I know it’s in Canada but I’d love to see a video on a HSR corridor from Windsor to Quebec City. It could even be extended to Detroit and potentially Chicago
This, I asked Stew about about this a few weeks ago and he said he would cover connections to Canada, but not the line itself. I’d love to see him reach out to Paige Saunders or RM Transit and collaborate on something. The cultural zeitgeist towards rail is really shifting in Ontario this year and he could produce a very popular video if he tried into it. More Canadians should know about High Frequency Rail and realize we are a month away from making a commitment to build high speed rail (or stick with slow trains).
Dude I am currently dating a girl in Ontario and I CANNOT stress enough how wonderful this route would be. I already traveled to Toronto a lot for numerous other reasons but now with an SO over there having this line would be great. Obviously not just for me, cause man oh man, do I see a crap ton of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio plates crossing over. Even some Missouri. Ofc NY / PA / NJ etc too but they are not really in that corridor area obviously. Conversely I see a huge number of Ontarians here in Chicago. I am not kidding when I think that a Chicago to Golden Horseshoe Area to Montreal / Quebec City corridor of HSR is the MOST feasible in North America outside of the NEC (and a theoretical SEC connecting to the NEC, as well as the California HSR). Going to be honest, I dont think projects like the Texas HSR project have enough support or public awareness OR even viable connections / stops to really support something like that... Especially if it's Texas only. Imagine getting off and immediately having to rent a car to get around a distant but also public transit-less unwalkable hellhole. No thanks. but I'd never live in Texas anyway so I guess that point is moot.
Neither Canadian nor American but I've always wondered about extending the Empire corridor from Buffalo across Ontario to Detroit via London and Windsor. I assume there would be enough issues that you couldn't HSR it or you would have an American HSR with no Canadian stops running straight across Canadian territory. But still, it would be the most direct route and would give Amtrak impetus to get the Corridor up to NEC standards or above 200 mph with options to connect Toronto/Hamilton to New York.
Great work as always. I'm partial to Urbana-Champaign even if Decatur is kinda a mess. The Indianopolis connection is too strong, and you get Indy to St. Louis.
You could ways pick up Champaign on the way to Indianapolis from Bloomington. I actually had come up with a scheme for ring rail around Bloomington, Champaign, and Decatur as the center of a greatly expanded regional system, but the video was already too long.
@@LucidStew There is a plan in the concept stages for what is now known as the Illinois Circumferential Route, which would connect Champaign/Urbana (or Cham-bana, for short), Bloomington/Normal, Peoria, Galesburg, and the Quad Cities. Figuring out a way to include Decatur shouldn't be too difficult. In March, 2024, Senator Dick Durbin started the process of putting feelers out for the Peoria-to-Quad Cities portion of the route. The Peoria-to-Bloomington/Normal-to-Champaign portion seems like the segment to focus on first, but, whatever.
@@LucidStew Illinois does need a nice ring rail. As it is right now it's impractical to use rail to get around downstate IL since you'd have to transfer in Chicago if the city you're going to isn't on the same line as the starting city.
@@imminent_flight_risk That's another reason I picked Bloomington-Normal. The various ILHSR Commission maps indicate a route from Champaign to Peoria through there. Of course, you could still have that if the HSR trunk went through Champaign instead. But in terms of the state of Illinois, Normal is a little more efficient for that idea.
Hi Stew, thanks for making this video. it's a great discussion driver and overview. I do have to say, though, the route to Decatur and Champaign is, in my opinion, the best choice by far. If you go to Champaign, you get the following (among many other things but I'll keep it short): 1) about the same travel time (further improved by 220+ max speeds) 2) an easy way to bring the station directly to the existing downtown with virtually no destruction of private property and low land acquisition costs, since likely station land (on the east side of the CN tracks across from the current train station) is already publicly owned. Bloomington is going to be destructive no matter how you do it. 3) easy access to the 6th largest student population in the United States (around 56,000 students!) who will drive a ton of ridership, a growing and densifying urban environment, and a transit system that punches well above its weight 4) means that the 2 billion already invested into improving the existing Lincoln service corridor doesn't go to waste and can feed into the system at Springfield instead (Illinois/Amtrak would probably discontinue the service entirely if HSR is built directly parallel to it). Decatur also has a couple of decent route options. One is a route from Champaign which enters Decatur south of Decatur Airport and travels north to west along the east side of highway 36, paralleling DREI and then NS tracks until around the I-72 and I-74 interchange. With some retained fill and elevated structure, it would only require some low rise commercial property acquisition and possibly some adjustments to the footprint of highway 36. Otherwise a station along 72 would still be way better than it seems - would be a dramatic improvement over 4 daily intercity buses and 0 passenger service, and with a lot of room to grow and densify around it.
I can appreciate Champaign as an option, especially if they choose not to electrify. Electrified and needing space, Decatur seems difficult from any direction, unless going with the northern route in the video, which really isn't THAT bad.
Don’t tease me like this!! Live in STL but hardly ever go to Chicago because the transit access is abysmal. The current Amtrak offerings are always late and mean you have to dedicate an entire day to travel up or down. High speed rail like this would actually have me and my fiancée visiting at least six times a year. Plus, high speed rail of this nature would open up the ability to hold a hybrid job based out of Chicago and still live in St. Louis. Travel up Tuesday morning, in office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and back down that afternoon.
One correction. I live in Springfield. It's a great city. But we do not have anywhere near 700,000 in our metro. It's more like 300,000 and that's still being very generous
Resident of Kankakee Metro here! It’s pronounced locally as Kay-n-ka-kee. Always wanted to be the guy that comments that on the video. Hsr going through kankakee would be a massive boon, our downtown used to be lively and reasonably dense before industry left in the 50s and 60s. We have way, WAY too many parking lots. I’ve spoken with local developers in the downtown area and there appears to be a massive wave of new redevelopment in town! Ps I loved the cut to the “bitchin’” mall 😂, I hear talks of some massive redevelopment there as well supported by the village but we shall see if anything really happens.
Back at it again! Helping map America's future infrastructure. I wonder what a transborder train would look like. Like Seattle to Vancouver or Boston to Montreal.
Really happy to see the usage of the super straight abandoned rail ROW south of Springfield. I'm a St. Louis resident and have done a lot of fiddling around with this route on NIMBY Rails, and I used the same track. I dont mind the Kankakee stop and routing, but I would probably also add a stop in the southern suburbs, like Homewood. If the Rock Island routing was used via Joliet, a stop at Joilet would be needed for sure. Its VERY popular for the lincoln service.
I know it may be crazy, but how about a video redesigning Brightline's current South Florida corridor into a fully grade separated one capable of 225 mph speeds, with the planned extension to Tampa? I'm curious to see if that's possible and how it would work.
The only way this is possible is by a stacked configuration where they build a viaduct directly on top of active tracks that is 150+ miles long. That would cost a LOT of money - probably the same price as the CA HSR project lol
As someone who does road calls all over this area. Metras Manhattan line could also be a initial route out of chi town. It would put you closer to joliet without putting you in downtown. And capturing the joliet traffic would make this alot more justifiable to the legislators. Yes Kankakee has a whole county named after it but its not that big and the abandoned row you can develop s of Manhattan beats out the 57 median in my opinion. That and the rural folk around here fought tooth and nail against the Illiiana. So all that wide open land isnt quite up for grabs like youd think. Definitely have a easier time going after a rail trail than greenfield
It's entirely reasonable to cap speeds at 200mph but there's a tiny part of me that just thinks "I'm an American goddamnit I want it as fast as it'll go" i.e. 225 or so.
250mph gets thrown around sometimes in studies, like for Pacific Northwest. Train sets continue to get lighter and more powerful. Maybe someday it would be economical. I read an article recently from Innotrans where an Alstom exec said the speed wars were over when explaining why the Avelia Horizons have a top speed of only 200mph. Their big feature is that the carriages are double-decker.
I feel like if it cuts the time it takes from one big city to another, which it does because it takes 4 hrs and 21 minutes for one trip by car, it should be worth it. Especially since it also competes with flying. Also, if they are concerned about saving money, then I would go for the Diesel-electric Option. Also, for the south of Chicago segment of the route that goes along Interstate 57, I would do a viaduct instead of a man-made landscape elevation. It will probably make it more expensive, but I think it would be worth it considering the environmental impact that viaducts would have
The breakeven ticket price calculation you did right at the end was sobering. I'd be curious if A) longer trains would improve the payoff time or allow for lower ticket prices, and B) how the price compares to the price we pay for those interstates via taxes.
Those highways aren't cheap, and that was about a normal price for high speed rail in Europe. The key to lowering it is to make transit attractive enough in all the destinations so more people choose the train over driving.
Given the predicted ticket prices, the encouraging part is that there appears to be enough money to both cover operating expense and pay off infrastructure over 100 years(except for any financing) IF they could manage 3 million trips/year.
The idea that it does have to come to a breakeven is not correct : the environmental and climate impact are to be taken into account. The train will in the long term be much better then continuing flying. What we would need is a gradual increase in taxes on kerosine for the planes, and redirect this money to rail infrastructure. The increase should be mild because there are too many flight connexions where no reasonable rail alternative will be available for the next 3 to 5 decades.
@@tonguepiercing I agree. I phrased it this way because many people, including our dear leader Lucid himself, are more fiscally conservative, so I want to be able to make arguments in that vein; even though it shouldn't matter given the climate benefits.
One thing not covered in the payback calculations is the possibility of a wider network. Connections at Chicago to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or Detroit, or at Champaign to Indianapolis (a strong reason to prefer Champaign-Urbana over Bloomington-Normal), would drive a lot more ridership, lowering the ticket prices needed for breakeven.
Great video! Just a comment - would be nice to see a few different alternative routings or alternatives that include other major cities in that general corridor. The alternatives I can see include the following: 1. Chicago - Peoria - Springfield - St Louis 2. Chicago - Bloomington - Springfield - St Louis 3. Chicago - Champaign - Decatur - Springfield - St Louis 4. Y-shaped alternative, with branches meeting in Springfield on the way to St Louis. The western branch is Chicago - Peoria or Bloomington - Springfield, with the eastern branch going Chicago - Decatur - Springfield. In this case, you could run a loop from Chicago - Springfield - Chicago, and later on branch out Champaign to connect to Indianapolis, which would be about 130-140 miles through mostly flat farmland, pretty easy to do and would massively improve the viability of the network (more $$$ to pay for itself)
But hopefully you have planned with slab track. Above 125mph you won't have any fun with normal rails because you have to constantly drive over them with a tamping machine.
9:35 A greenfield route?! In my Lucid Stew?!!? That being said, running trains through empty and flat land does make things easier, even if not as many people are served. Go figure.
This is going by ILHSR Commission priorities, with speed high on the list. I usually try to tend toward less cost, less land acquisition, and less property demolition.
I honestly think itd be more worthwhile for the state of IL to just buy the Union Pacific line outright and remove freight traffic from the equation. UP has another route, the Pana Subdivision, that basically parallels the Joliet/Springfield Subdivision from Chicago to Granite City (they meet in the same place!). Since Metra already owns the Rock Island District, they could electrify it and have a stop in Joliet instead of Kankakee, where it would then turn south onto the ex. UP right of way.
Great job! I agree with Kankakee over Joliet. This could be shared line with future Indianapolis line thus reducing costs for that construction (and why they should start building now since it’s an ideal stretch). I’d prefer the Champagne stop as that would be a great connection for St Louis to Indy (and more shared line for reduced cost). Amtrak can reduce Lincoln service to stop at Springfield so Bloomington would still be served.
Also, a good thing you didn't use the Metra Electric route, unless you're imagining Eurostar-style multi-voltage electric trains. Why? Because Metra Electric (and the South Shore line to South Bend) use 1500 volts DC. Most modern high speed lines use 25,000 volts AC.
You seriously can't handle a recognition that the city population has declined by 65%? Want to point out anything else remotely negative I had to say about the place?
@@LucidStewRelax, dude, I’m joking around. I’ve never been to St. Louis and I’m not remotely emotionally invested in the place. I actually thought you were being funny/lowkey savage.
Yeah, probably eventually. I was thinking about driving down there one of these days. If I updated it, I'll probably do dashcam, drone, render like I'm going to do with the Brightline West construction. Might be a while, though
As a Canadian, while far from perfect, CN has been willing to play ball with governments when it comes to passenger rail projects. So using the CN line around Kankakee would be a good choice. It could definitely trigger some significant growth in the Kankakee area for commuter trains on the high speed line - assuming relatively frequent service (hourly or better all day).
I wish they would consider true high speed between Chicago and Milwaukee, like they did in the 1980 with the turbo liner. I think if Illinois would start with the shorter 70 mile distance, true high speed between Chicago and Milwaukee would be a great way to test the feasible for a long run like Chicago and St. Louis.
Didn't realize how small Saint Louis is. Less than 300k residents is wild. That's less than the suburb of North Las Vegas, NV! Maybe North Las Vegas deserves a Federal Reserve bank...
St Louis like several other rust belt cities has a relatively small hollowed out central city surrounded by a significant metro region. The St Louis metro region is about 2.8M while the Vegas metro is about 2.2M. Cleveland, and Cincinnati are very similar in size, while Detroit city and metro is about twice. Versus cities like Indianapolis and Columbus where the city is about 800k but the metro is still only a little over 2M
@@cmbakerxx for sure. Center city population is crucial for HSR though. A dispersed population in a sprawling metro is much more likely to drive… since they need to drive in to the city center to even get on the train… Sounds like this city pair is doomed unless central STL can revive itself
St. Louis is small geographically. Unlike most other large U.S. cities, it never absorbed its suburbs. St. Louis County, which is closer to the amount of surrounding area absorbed by most other large U.S. cities, and St. Louis city have a combined population of 1.3 million.
This looks really good but I do wish it could go through Champaign. Being able to take a high-speed train from UIUC to Chicago would be the dream Oh well, I should probably be happy HSR is even being seriously considered in the US
You would think that the freight RRs would like to reroute to the same alignment as HSR. I would assume that the cost to them would eventually pay for itself; with not having to maintain grade crossings.
Where did you get the 700,000 number for Springfield's metro area? Even adding in the combined metro area only gets a population of a little over 303,000.
Love your detailed work! I do think you grabbed the wrong Springfield when you mention metro population -- the Combined Statistica Area population of Springfield MA is about 700k, while Sprinfield IL is about 300k...combining the metropolitan + micropolitan areas of Springfield, Jacksonville, Taylorville and Lincoln.
@@LucidStew Yeah, Springfield proper is a bit over 100,000. But it doesn't have THAT much metro. That said, being the capital, it's kind of key to this whole route (and why it's profitable in the first place). If you are going to run things through East St. Louis, you may as well put in a satellite station/junction running to Cahokia (run schoolkids on charters to the mounds, bump up the tourist trade). Similarly, the "new" route would locate the station right by the Lincoln Historic District, (the old station is much more coveniant for the museum and old capitol building, though the whole bit is walkable. The other bit is getting Springfield to the Loop time down low enough to make "up and back" really practical.
@@AndrewDederer The downtown area is deceptively robust, probably due to governmental buildings, so I didn't really balk at 700,000, but looking at the size of the metro compared to the other mid-Illinois metros I should have realized it was high.
@@LucidStew Count the parking lots, there are a lot of empty buildings (and lots where they used to be) downtown. Which is why I re-located after College. The government is pretty big, but it's also just about the only game in town (except tourism).
The one thing that concerns me about any CHI-STL HSR is a general lack of intercity connections once you arrive in St. Louis. Yes, there is the River Runner to KC, but other than that, there seems to be very little else forthcoming. I have seen STL-Springfield, MO-Tulsa-OKC proposed, but that's about it. All the other proposed Chicago Hub Network termini, MSP/St Paul, Indy, and Detroit, have plans, or at least ideas for plans, for connecting routes, so they would serve as hubs themselves and collection/disbursal points for the HSR. ETA - Considering that nearly 90% of the STL Metro population resides outside of the city proper, it might be advisable to stop at Gateway Multimodal, but actually terminate in suburban Kirkwood. Also, at 5:32 you mention the need to move some of Amtrak's maintenance facilities to accommodate the St. Charles Air Line Connector into Union Station. The CMAP report fails to mention that, as part of the CHIP program, Amtrak would acquire the now-unused Union Pacific rail yard at 23rd and Canal Streets in the Chinatown neighborhood, immediately south of Amtrak's current yards.. One other thing to consider, heading south out of Chicago Metro along Interstate 57, is the possible need to stop at a future airport in rural Peotone on the way to Kankakee. Many have written off the idea of a Peotone airport, but the State of Illinois continues to hold the land it has acquired for the initial airport layout, and state legislators recently started discussing initially building Peotone as a cargo airport, with the option of expansion and the introduction of passenger service. The fully built out vision for Peotone would see six large parallel runways, the same configuration as O'Hare, which, after a new Terminal 2 and the satellites are built, would likely rule out any further possible expansion.
The route between downtown and Kirkwood is pretty slow. The county would be better off expanding transit. Maybe express buses initially. Either way, you have to start somewhere. I don't agree with the philosophy of intercity waiting on transit or vice versa. If either are good ideas and a good price, they should be built.
How would an extension to Milwaukee look? Instead start/terminate the service at Milwaukee and then use Chicago as a pass through to to alleviate traffic at Union and pick up more passengers at Milwaukee and MKE airport stop?
So Stew from St Luis do you go straight west to Kansas City ore SW to connect with the Tulsa HSR from Texas potentially giving a Chicago - Dallas direct HSR service?
That's the question. You have 3 reasonable north-south routes to connect those areas. KC-Fort Worth, STL-Memphis, Indianapolis-Nashville. How many, if any, are worth it? Assuming Memphis is in the middle of a line between Nashville and Little Rock, Memphis is probably out because there's very little between it and STL. KC and Fort Worth. Is OKC and Tulsa or Wichita worth 500 miles of HSR? Probably not. Indianapolis, you pick up about 3 million people & connect to Atlanta. Seems like the most attractive out of an underwhelming group.
I think the Rock Island line is the right choice. Yes Metra Electric is Electric, but it’s electrified at 1.5kV DC not well suited for high speed. I think Italy is the only country which does run High Speed Trains under DC (3kV). While you could install some additional 25kV 60Hz AC on Parallel Tracks to Metra electric, you may end up interference and possibly even having to replace the entire Metra Electric Signaling System if it is 60Hz AC powered. Of course you could buy Train-sets which support both 1.5kV DC and 25kV AC. As Europes Rail electrification is a mess, basically every Train designed in Europe (Siemens or Alstom )will support multiple different electrification system if required. Still this would men more complexity.
Do we have to stop Bloomington-Normal ha? I just want a direct route to STL-CHI like if I was going to take a plane. Or at least have that as like an express option that runs 2-3x a day and then a "local" that still goes fast, but stops in B-N, Springfield and so on.
You can definitely have super express in addition to other services, but you'd probably only have a couple a day each way. Routes through cities here are pretty direct and not super slow, so bypasses would unfortunately only save a few minutes and probably wouldn't be worth the extra cost. Still, because the train wouldn't need to slow for stops, you'd likely gain about 35-40 minutes on a super express compared to the service presented in the video.
iit should include a branch tho champaign-urbana where it would cinnect to the exting services to southern illinois which would have to get better timming fr or political reasoms.
I like your videos, but I am always confused if we start talking about travel time. no idea if 26min or 55min is fast or slow now because of miles. 🤷♂ 200 miles per hour does not even sound fast to me. we have regional trains now going 200 kmh. but anyway keep going.
Satire might not be appropriate here, but I posit that we need vastly improved times between Chicago and St. Louis because the butt cannot endure the seats in the Venture cars at the current 110 mph. Thus, the sooner we get off the damn thing, the happier humans we will be.
@@LucidStew see i understand the aquarium could be fairly hard to move.~ but as a location it well suited, its size is help for more than just HSR (which tbh I would route under the old terminal for the ability to head onwards to Kansas City and Denver. similar to that of other European stations. The Main station sections can be better utilized for commuter, Short and long distance trains as it was originally built and any Highspeed trains terminating in at St louis. with the route in i would almost take a wider turn in through East St louis with the aim of creating a better connection across the river and improving the connectivity the other side of the river to all the incoming lines Like a Clapham junction basically creating one a better connectivity to the rest of the system and bringing much needed uplift to the area?
I cringed at the ticket prices. If I were alone...maybe. If the bus fare is cheaper, I'd probably just do that and swallow the additional travel time. Those prices are high. If it's a group of people traveling, driving is without a doubt the superior option. Ticket prices are just way, way too high for a group. I love trains, but they are way too expensive in the US. I've nearly always taken the bus instead of the train because of it.
Respectfully, this analysis is facile. (To be fair, Lucid Stew is better than most of these public transport channels, but that is not saying much.) LS calculates future ridership by assuming the HSR would capture 85% of existing air travel and 15% of Single occupancy vehicles. Both of these are way over-inflated. In terms of airline traffic, he calculates the number of seats for sale on the route currently as 1.8M a year, and assumes they are 100% occupied every flight. This is never the case, and he should be scaling this 1.8m back to the number of seats actually occupied. Further, the assumption that the train would take 85% of air traffic is absurd. Chicago is one of the busiest "hubs" in the world, so a material percentage of flights are people flying to/from Chicago to connect to another flight. They are not going to switch to the train. It is noteworthy that in the case of California HSR, the authority is projecting that the train will capture about 20% of air traffic on the route, so the 85% used by LS seems to be plucked from nowhere to make the numbers work. In terms of cars, LS calculates 7.3m people driving the route at present, and assumes what he calls a "reasonable" figure of 15% switching to the train. This is just a wild-assed guess, that I think is way overstated. Those 7.3m already have access to flights, so if they are choosing to drive then speed is not their #1 motivation. These analyses always assume that a car travelling between Chicago and St Louis began at one and is going to the other. But they could be going to Oklahoma, or Dallas or any of hundreds of other places, such that fast planes/trains from Chicago to St Louis are meaningless. There's no substance to the 15% figure used by LS other than wishful thinking. And even having over-estimated the number of HSR passengers to 3m a year, how does that justify spending $30B on the train? If everyone paid a $100 ticket price, that is revenue of $300m a year. Not profit, just revenue. Yet the interest alone on a $30B construction cost would be $1.5B - $2B a year. A HSR makes zero sense even using the inflated projections used by LS. If you overlay a more realistic ridership of say 1m a year, or even 2m a year allowing very generous induced demand, then the economics would be nothing short of scandalous.
Some fair criticisms. One thing that is incorrect is that I tried to "make the numbers work". I'm not invested in whether or not these projects are justified, and am not attempting to advocate for them. These estimates are sort of a reasonable ceiling based on performance of various modes in Europe. While it is a guess, "wild-assed" is not fair. It is based on something. For flights, if you calculate the numbers, you'll see I'm shaving 180,000 trips off the top to compensate. There would also be some amount of induced travel, which I don't account for at all, further chipping away at the idea that all the flights are full. Typical flight passenger loads run in the low to mid 80%s. That would be about 230,000 fewer trips. 3 million is also broadly rounded for convenience, and I do indicate that the estimate on which that number is based is "very rough".
@@LucidStew Ok, we'll agree to disagree on specifics then. If I didn't make it clear with my caveat after the first sentence, I do enjoy watching your presentations. There are a myriad of channels on the topic, and yours have far more rigour than most. Even if I disagree with your conclusions on many variables, I do acknowledge that you approach the exercise in a logical and well-structured way. Cheers.
Generally maglev is expected to run about 30% more expensive. With a lot of greenfield like this, there would likely be room for the 6 mile radius curves you'd need.
@@LucidStew I think statistics are a bit misleading because so many people are leaving, crime is technically going down. You can see this across the river in East Saint Louis. Their crime rate is going down for the first time just because the downtown is completely abandoned lol
That’s a good chunk of the demand, but people also choose HSR over air travel because they don’t want to deal with airport nonsense, find train travel more comfortable, or simply don’t like flying.
The ILHSR Commission is in very early planning stages on an upgrade to the current system. It will probably be a little while before they make any suggestions. Who knows what will end up happening, but they seem to favor the idea of dedicated ROW in at least some places, which should result in time savings.
@@LucidStew Agreed - my hope is that they do a phased approach where they focus on one segment at a time and when each segment is ready, immediately run Amtrak on it. Even if they just initially speed up the St. Louis to Springfield segment to 125mph using existing rolling stock, that'll at least build more political support over time
