Excuse my confusion but why does all East / West passengerl traffic travel threw Chicago. It seems that it would be faster and less congested if a high speed rail line traveled from say Washigton DC threw Pittsburg Pa, Columbus Oh, Indianapolis In, to St Louis Mo. This route is heavily populated with conctrations of people on both sides of the right of way
A route from the East to St. Louis doesn't really connect with too much. Most of the major routes to the West have their eastern terminus in Chicago.
Yah,
Also it's just what it seems like thay have always done with trains. Chicago is just the "hub" of things. Also lots of population up there.
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It is called the Chicago Way.
Without it, how would taxpayer $$$ endup in Chicago?
ed
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Chicago became the 2nd city & passed St Louis by more than a century ago. Chicago is the hub for all forms of transit. Even the Chicago port has been very busy.
High speed rail needs cities within 500 miles (makes a 5 hour trip at 100mph). From the East coast to Chicago is at least 1000 miles. From NYC the low level route may take one to Buffalo. From there, another systems links the Ohio cities. From Chicago, a third hub goes east to Detroit & Cleveland, and west to St Louis, Milwaukee & St Paul.
Other locations have tried, but they have all failed. The National Limited once connected the cities you mentioned. Bad track & poor service on the route killed that train in the Carter years. Amtrak would have to own & rebuild most of the tracks.
I suspect most of the traffic is on I-80 or I-70.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that Lake Michigan is not easy to cross and Chicago's hub status comes from its being very much in the way -- one of the continent's biggest natural intersections.
Run a line from Cleveland to Portland, and it will have to go thru or around Chicago somehow.
Run a line from Indianapolis to Milwaukee and it will have to go thru or around Chicago.
Run a line from Omaha to Grand Rapids (MI) and the best routing is probably not far from Chicago.
There are exceptions (the old Wabash mainline comes to mind), but even if it did not have a very large population base, the tip end of Lake Michigan is a dandy place to cross railroad lines. If Illinois had never developed industrially, then lines would nonetheless cross in and around Hammond and Porter, Indiana, as they indeed still do. As RR history developed, we also have the situation of eastern megasystems meeting western (NS and CSX to UP and BNSF, with CN down the middle and CP functioning as a western road into Chicago.) That's six of the biggest seven carriers.
Also, Amtrak made Chicago a really big transfer point. It's a pity they never put a train on the old Wabash mainline to serve St. Louis - Detroit, but of course Chicago was the bigger pull for transfer passengers.
Whether CUS is the best transfer point is arguable (to me it is, since it's downtown), but if regional HSR lines are built most of the ones in the Central states are going to have something to do with the Chicago area. IMHO.
Forgive any misunderstanding I may have about American geography and history but I thought I read once that the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was at Rock Island Ill. and Chicago was the closest big city. It was already a major city in the area and then to find itself on the first main east/west line was just a bonus.
AgentKid
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I'm sure your take on Midwestern history and RR history is fine.
Sounds like a chicken-and-egg situtation to me. Chicago was a prominent city but the railroads were a factor in making Chicago a huge city. And a really big city was worth going out of one's way for, or at least to "bend" a little in that direction. Hence all the junctions and crossings in the region. Also, unlike Manhattan, getting into and out of Chicago did not call for very many large RR (or highway) bridges . . .
I thought the "choice" was imposed on them by the old technology vs. geography struggle so common in the history of railroad building.
Yes, I'm sure the struggle you mention benefited Chicago especially well. We had a fire-burnt city in 1871 that needed to modernize itself just before Reconstruction ended and America got very capital-intensive, with the RR's being the "dot coms" of the late 19th Century.
It would be a whole different matter today. In fact, so much of Chicago is drained marshland (and reversing a river helped) that the EPA would probably declare much of the town "off limits" as Wetlands if it were discovered today!
This line did exsist at one point in time the Pennsy had a main line from P'Burg to St. louis thru C'bus and Indy. It used to have lots of freight and Passenger business. It was taken out by Conrail in favor of the NYC Big Four Route (now owned by CSX) which basically covers the same area. There is still alot of traffic on it. Pretty much anything from Texas and points South West like chemical and manifest freight from the Union Pacific/ Missouri Pacific/Southern Pacific bound to east coast points on the former Conrail take this route Skipping Chicago.
I guess my post did not relate to the passenger question....
alcodave I guess my post did not relate to the passenger question....
Well, I think it does.
Passenger traffic naturaly followed the economic development and the passenger flows mimicked the freight flows.
The Pensy even boasted a train to handle that Texas business you talk about. It was called "The Penn Texas" and carried "a bunch" of through sleeping cars between New York's Penn Station and San Antonio, Houston, DFW and El Paso. But the St. Louis route was, in fact, specialized into the Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas business while Chicago handled almost everything else.
That Texas sleeper traiffic was basically commercial travel and it got off the train about as soon as Branif began flying DC-6s between Texas and New York.
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