Of course, living in Champaign, I'm all for it. However, it seems redundant with the Chicago-Bloomington-St Louis HSR. But, curiously, the route through Bloomington would be a 110 mph route, but the Champaign route would be 220 mph. And, the Bloomington route has an abandoned 2nd main the entire way. Whereas, the Champaign route would have to use the single tracked NS from Tolono to St Louis.
Personally, I think the Midwest High Speed Rail Study is just an idea tank and nothing will come of it. Here's a couple of links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/30/plan-calls-for-midwest-hi_n_223500.html
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=20770
There is no way 220 mph trains are going to run between Chicago and St. Louis through Champaign, Tolono and Decatur. This route passes through far too many towns and has multitudes of grade crossings that would make anything approaching this speed an impossibility. This proposal, like some of the other HSR routes being talked about, is just a pipe dream and it baffles me why the media would give any credence to it.
Mark
Also, Tolono to Decatur is one the absolute arteries of the NS system, with noticeable traffic. I can't imagine NS is going to allow 220 mph trains there.
I know I sound like a broken record, but why we (we being this country rather than this forum) keep talking about high speed rail is beyond me. The Chicago - Saint Louis corridor is a great example.
WIth comparatively miniscule funding, they could bring the old Alton to 90-110 mph track speeds, remove some of the bottle necks--like poor sidings and waiting points--and have reliable service with only three or four stops, you would be getting 90% of the benefit of high speed rail for 5% of the cost. Same for Indianapolis to Chicago.
If you give me a reliable train between Indy and Chicago that travels at 80 mph, I don't think I would ever drive to Chicago. Why we have to keep making the standard some 220 mph elixir that will never happen is beyond me.
Gabe
P.S. Sorry for the misspellings. I am on the road and it is hard to type.
gabe Also, Tolono to Decatur is one the absolute arteries of the NS system, with noticeable traffic. I can't imagine NS is going to allow 220 mph trains there. I know I sound like a broken record, but why we (we being this country rather than this forum) keep talking about high speed rail is beyond me. The Chicago - Saint Louis corridor is a great example. WIth comparatively miniscule funding, they could bring the old Alton to 90-110 mph track speeds, remove some of the bottle necks--like poor sidings and waiting points--and have reliable service with only three or four stops, you would be getting 90% of the benefit of high speed rail for 5% of the cost. Same for Indianapolis to Chicago. If you give me a reliable train between Indy and Chicago that travels at 80 mph, I don't think I would ever drive to Chicago. Why we have to keep making the standard some 220 mph elixir that will never happen is beyond me. Gabe P.S. Sorry for the misspellings. I am on the road and it is hard to type.
Gabe,
I am in total agreement with all the points you make. Ditto your comments for the Michigan, Missouri, Heartland and other Illinois corridor routes (and also for many other Amtrak routes, both corridor and LD). 220 mph HSR on existing ROW's is just not practical anywhere in the US in the foreseeable future. Maybe some day, but if it ever comes to pass it'll likely be a totally different technology such as maglev.
DennisHeldThe local Champaign news outlets have been running a story that the Midwest High Speed Rail study group has released a HSR study plan for a Chicago to Champaign to St Louis route of 220 mph trains. The plan would use the abandoned 2nd main of the CN (ex-IC) from Chicago to Tolono, IL. It would pick up the NS from Tolono through Decatur, then to St Louis. Of course, living in Champaign, I'm all for it. However, it seems redundant with the Chicago-Bloomington-St Louis HSR. But, curiously, the route through Bloomington would be a 110 mph route, but the Champaign route would be 220 mph. And, the Bloomington route has an abandoned 2nd main the entire way. Whereas, the Champaign route would have to use the single tracked NS from Tolono to St Louis. Personally, I think the Midwest High Speed Rail Study is just an idea tank and nothing will come of it. Here's a couple of links: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/30/plan-calls-for-midwest-hi_n_223500.html http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=20770
Personally, I think the reporters and editors at the "local Champaign news outlets" have been hitting the champagne -- or perhaps been smoking a controlled substance -- a little too much.
Here's why: first, freight and high-speed (herein defined as averaging faster than 150 MPH) passenger traffic CANNOT share the same roadway. Freight trains will get in the way. To justify the enormous expense of constructing from the ground up a Eurasian-style high speed line, delays from freight trains cannot be allowed. So...you have to build a dedicated high-speed railway, just like the Europeans do (I've seen high-speed and freight/local service tracks running side by side, but like oil and water, the two do not mix). Moreover, ALL grade crossings (rail and highway, including private crossings) must, for safety reasons, be engineered out of the high-speed railway -- you can't allow them (to do otherwise is to beg some farmer with his combine, or schoolbus or fuel truck, to be on the crossing at the wrong time...). Moreover, if we spend that much money for dedicated high speed train service, you have to run the trains at intervals of no less than hourly -- else why build the line in the first place -- if you build it anyway with infrequent service , you accomplish just as much good as if you connect by high-speed rail Chicago with Paducah, KY -- who's gonna ride the thing?
Finally, when politicians (including our own fearless leader from Punahou) talk about "high-speed trains," they may think of 120- or 150- or even 220 MPH service, but their funding ceiling stops at 69 MPH, maybe 79 MPH. Like the ballyhooed $9 billion in federal bucks for high-speed rail rail being spread around multiple corridors so that nobody anywhere will see anything like high-speed service. Maybe politician high-speed equals in their mind eurasian high-speed. Still, to inject a note or reality here, if anyone were semi-serious about high-speed rail, the $9 billion number would be followed by another zero, and if truly serious, two zeroes.
Now other commentators could all be wrong about this, and even I could be grossly mistaken; yet although I haven't had any champagne before belting this out (nor smoked any controlled substance), I can assure you that even if I had, my perspective on this issue would remain unchanged!
Here's the story:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-high-speed-rail-30-jun30,0,2990669.story
Sorry, not in my lifetime.
The study turns a $4Bil project into a $11Bil project. Not going to happen. The HSR crowd can be just like the pioneers and connect Chicago & somewhere to St Louis. Sometimes rail fans can be their own worst enemies, spending somebody else's money. They must think this Global Warming money comes from the thin air for them to spend.
The Champaign papers that know nothing get excited if they get to share in that $11Bil pot
....If "high speed corridors" are constructed in the near future....I'd like to see design and construction stay "reasonable"....such as upgrade existing ROW's where possible and new where necessary....to be run at speeds, perhaps in the 100 to 115 mph or so. Maybe in the near future, that might be possible and adequate.
Quentin
Just took the Saluki from CUS to Champaign this morning. Plenty of freights in the hole while we blew by and the detectors said we were doing 80MPH most of the way. The major dogtime was getting out of Chicago - up the Air Line, past McCormick Place, etc. ROW looks like it would have to be elevated or otherwise separated from the landscape
Just some observations.
Copied links to activate for Poster!
Edit: I was just going to activate the links for Dennis, but I got to reading the links posted by jclass and Dennis Held.
Don't get me wrong I want modern and fast transportation as much as anyone else, BUT a couple of questions come to mind:
A.) Where are they going to come up with $12 Billion for this project?
Based on some of the figures for rebuilding/creating new ROW's and and even maintenance, that have been quoted from time to time by MudChicken and Railwayman Twelve Billion might just be a point in space to sell this HSR to Ill and the Federal Pols.
A1.) I would thoink that for safety that a minimum requirement might be a need for double track and or a complete seperation of passenger operations from freight operations.
B.) According to many economists(interviewed in media outlets) we are on a slippery slope towards a Financial Black Hole. { Do not want to start a political donny-brook so I'll let that lie}
C.) Why would you need that kind of HSR link for a 295 +/- mile trip?
D.) Again, Who is going to pay for this?
I believe that the price tags on projects as costly as these do merely state a number that has very little relationship to the actual price in the end. The public agencies that will build the system want estimates so they can put numbers on the project and sell it to the public. All the builders and suppliers lowball just to get their foot in the door, and then ratchet up as the project moves toward a final go-ahead. And the process continues at every opportunity once the project begins.
This dynamic occurs all the time with public spending on infrastructure. But it is in uncharted water when it gets into the stratospheric cost levels implied by these massive new HSR projects. We have never actually been there before, but there is a point where the rising cost can just run away toward infinity, and the project dies from the overrun. It takes cost overrun to its ultimate conclusion.
Just a couple of wry queries...
Are these the same people who keep proposing various HSR links between Las Vegas and Los Angeles?
Or are they the descendants of the lotus-eaters who (during the height of WWII) wrote popular magazine articles about a post-war world full of consumer aeronautics that never happened? (I'm still waiting for my personal autogyro...)
I wonder if anyone has measured either the air temperature or composition of the atmosphere in the rooms where these people meet to write press releases about their embellishments to the square wheel...
Chuck (bemused observer)
Boy, being kind of short-sighted, aren't we folks?. I'm surprised anything ever gets built in this country. Every other modern industrialized country in the world seems to be able to build and operate high speed trains. Why should we remain a backwards third world place when it comes to transportation?
Will it be expensive?. Sure. The Interstate Highway system was expensive, but we managed to build it. The Panama Canal was expensive, but we managed to build it. Foreign wars are expensive but we manage to fund them.
A 220 mph high speed rail system isn't compatible with freight trains, so separate tracks would have to be built.
Some kind of updated 1950's passenger train won't bring the public back to the rails.
You got to think big to make progress.
But what the heck, go ahead, guys live in the past.
One problem is that the public wants everything all at once. Few people realize that the European HSR systems were developed incrementally over decades and that the political climate is quite different than on this side of the Atlantic.
On a much smaller scale, many commuters in Du Page County wanted restoration of the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin after service was suspended in 1957 but they were quite unwilling to tax themselves to pay for that service. They wouldn't even pay for CTA's proposed Forest Park-Wheaton light rail operation, although CTA may have made this proposal knowing that a funding solution would not come to pass.
Mike O Boy, being kind of short-sighted, aren't we folks?. I'm surprised anything ever gets built in this country. Every other modern industrialized country in the world seems to be able to build and operate high speed trains. Why should we remain a backwards third world place when it comes to transportation? Will it be expensive?. Sure. The Interstate Highway system was expensive, but we managed to build it. The Panama Canal was expensive, but we managed to build it. Foreign wars are expensive but we manage to fund them. A 220 mph high speed rail system isn't compatible with freight trains, so separate tracks would have to be built. Some kind of updated 1950's passenger train won't bring the public back to the rails. You got to think big to make progress. But what the heck, go ahead, guys live in the past.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
The interstate highway system was originally touted as a military deployment system. The Panama Canal was taken up by the United States so that we could fight wars in two oceans with a single Navy.
The present proposals all call the various HSR proposals civilian transportation. Nobody has even suggested that they would have one iota of value in military activity.
Since the general perception is that the public prefers the convenience of their personal transportation, running over their personally chosen routes and departing/arriving at their whim (and without the hassle of ticket procurement and security checks) HSR wouldn't bring many back to the currently-deserted rails. Talk to any twenty persons at random, and eighteen of them will say some variant of, "Rail travel is so-o last century..." (Quote from a UNLV coed.)
IMHO, it's the people who think traffic will go back to some variant of flanged wheels on steel rails who are living in an imperfectly-remembered past. Interesting to note that very few of them are willing to put THEIR PERSONAL money into these schemes. They all want to fund them with tax dollars extorted from a mostly-disinterested public which will never use HSR even if it is built.
Bah, humbug.
Chuck
The 220 mph versus 80-110 mph "debate" reminds me a bit of the SST Concorde planes of a few decades ago. They were fast but they are gone and the conventional workhorse jets keep taking us across the ocean. I know that crash in Paris was the final blow but they never really had much future.
So... just give me a dependable, on-time train that saves some time compared to driving and that doesn't cost so many billions.
I agree that the HS in HSR is supposed to be the magic carrot that woos people back onto the train, but in most cases, it will not overcome the preference for the private automobile traveling at freeway speed. And besides, the FRA says that the purpose of HSR is to reduce the production of CO2 and our dependence on oil. Yet, arguably HSR will produce more CO2 than the private transportation it will replace.
I believe the slowest part of the route between St. Louis and Chicago would be the 20 miles between Wood River and East St. Louis, which is under yard limits. It seems logical to me to build a passenger line there now, which could be adapted to HSR later.
And in the Third World, South Africa is opening a 100 mph line linking Johannesburg with Pretoria.http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/gautrain/
Thank you Dale,
Not to say you buy my point, but you lead into it nicely. The aspect about the high-speed rail argument between Saint Louis and Chicago that leaves me at a loss in accepting people's assertions that we are living in the past in not building it is: for a small fraction of the price of building the high-speed rail project discussed above, we could bring the existing route up to 110 mph, remove the bottlenecks, and make service more consistent.
To the extent we see a return on this investment--not necessarily in dollars, but in terms of cars taken off the highway, we can then discuss further upgrades.
P.S. My love of trains aside if Amtrak could consistenly get me from Indianapolis to Chicago in 2 hours and 45 minutes, I would never ever drive to Chicago. Because It inconsistently gets me there in over 5 hours and has inconsistent and untimely service, I will never take the train to Chicago.
Re- How are we going to pay for it?
The only way to pay for HSR and all the rest of the staggering debt that is being piled up at this moment is to inflate the money supply by printing money. Debt slows down growth, and we are way past the tipping point where growth can service our debt. That horse has left the barn. Printing money reaches right into your private accounts and takes your money without any limitation. The only refuge from this kind of inflation is to have nothing to lose. A lack of a flashy new transportation system to show the rest of the world we have arrived will be the least of our worries.
I'm always thinking Illinois and Indiana should be very much alike, but they are poles apart when it comes to passenger rail.
The article is old and outdated. It was published Jun 30,2009 before DOT HSR guidelines and way before the original ARRA awards that were issued last fall. The exception was the California grant but the grant amount was close to what a 110 MPH grant would be with California putting up the rest of the money? The DOT was proposing the Japan and European incremental approach. As each incremental speed is achieved the next higher ones will emerge as a public demand. I most definitely desire to ride a 220 MPH train in my area but will leave it to my children?" and grandchildren to do so. Too few 220 MPH trains with out the required backup feed would probably fail.
Europe is a system not a disjointed series of unconnected HSRs.
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