses viaducts, tunnels and not using existing ROW's. Doing so will significantly lower your estimated average speeds. 3. Connecting smaller cities along the way and bringing the service to every region is important and crucial for the support such a project requires. I don't think that congress would have approved the Highway act if it skipped large sections of the country or consider some distances as "too long". 4. Smaller cities should be connected to to lines hat pass nearby, it doesn't have to go into the city, it can either have a station close enough with public transport connection to the city or a bypass that goes into the city center. Most trains can be direct, or with stops in big cities but a few should service the smaller towns and a more local high speed service can connect the towns in a specific area. 5. From current experience your cost estimates seems a bit low fro the US but as neither of us have the tools to get a more informed estimate (and history shows that even most "professional" estimates are wrong) but you're construction duration does seems over optimistic when taking into account other countries that are more efficient and cost effective than the US and have central governments and full public support. 6. Experience around the world shows that people are willing to use trains for long distances that are "not viable". There are very popular lines that are more than 600 miles and takes 6+ hours. 7. If you´re planing future lines they all should be government owned and maintained with open access, just like road and air travel are. you'll get more choices, competition and much lower prices.

[@LucidStew]

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. 1. True and quite possible. They're rough estimates. It's not a detailed study. 2. This is accounted for in anything I estimated. In cases where any ROW was too restrictive, I theoretically broke out of it on new ROW or viaduct and factored that into the cost and speed. 3. I did concentrate on the metro cores, but my general idea was that each metro would also have a couple of suburban stations on either end and moderately-sized-in-between-cities and other places of significance would have stations for local service. Apologies for lack of clarity on my part. 4. Same as #3. I encountered some smaller cities service would need to go through and some that were bypassed with the idea that there could be a station on the edge of town in a space ideal for development. 5. Definitely possible, but looking at it relative to CAHSR and BW, even if all three are underestimated, this would tend to show that CHN is a relatively good deal. But, yes, its a quick and dirty estimate. My main concern on the construction duration is the country's capacity to build HSR on a large scale in the immediate future. 12-15 years assumed ideal conditions and adequate funding at every step. 6. I've seen data supporting that as well. This was more about what was most relatively viable. Kansas City as the most relevant example in the video: if HSR is built to St. Louis from Chicago and let's say Dallas from Houston and both are quite popular, then you have a shift in paradigm and my conclusion about KC would need to be reevaluated. 7. This is a tough one inside metros because most of the rail ROWs are freight company owned and Interstate ROWs get intensely tricky, but it would indeed be ideal. I think, also, further purchase of freight ROWs by Amtrak would be good. Basically the more routing options the better.

[@KyrilPG]

I'd really disagree about point number 1. There are several lines / destination pairs in France or Spain that have average speeds substantially higher than those presented in the video. Some as high as 175+ mph (yes, average speed from origin to destination, *not* peak speed which is a sustained 200mph for most of the length of these lines / city pairs). One example of high average speed for a rather short distance is from Paris, where I live, to my father's city, Reims. The train has an average speed of 140-150 mph for a distance of roughly 100 miles with a substantial part crossing the Paris suburbs at slower / legacy speeds. It makes the entire journey in 39 to 45 minutes, depending on whether it's the "off-line" city center or the "on-line" outskirts-of-town stations and the saturation of the network, with a steady peak speed of 200mph (320kph). So the average speeds presented in the video are perfectly doable, there are ample examples in Europe. I've less disagreement on the other points.

[@PtrkHrnk]

The sound is too quiet, I can barely hear a thing.

[@LucidStew]

Thank you for your feedback. The sound was produced and edited to remain in a -6 to -18db range. I also like to keep the back track at -32db to avoid conflict with the voice over. If I turn things up from there, someone will complain the levels are too high. I hope to rectify some of that in the future by rolling channel revenues into a new mic. I'm about half way there atm. I also, unfortunately, live in an extremely noisy environment at the moment, and am not able to produce the audio at the quality level I'd like out of necessity and expediency.

[@docjanos]

There are 2 factors that have hindered HSR in the US and neither looks to be solved anytime soon. One is the conflict with freight. Only dedicated (and straight) rights-of-way solve this and that begins to abut into the 2nd problem--politics. HSR requires a multi-generational commitment that absorbs the pendulum swing of politics. This is not an issue in places like Japan, France, Germany and even Canada, societies in which the government's pivotal role in their otherwise free market economies is accepted by the more centrist parties [obviously not an issue in China, but unlike the others that is not a democracy]. In the USA it's a tug-of-war between the hands-off types and those who are all-in. HSR cannot withstand such pressures with its long interludes. Apart from Canada, all those countries have relatively closely strung origins annd destinations and, importantly, the final destinations for passengers are often not far from the central cites. But they all have issues as well, especially as low cost air is cheaper than HSR--albeit with all the attendant airport hassles. Most estimates of US HSR fares show extremely expensive tickets Perhaps most importantly one needs to model the demand 20 years out. Will the nature of tech be such that the demand for travel will continue to drop?

[@LucidStew]

Yup, very much ebbs and flows with Democrat and Republican control. I think the demand will be there. rail and air travel are the travel modes that are growing. Personal vehicle is stagnant. I do think we could make roads much smarter, increase their throughput, and therefore demand. This idea doesn't really exist in the current conversation because self-driving cars are kind of the focus. However, even with that tech in place it will work MUCH better if the road and the car can communicate and both systems share data at high speed to reroute traffic in real time.

[@wiz553]

They should be like Brightline west where they take advantage of existing ROWs to drive down cost (by billions). They also should partner with freight companies to get private funding. Speaking of funding, they should NOT rely on the federal government for funding because you will be pressured to begin construction before you are ready and it will be a mess (just like CAHSR). The states should also cooperate with each together to get more funding. In total, the project will cost more than 200 billion dollars.

[@LucidStew]

Most of my time and cost assumptions are built around the concept of utilizing interstate ROWs in the rural areas between cities, so the route concepts in this video do incorporate that philosophy. My argument against expecting the states to accomplish this on their own is almost no result in the present when many of these states have been studying the idea for decades. The cost is quite large and the project runs through at least 8 states. There may be negatives associated with federal involvement, but very little is getting done without it. Even the Lincoln Service upgrade to 110mph is mostly due to the ARRA grant Illinois got.

[@tonywalters7298]

@@LucidStew California got into a catch 22 with high speed rail, in that it would take the resources of the federal government to fund it, but since the feds see the project as strictly california's, they only invested bare minimum funding.

[@LucidStew]

@Tony Walters I think they made some very poor assumptions up front. Firstly, their cost analysis was quite bad and the project cost ended up being 4 times higher. Secondly, they assumed half the original project cost would be funded by the federal government without bothering to check with the federal government.

[@tonywalters7298]

@@LucidStew Also having very high design standards makes it harder to implement lower cost designs. I also think they should have done all the environmental and planning prior to going to voters for a bond issue.

[@LucidStew]

@@tonywalters7298 Personally I don't think the public should be voting on bonds. The legislature should be handling that, but unfortunately that's not how we do it. I'm not sure it would be practical to do all of the planning before you fund the construction. What if you decided not to build? That's a lot of money flushed. I DO think they should have had the route nailed down before getting the funding, though. That would have helped the cost estimate a lot.

[@realswampwitch2336]

16:40 Wrong. It should be built there. You are missing something in the economics. It will be built everywhere. And it will be magnetic levitation.

[@LucidStew]

Ok. Hopefully I'll still be alive when it's built and you can feel free to rub it in my face.

[@gumbyshrimp2606]

Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska is a high priority.

[@LucidStew]

Too relatively expensive for what you get.

[@gumbyshrimp2606]

@@malachaicarter4338 I want it

[@AaronSmith-sx4ez]

@@LucidStew It would include much of Iowa's and Nebraska's populations. Quad Cities: 380k. Cedar Rapids/Iowa City: 250k. Des Moines: 626k. Omaha/Council Bluffs: 1 million. Lincoln: 340k. Land acquitision should be cheaper and it could eventually connect to Denver and beyond.

[@michaeljones7927]

This entire discussion fails to take into consideration the differences between Europe and the United States. European railroads are nationalized and ours are privatized. European railroads are passenger train dominant and ours are overwhelming freight train dominant. HSR trains in Europe easily access city centers using tracks that are government owned and operated, and shared with freight trains, commuter trains, and conventional passenger trains. Freight rail companies in the U.S. are unwilling to share their rural trackage with Amtrak, and would f(ight fiercely any attempt to add passenger trains in congested urban areas (Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston being the three biggest examples of rail congestion). Moreover, if Amtrak can't increase its volume of passenger trains in those and other cities, and it can't without a perpetual legal battle, there is no way for state high speed rail authorities to force UP, BNSF, NS and CSX to share their properties with HSR. Only $$$$$ can possibly change the equation, but the ultimate problem may be electrification. The tallest rail cars are 20'-2" high and that precludes joint use of existing freight rail lines if passenger trains are electrically powered from overhead catenary. The more we explore these issues, the more complicated it gets. But onward we march because we know we need HSR.

[@LucidStew]

Yeah if the private companies that own the ROW don't go for it, those routes are shot. However, there is room in most ROWs to add track, so there has to be some way to negotiate that. My general assumption is that within privately owned ROWs, any new track would have to go up, over or around. Look at BNSF and CAHSR. They found a way to make that work.

[@michaeljones7927]

@@LucidStew Yes....they found a way to parallel BNSF, but at a gigantic cost for the massive pergola structures that allow the HSR line to cross over the freight line (all of which could have been avoided on the I-5 route). That's where much of the money has gone in the 119 miles under construction. Just remember, catenary will have to avoid spatial "conflict" with the freight clearance envelope. If I remember correctly, A.R.E.A. clearance requirements for new overhead structures is 25'-0". And railroad ROW is almost always 100 feet in width. That's insufficient for freight and HSR double track with catenary poles.

[@LucidStew]

@@michaeljones7927 Sounds about right, and these are issues I'm running into trying to figure out finer details of Chicago-Indianapolis. I don't want to spoil it though because I'm very interested in your take as you come from a much more informed position.

[@rapunzel1701]

Connecting cities because reasons is pointless. No one travels between Chicago and Cincinnati and no one in Indianapolis wants to go to Chicago, ever. CVG-ORD/MDW is 3 ERJs and 1 737. Economies are a lot more State centered so CDCC in Ohio makes way more sense. Brightline already has demand, East and West. There are 18 flights between South Florida and Orlando and >50 LA-Las Vegas.

[@LucidStew]

They're only 240 miles apart, that's not exactly flight distance. You'd be at least as likely to drive. Road traffic between Chicago and Indianapolis is not insignificant. You also have to remember, its not going to be one station in each downtown. You'd also have a couple of suburban stations per and intermediates like Lafayette by the Subaru plant or Greensburg by the Honda plant. Most trains would be local, not express. You can build CDCC in isolation, sure. It's not the worst idea, but have they done it?

[@Mgameing123]

Ofc there are people who travel between those cities. Just bc you don't doesn't mean others don't.

[@PuNicAdbo]

2:19 overheard wires are missing. Don't tell me they shit in this again.

[@LucidStew]

the Chargers that Amtrak plans on using come in a variety of configurations, including hybrid.

[@karthikmahesh2182]

This network kinda screws over most of Illinois which is not Chicago. Central Illinois erasure is blasphemy

[@LucidStew]

I will be addressing this in a future video with a concept people really hated in my latest video: bypasses. However, I don't think "erasure" is a fair assessment, as I do indicate that the current route near I-55 should be upgraded to faster regional rail to benefit Illinois in light of preferring going through Indianapolis with a high speed trunk.

[@qolspony]

A very population declining region. There is at least a case for regional rail in the state of Ohio. It population is equally distributed throughout the state (even more so than North Carolina) unlike the other Midwest states. Chicago is a rail hub for Freight. That's all it would ever be sadly.

[@user-gi8bc6us4d]

USA Hsr is bad

[@mrfleming79]

Let’s face it…it will not happen in our lifetime…

[@LucidStew]

Odds are low. They'd need to get serious about it soon. Lead time is usually 20-30 years for something like even part of the CHN

[@woodworking406]

Nice dream. This will never happen, not in the usa.

[@LucidStew]

Politics will look different in a generation.

[@madmadmal]

what a waste. it will never have decent ridership. the expense will be far higher than this video expects

[@LucidStew]

Prove it.

[@madmadmal]

@@LucidStew High Speed Rail is constrained in several ways. First the Federal Railway Administration. Has strict rules governing trains that exceed 125 mph+. Most important to those rules, there can be no at grade crossings. That means all traffic (train, auto, even foot) must pass separately either below or above. Trains at that speed cannot travel on current right of ways. Current freeways and rail traffic have curves designed for lower speed traffic. Taking a curve at 125 that is designed for traffic moving at 70 would cause passengers to be thrown about the cabin. Even railways sloped or train cars designed to tilt would cause very high G forces in the cabin on those curves to make passengers uncomfortable and probably cause injury for those up and moving. Grade changes are also a problem due to the same effects. Just to get proper right of ways for trains traveling that fast would be extremely expensive particularly in densely populated areas. Sure trains could go slower in those areas but that would mean travel times must increase. On top of those increased costs is ridership. Audits on California HSR currently project ticket prices (SF to LA) to be about the same as air travel and now project the line needing continued subsidies for operation. California HSR would take longer total travel times than point to point flying. Every stop along the way would entail additional time. HSR makes sense between two cities with high density populations with good public transit. Airports do that for the most part. Unless I live in downtown Chicago I have two airports serving other airports on those rail lines. If I live in Cicero IL, do I want to go downtown to catch a trail to St. Louis or go to Midway and catch Southwest. Southwest will probably get me there faster and if, like projected in California, the fares would be comparable then I have even less reason. If cities down to small towns, like in Europe, were designed for density the proposition would make sense. I can find a plethora of cities in Europe the size of Ft. Wayne that have a much smaller footprint. Those cities make local public transit a dream. Ft. Wayne has little public transit to the city center from many places that make sense. You need a car, and if you have a car the airport or downtown make little difference, in many cases the airport may be more convenient than trying to battle downtown traffic. There is very little in downtown Detroit that would draw passengers to it and if the trains start running to the airport do they make sense beyond flying? Is what I am saying proof, no. It can’t be until there is a HSR route that competes. I am just supporting my comment. If you disagree, great.