I forgot to compare this to flying. Just looked up flight times. ~80 minutes + ~75 minutes for airport stuff + ~20min drive on either end means something like this would be about AN HOUR faster downtown to downtown. Also would then fair very favorably in most other scenarios you can imagine.
Unfortunately this route isn't more direct than the present Amtrak Wolverine route. Since Indiana isn't going to spend a penny for HSR, nor will Uncle Sam without state contributions, Amtrak would be better off spending a billion or two to upgrade the Wolverine route more and be happy running at 125 MPH top speed. Furthermore, the Chicago NIMBYs won't allow trains within the Chicago city limits to go over 80 MPH. While your plan is wonderful, it is also far too expensive for any of the states involved. Cost vs time saved isn't worth the investment....
@@ronclark9724 These are nitpicks, really. The routing is somewhat irrelevant. There are many different ways to route this connection. I just picked one and made a video about. Indiana will spend money on a good idea that drives economic growth, just like any place and so will the federal government. If you think Wolverine service can be upgraded significantly for $1 billion, I have a bridge to sell you. North Carolina is spending $1.4 billion to upgrade 1/10 of the S-Line route between Raleigh and Richmond to 110mph. Even if you did "upgrade" it, you're saving minutes on a 5 1/2 hour trip that is not able to compete with air travel. And you're talking about what isn't worth the investment? You're going to save 200,000 person-hours for several billion. The time saved here is 3 hours over a route with 420,000 train trips and an hour for a million current flights per year, not to mention the environmental advantage of pulling that many trips off fossil fuels and onto much cleaner and more efficient electric rail. I'm talking about saving 10 TIMES that amount of time for MAYBE 5 times more investment. The ROI here is vastly better than what you're talking about. Even if its true, the Chicago speeds criticism only makes about a 10 minute difference. You'd have to slow this thing down by a half hour or more for it to have any significant impact on travel demand because it would be that much better than anything else that exists.
@@LucidStew I don’t know if City Nerd has covered it, or anyone else - but I know you both share a disdain for the incremental, iterative, unambitious approaches to rail upgrades. Have you seen or done a video comparing the cost benefit of spending $1B to upgrade rail to “higher speed” rail vs vs say, spending $20B on upgrading a rail line to HSR (numbers are meaningless, just looking at the relative benefit of spending more). The way I see it, is that only once you hit high-speed rail, or at least speeds approaching it (avg 110 mph or faster including stops) does there start to be a true net economic benefit in time saved. The model that City Nerd uses to highlight the potential benefit to society (that triangle) shows it really well. If a train isn’t is fast, there is almost no triangle whatsoever - and thus no net benefit to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep passenger rail creeping along at 50 mph. It’s not to say we shouldn’t, for many without cars (or second cars) it’s the only practical way to visit friends or family in some locations. But if we are looking at ways to truly improve the productivity of society, high speed rail is worth the seemingly larger price tag so as to save every person time vis-a-vis the other mode of transportation they would have taken (flying and/or driving, primarily). That’s without even factoring in the net environmental benefits which are arguably more important but much more difficult to quantify. Anyways - could be a great video and maybe in your wheelhouse!
@@rebeccawinter472 : interesting approach, but I am not sure if this will work. We have many "upgraded lines" here in Europe. Upgrades here are relatively easy because existing lines are already electrified, and the majority of our freight rail runs on electrified lines using electric locomotives (th-cam.com/video/AT8KV-B845k/w-d-xo.html). This is why the German ICE can reach acceptable travel times without the construction of thousands of miles of passenger-dedicated lines. In the US, electrification poses a limit on freight loads, so either the "higher speed" services have to be diesel/battery/hydrogen powered, or the freight services cannot support double-stack containers.
@@rebeccawinter472 The thing is, we're talking about high speed rail corridors and what we're getting really is mediocre regional rail. So my main argument in most of these videos is: let's stop pussy-footing around and talk about high speed rail FOR the high speed rail corridors. The other places, like Phoenix-Las Vegas is more for fun. My experience in comments so far is that a lot of people think its an either-or choice. However, I keep a very wide ear open to the European commenters that have lived this for 50 years now. They have both kinds. Region to region, you really only need one high speed trunk. Everywhere else IN those regions, you're going to want a competent regional rail system, capable of 110-125mph. Wolverine service can be that and provide great service to those customers, but it's really not straight enough to act as a high speed trunk. So, my argument is rather than choose between the two, if both make sense build both. The thing about diving into the numbers is that you need specific studies to compare things adequately and those mostly don't exist until someone decides to look into building one of these things. The purpose of THESE videos is kind of intermediate between the two.
Any HSR route from Chicago to Detroit will have to go through Michigan (I-94 or 96 route) rather than following I-80/90 as a matter of political reality. Both the prior government (R) and current government (D) have been willing to purchase and upgrade track and subsidize rolling stock. There is too much internal use for Michigan for this to get routed through places that don't necessarily want it.
If you sent the train north from South Bend to Niles thrn used the old Michigan Central route to Detroit youd pick up a lot more cities with several major universities. And theichigan Central route is already 110 mph between Niles and Kalamazoo so it wouldnt be hard to upgrade it further. It would also pass close to Detroits airport. And the route would be about 50 miles shorter than the route you propose as well as giving it a direct shot into Canada and Toronto.
Like I said in the video, there are a lot of permutations, which is part of what makes the Chicago-Detroit pair interesting. That route is not very good between Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, though. You generally want a high speed trunk to be straight and fast. If you're looking to service a lot of cities and make a lot of stops, that sounds like a regional line to me.
Battle Creek to Ann Arbor is, I believe, the real problem on that route. Another possible routing you may have considered would be Chicago, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit Metro airport, and Detroit (with option on to Canada) or branch at Lansing to Port Huron, Sarnia and Toronto. The cost and NIMBYism to developing such in our lifetimes would be prohibitive unfortunately.
Loved the visualization, it's next level! If I had to make one suggestion, I would recommend using more background music, I was going slightly insane listening to one song for 20 min haha
I was hoping the voiceover broke it up enough to not be annoying, but this reaction was one I was also kind of anticipating. I'll adjust these as time goes on.
Another brilliant video. Thank you! I reckon if it’s hitting 150+ mph in such an urban area, I don’t know what the decibel level would be, but there may be some sound buffering needed where there is condos and such adjacent to the line. I would live there to be a constant speedometer and odometer to give one a sense of where we are and how far along it is. You bring it up occasionally but perhaps a small box always present in the corner could work? The stop in Hammond - or a similar suburban stop - would be important to have so that folks living south of the city and in Western Indiana don’t have to trek all the way downtown to grab the train. Thats its main benefit, not as a place to get off, but as a place to get on. It could be skipped for some express trips of course. I’m imagining the HSR would have to have its own tracks and not share same tracks with south shore route. Could be room on same alignment maybe, tho there’s a national park and such that could get tricky. I like your choices for routing otherwise. And bypassing Toledo (for the direct High Speed route). Smart.
I did make a stylistic choice not to include any sound or barrier protection so you can see the train better. There are also places where this is elevated due to various map-related issued where it probably wouldn't be in reality. From the studies I've seen, sound on these isn't bad with proper protections. I will probably add an on-screen speed element at some point when I have time to start hooking logic up to the set-pieces I'm constructing currently.
Over in Japan, they have noise barriers in urban areas, plus sprinklers on the tracks that they use for noise abatement. Interesting technologies over in the original home of high speed rail.
We've been pushing for high speed rail in the Windsor to Quebec City corridor for decades. There has been some progress, with almost high-speed under construction for Toronto-Montreal. Unfortunately, the route they've chosen in order to make it run through Ottawa makes it cover twisty lake country where it's not practical to run at real high speeds. Windsor is just across the river from Detroit, so a Chicago-Detroit high speeder linked with the Canadian one would be a real backbone for the Great Lakes / St. Lawrence / Midwest region in general. The new Gordie Howe Bridge is nearing completion. . . . Grand Rapids has been showing spectacular growth in recent years, and looks like it will become a major metropolis. Its Metro is already well over a million. So a route through Michigan City, Grand Rapids and Lansing might be practical, if slightly longer.
I think a better alignment is: 1. Head toward Toledo from your alignment then turn north to follow I-475 and Michigan US-23 and return to your alignment. 2. Follow Route I-94 past the NSRR to Michigan Avenue and duck under the avenue until the Michigan Central tracks where the HSR pops up to the surface and into the terminal, where it would meet Canada's HSR or HFR to Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City with local services for the major towns in-between.
1. I dunno, that branch line is extremely fast. You're going to have trouble keeping up with that in freeway right of way. 2. Not a bad idea. Tunnelling makes everything easier. :) Maybe even keep it underground. That would make it easier to get under the river into Canada.
I'm not sure if you've done a video on this yet but here is my take: Start out at Millennium Station and use the Southshore Line alignment until you reach the Amtrak / MDOT owned Wolverine Corridor trackage. It's already electrified and the Wolverine Corridor is rated / being rated for 110mph service. I see no reason to go to Fort Wayne with HST. That could easily be served with 125mph service no problem. What's neat about the wolverine corridor / the CHI-DET HST in general is the potential for an HST connection to a Canada HST Corridor that would serve from Windsor to Montreal / Quebec City. THAT would be huge.
What I like is how you manage to create a route between Chicago and the biggest city in Michigan that can absolutely not benefit anyone who lives in Michigan. Great work.
Fort Wayne is a lovely town (I used to live there. Go Komets!) but I feel like a more direct route through South Bend on an improved version of the South Shore line would be much more practical.
138mph average including stops in not bad at all. You could always make it faster with more demolition, but part of the purpose here is to show that its possible to accomplish these things without a lot of hurt, so I tend to pick routes that avoid driving straight through things that are already there. Sometimes can't be avoided, though.
Thing is half of this route between Chicago and Fort Wayne may have already been that fast if the rumors about the Pennsylvania Railroads Duplex locomotives are true.
Hammond to Millennium Station was my commute for a while! While I think upgrading the south short line is a pretty critical piece of an eventual Chicago hub - I'm really concerned about the state of Indiana completely blocking any attempts to do so. Current leadership is actively hostile toward transit - including going so far as to outright ban dedicated bus lanes this week - in addition to bans on light rail systems. Incredibly asinine to think that regressive Indiana leaders could stifle any hope of the most plausible and sensible potential HSR hub outside the East Coast.
@@LucidStewAbsolutely! Tangent: would you expect the northern focused routes to run out of Union station or is there enough capacity (or potential) at millennium?
This route would not get much support in Michigan because it completely misses middle-sized cities such as Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson and Ann Arbor. The Wayne County Airport Authority zealously guards their parking revenue and this train would be seen as a huge threat to it. Also, the platform would never be elevated at Michigan Central Station because it is likely the tracks would either follow the existing tunnel under the Detroit River or a new tunnel would be built under the river. Toronto, Montreal and Buffalo are ideal pairs to Detroit in the east by high speed rail.
I prefer an alignment on NS and CN ROW with intermediate stops in South Bend and Toledo, Fort Wayne is pretty small and the freight ROWs are pretty much perfectly straight for a majority of the way
Unfortunately this route, while looking good as a concept, is impossible to implement. The Michigan Central Station is reopening in June, but because Ford owns it, there's no news that the building will be used as a train station again. Note, when I say that Ford owns it now, that means that there's no way that it's going to happen. In the video, it looks like the only way this thing would work is if most of the route is elevated. The current Chicago to Detroit route, which ends at Pontiac is pretty much the only blueprint to work off of. The route that was in the video is a great route, but there's no way that it can be implemented unless it's off the current Chicago-Pontiac route. A HSR from Chicago to Detroit would also require that Detroit build a new train station. Sadly, it won't be as elegant as the MCS, but it will have to be built to at least house HSR. The track from Kamalazoo to Detroit, would have to be bought up from the freight companies, probably CSX. Otherwise there's no way that the train could run above 110 mph. What's really important now in order to make all of these projects work, is to find a way to make passenger rail more prioritized than freight. Otherwise, we'll never see HSR take off in the US.
Thanks. Up until America burned the boats with Amtrak there was daily commuter service from Valpo to Chicago. The big steel guys built some great Victorian homes there.
If I were you cross it into the Canadian border at Windsor then extended to Toronto eventually Montreal and Ottawa. In the case of Toronto to Chicago high speed rail train the front section is the New York City where they will be split in Hamilton Ontario for Chicago via Detroit and Windsor the other is New York City by Niagara Falls Albany. Excellent idea overall
Yeah, I will get to this eventually where I will talk about connecting Chicago Hub Network, the Empire Corridor, and the Northern New England Corridor with whatever the Canadians call their hypothetical corridor. Seems like there is a lot of potential there.
please do a video on a michigan alignment for this! indiana is so politically toxic to HSR i think a MI alignment is more realistic even if its connecting less people
Since the highest mountain range between these two cities is a highway overpass that part is easy, the tough part is that nobody wants to go from centre city D to cc C, D is an already dead city and C is working overtime to get there. Most businesses in these two disasters is connected to the suburbs, in Chicago's case they do have this connection made via transit and commuter rail, Detroit has neither nor any chance of getting any, ever. Spent that capital on its go nowhere people mover that very few use anyhow. I suspect that air traffic between the two cities is mostly someone connecting to a flight in the other city (the best way to get to an airport is by plane { until TSA starts checking passengers getting off planes}).
So I have a question about the visualizations - they are amazing - but why is the train switching from running on the right to running on the left to right to left again? Stylistic choice?
Our commuter trains drive 130kmph (80mph) between stops, intercity trains drive 160kmph (100mph) between stops and our intercity direct drives 200kmph (120mph). The high speed trains drive 300kmph (185mph), faster is possible, but only abroad because of the bad soil in our country, which is mostly peatland. The US should try driving their trains faster, but only on dedicated passenger tracks and without at grade crossings.
There is no way this line doesn't connect either of Ann Arbor or Toledo. And I would argue the airport connection (with that expensive tunnel) is pretty much useless if you don't connect those 2 cities.
millium station in downtown chicargo might by the easyest ad cheapest place for the termial but i conects yo nothing but busses north and ot even well to the extensive nothern chicargo express buss service.
Given the current state of Chicago, its various terminal stations, and the currently remote prospects of connecting them downtown, I think it's realistic and reasonable to talk about connecting one at a time to intercity and then let Chicago figure out how to disperse the riders at the endpoint.
For $21 billion, this seems like a no brainer. Honestly, I wish the feds would pass a national HSR act like we did for the freeways, maybe even diverting some of the funding we currently spend on that to HSR.
Wow! That was totally awesome! Chicago could be the hub of a Midwestern network connecting to Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Green Bay, St Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Des Moines. I'll probably be long dead and turned to dust before that happens but it would be cool to see.
Chicago IS the hub! :) They are looking at addressing huge structural issues with Chicago though, and I'm not sure that's the best way to go. They want to make Chicago through running, but does it need to be? As the heart of the hub, maybe the various terminal stations are enough and then find better ways to connect THOSE? It was suggested to me a while back, but I'm still planning to look at the European idea of bypassing the metro, and that is key to Chicago being a true hub in its current terminus form.
@@LucidStew yeah, there have been a number of plans for Union Station, including some grandiose ones. Digging a separate tunnel for HSR to go under Union and Ogilvie Stations makes the most sense. That way a station could take up the space between Union Station and Ogilvie Station making connections to all those Metra and Amtrak lines easy.
@@aimxdy8680 Net population growth for the Chicago area has been +0.27% in 2021, +0.5% in 2022, and +0.53% in 2023 adding about 146,000 people since 2020. While not huge, judging from the number of high rises that have gone up in the last couple of years, business isn't slowing down.
@@bryanCJC2105 Chicagoland 2023 metro population figures hasn’t been published by the census so it’s made up. Chicago reported a net loss of 159,000 people since 2020 from a metro population is 9.6 million people to a metro population of 9.4 million people. It’s even worse considering it has been stagnating since 2009, same years chicago sold its parking meters to big corporations.
I've taken Amtrak between Detroit and Chicago. It occasionally hits 120-130 on the better bits of track, and it's so smooth and rapid, you want more. I'd love this upgrade.
Amtrak's Wolverine is a maximum of 110 mph and much of the rest is considerably slower due to curves and freight congestion on NS between Chicago and Porter, IN.
@brandongregory9542 I'm not gonna counter anything. GPS observation from my coach seat. Maybe that's bunk. Idk. If it was 110, it was still nice and comfy and I want more train travel like that.
Why would you do this in Indiana and not straight through Michigan? You can connect Western Michigan Univ., U of M Ann Arbor, and maybe even Eastern Michigan if you were looking for University connections. It might also pull traffic off of I94. Maybe it's because I'm from Michigan, but going through Indiana for anything seems silly.
What's the route straight through Michigan? As explained in the video, this choice was partially due to Amtrak considering this in their long-term plans.
The Detroit line of he Michigan Central Railroad runs from Dearborn to Niles Michigan with the stretch from Niles to Kalamazoo owned by Amtrak and the stretch from Kalamazoo to Dearborn owned by the State of Michigan. It basically parallels I-94 and runs through Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor and Dearborn, continuing onto Detroit. Michigan has been gradually upgrading it for a number of years and on several sections Amtrak trains currently run at 110 MPH.
If METRA had the capital and the external political will. People have been dreaming of what if they could have in Chicago and dreaming of well thought logical plans like yours.
I think 150 is a bit of a stretch, due to station spacing and having to share track with slower express commuter trains, but I'd imagine 110 or 125 could be viable. Also, the two eastern tracks are currently not electrified and are owned by CN.
Visualization request... SE Wisconsin + NE Illinois loop. The combination of short distance, population, legacy infrastructure, and lack of major hills makes this an intriguing HSR option. - Chicago Union Station > O'Hare Airport - 16 miles - O'Hare to Rockford (147k) - 73 miles - Rockford (147k) to Beloit (44k) - 29 miles - Beloit (44k) to Janesville (66k) - 13 miles - Janesville (66k) to Madison (270k...metro 560k) - 40 miles - Madison (270k) to Milwaukee (529k...metro 1.5m) - 79 miles - Milwaukee (529k) to Milwaukee Airport - 8 miles - Milwaukee Airport to Racine (77k) - 23 miles - Racine (77K) to Kenosha (99k) - 11 miles - Keneosha (99k) to Chicago Union Station - 65 miles Total miles: 357 Total city population: 3.9 million Combined metro population: At least 10 million
Sure. I like that its broken up into sections. That makes it a little easier to fit visual pieces together. One ~2 minute clip for each. I'm going to make a list. It won't be resolved in any particular order, but this will go on the list.
Might be worth noting the semi-recent announcement of Metra service to Rockford via Belvidere. Might be useful ROW for any Rockford involved video. Looking forward to some more north IL rep!
This made me think about an Acela expansion down through Virginia into Richmond as it's a fast growing city and the DC suburbs have built up strong transit connections
It's not got electrification though and speeds on the line are mostly only 70mph. Also I thought there were some restrictions on the tunnel from DC station heading south.
@@BigBlueMan118 I mean that is fair, Amtrak and Virginia have pushed to modernize the line so some investment into electrifying it or improve its speed could help reach that
@@KarateTeddy27 They've declined to do electrification through Virginia. I think it mostly had to do with the fact that they bought diesel electric trains that can operate both electrified and not. Also, DC has the major hub where diesel trains are switched to electric, and moving that to Richmond would likely be quite costly. Still, I think the entire network should be electrified as it just makes sense, but you can't reason with politicians these days.
@@jamalgibson8139There's also CSX, which puts the kibosh on electrification on their two shared tracks at least for the near term. Honestly the wires are more likely to extend south to Alexandria (two dedicated passenger tracks) for MARC, potential dual mode VRE, and Amtrak as the first move south. Hopefully with both VRE and Amtrak using the line it gets extended to Fredericksburg and then Richmond, but that's a big lift from what we have.
@@daniellewis1789and the National Environmental Policy Act will prevent any additional trackage ...you have a lot of Civil War sites as well as former American Indian settlements in that corridor.
Great visualization! Have you thought about a possible Chicago-South Bend-Kalamazoo-Ann Arbor-Detroit routing? It would be just as direct and serve a larger population.
Yes, I did think about that. I found its geometry to not be conducive to a high speed trunk. However, you may be referring to some other combination. As the video indicated there are, without exaggeration, 1000 different ways to do this, and this is just the one I picked.
As a resident of Warsaw, Indiana, I felt so honored to be mentioned. Indiana Department of Transportation is planning on making US 30 a limited access freeway through the area, but I'm not they will include enough median for high speed rail.
I would have liked to show your city in better detail, but Google stymied me. 45' will do it ground level, but you only need enough to fit the columns if you elevate. At a minimum it would be nice if freeways provisioned for this even if isn't built, as freeways usually have a lot of excess room in the right of way unless they're completely built out.
Lucid, AMAZING work! I have sketched out this route also, and arrived at something very similar to this. The only major difference for mine would be to avoid the airport tunnel/station for a side station on the Norfolk Southern tracks by the airport using the Ann Arbor railroad ROW. Also, map commentary would be greatly appreciated with your fairly witty style.
Nice. I decided to be bold with the airport. Please expand on what you mean by "map commentary". I was anticipating the dead air being an issue for some, so I can use ideas for adding more voice over to these. These videos are more about the trains, but the VO should also retain a good cadence with the silences not being too long.
@@LucidStew Re commentary: I guess what I mean is the type of commentary from your previous videos where you explain your rationale for the route that you've chosen. Given the length of the pauses and the dueling content of 3D train vs wider map talk, perhaps you could have a insert in the corner where you go over the stuff. I'm remembering back to your Atlanta to Charlotte and Gulf Coast videos. You made great arguments for choosing Columbia+ Augusta vs Greenville+Spartanburg for example. And looping to include Jackson. This one has so many different options, there are quite a few choices (I.e. Union vs Millennium station, Ft Wayne vs South Bend, Toledo bypass, etc.) Essentially, commentary from your old video + visuals of this video = success! Hope that helps!
@@Whatneeds2bsaid oh, ok, talking about different routes in comparison. yeah, that's a good idea. With this pair in particular the possibilities are a little overwhelming, which is why I kind of consolidated that in the beginning to "this is 1 route out of 1000" or whatever, but that would be good to include if you're only looking at a few choices. There is some additional room to slip that in various places here like Gary or by DTW. There is also some of that in this one, like the discussions about U.S. 24 and 30, or the Toledo bypass. In addition, I still plan on doing the City Pair style, where its a lot more focused on the route and less so what the train is doing.
Just as always keep up the great work. Your videos are so informative and go into depth that I like as far as give cost estimates per route. The 3d animation has just taken it to the next level. Maybe and I do mean maybe in the future you can even go a step further and show those regional routes or commuter routes that could work. 3d it out but you might actually need a team to get to that scale. Regardless great work and keep it up. I'll be supporting and rooting for you all the while.
Its a body of work and there are plenty of topics to address, so it might happen eventually, but probably not on the scale of packing it all into one video.
@@LucidStew oh I would expect it to. For example if you were to look at say altanta marta or florida tri rail masterplan for they're systems you'd need to probably do it in three parts maybe more. Commuter system anyway. Maybe for fun in the future you can just do a fly through
Two things might be a fun improvement: periodically show where we are on the large point to point map, and then at the end show the point to point map with speeds shown in color along the route, red being slow, green being fast, something like that maybe. Maybe just a small area map in the corner the whole time. The color coding of the route would also show where the value of straightening curves is. Edit: and you’re actually doing some of this. Nice! Shoulda finished the video first…
I really, really appreciate the constructive criticism and try to work that in when I can. I'll give some thought to how I can accomplish something like that.
@@LucidStew Hey, just happy to see somebody doing the speculative route building. I’ve had this itch for a long time, more for local transit, but it’s nice to see regardless. Another thought, I love the nerdy details, it might be fun to include the curve radius when you mention the speed through a section.
Love the Video. Why does the United States build space ships/probes that cost billions of dollars just to be sent to take films and pictures of Mars and galaxies but will not spend billions to take much of the traffic of the overcrowded interstates here on earth? What a total misuse of funds that could alleviate a continuing problem of travel. There are too many politicians, corporate heads that fight against high speed rail since they can afford their own planes and can avoid highway travel. The future belongs to those that want to and can fix this situation.
Politically, it would be smarter for the leaders of Illinois and Michigan to have this go through as much of their land as possible. Indiana would never build this.
As someone who lives along the hypothetical route, I keep rewatching to keep myself hopeful, and maybe manifest it. If you ever cover Indiana again, I’d love to see if the proposed Midwest Connect Corridor (Pittsburgh to Chicago) advocated by groups like the Northern Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance, would make sense for maybe some hsr sections. Also fun fact: Warsaw is the orthopedic capital of the world, with multiple companies such as Zimmer Biomet employing lots of people in the area.
if you're bored Stew I have the phone numbers of some of the Northern Lights Express committee members and if you could do a visualization of the route with HSR vs what is planned now I'd make sure they see it. Worst case is we'd get electrified instead of Diesel and hit 125mph the whole way.
Awesome video! Honestly the amount of criticism just shows to the extent and influence this route has on the populations as me personally being someone who uses the Wolverine often would prefer a similar route that connects Ann Arbor and DTW. I would probably cost cut the DTW connection instead of a tunnel and try to better utilize the existing Detroit Amtrak station in midtown by expanding that footprint as much as I would like service to be based in Michigan Central.
It would be cheaper and faster to follow the existing Wolverine/Michigan Corridor, as Amtrak already owns the portion from Portage (IN) to Kalamazoo, with MDOT owning the tracks from KZoo to just west of Detroit. Start at the same point in Chicago and use South Shore Line to Michigan City (in the process of being double-tracked). From there, you could have two options: 1) Follow the existing tracks to New Buffalo, Niles, and then Dowagiac, or 2) Follow the South Shore Line into South Bend. Instead of branching off to the South Bend Airport, parallel the freight rails into Downtown South Bend for a joint Michiana station. From there, it can parallel the CN tracks into Michigan and then divert back to the Wolverine Corridor. It's quite the diversion just to reach Fort Wayne. While bigger than South Bend/Mishawaka, its metro population is only 100K larger. A separate rail corridor from South Bend to FW, and then FW-Toledo-Detroit could be built, but I think a dedicated Chicago-Detroit HSR corridor should be more direct and the FW diversion wouldn't be worth it. From Kalamazoo, the MDOT corridor could be straightened to eliminate many of the curves and achieve HSR speeds. Rather than a station at DTW, an AirTrain could be built connecting the two DTW terminals, a new joint rental car facility, and then the Dearborn station (which will also serve commuter rail throughout SE Michigan). The Chicago-Detroit HSR station continues to the new Michigan Central Station in Corktown, with connecting trains into Canada.
Would love to use a service like this, it would be a lot easier to visit some of my family or go on work trips. Hopefully there is enough incentive for this line to be built in the future. I also want to see a high speed line that goes from Detroit to western Michigan, but I'm guessing there's some good reasons why the route shown in the video was chosen instead.
Great video. I think the look of the station interiors would be better if there was more overhead lighting. They all seem rather dark. There are the translucent or backlit walls that are letting light in but some bright overhead lighting would make it seem more inviting. The interior platforms look like a gloomy subway.
Being from this area I always find the maps routing the HSR through Fort Wayne to be interesting. I am not sure if the assumption would be that the current AML becomes higher speed, or if a 200mph route would skip it. Beyond Fort Wayne there isn’t too much to stop for in Ohio or Indiana on this proposed route. As a local and normal rider of the Michigan line, you have much more dense population, universities, and overall density on the existing route when compared to going through Fort Wayne. As for your approach to Detroit, I would say staying on existing ROW/ or rejoining the old Michigan Central would suffice compared to the massive Conrail shared Assets yard flyover the last 5-7 miles to downtown. The Michigan line from 94-MC station is light freight traffic for the most part. Great visualization, I love the theory and watched the entire analysis.
These videos are becoming an exercise in offering options to appease previous commenters. I likely would have gone with a more direct route into Detroit from Carleton, but wanted to hookup with DTW for the people that weren't fans of bypassing it last time. :) In this format, I imagine you could legitimately join the two cities with 100 different routes and have most be somewhat reasonable. That is one of the interesting things about the area to me.
@LucidStew thing is you could also use this line to go to Pittsburgh from Fort Wayne at a good clip. Thus, it might be desirable to build the connection for both directions to reduce costs or as an alternative if the current line is down for any reason. Even could be a case where expresses and locals run different routes.
Another posibility is from Ft. Wayne Follow the Wabash line directly to DTW, its open country and reliativly staight, maybe a stop at the half way point in Adrain, that would be the moderen version of the old Wabash-Pensy joint service that competed with the Michigan Central. From New Haven it is almost all open flat farmland.
I'm hoping the federal railroad association will get this grant to upgrade the Chicago Ft. Wayne & Eastern RR. This is a perfect example for high-speed 🚅 from Chicago to Detroit to develop soon. Flex from N.W. Indiana. I still remembered as a kid growing up in Gary seeing Amtrak Turboliner trainsets passing through the former Penn Central now Chicago Ft. Wayne and Eastern. In the late 70's to 1982. Thanks Lucid for this video.
There are a lot of Midwest routes entering the Corridor ID program. If Congress can follow up on the current FSP-National program funding, some of these routes might be working toward a similar service standard to the line along I55 in Illinois with 110mph speeds in 5-10 years. However, given the current performance of Congress, that's a big if.
Thank you! Live in Fort Wayne and would love rail to return. Great options to fly out of DTW or transfer to the blue line to hit ORD. Anymore I drive to and park in Micigan City and catch the SSL to Chicago.
This would be incredible. I use the the Wolverine line between Detroit and Chicago at least a couple times a year. Otherwise I just drive it. If I could ride a faster, newer train, I’d utilize it way more. Probably in a monthly basis.
Would the FAA allow that rail tunnel under the Detroit airport? If they don't like metro/subway stations stopping right at airports for security reasons, they may throw a fit about a HSR tunnel under an airport.
This is about 1/3 the cost per mile of CAHSR, but that is a very expensive project. Overall, I think it's a reasonable cost for what you get. I would assume similar costs for the various other possible permutations between Chicago and Detroit ASSUMING Millennium Station as an end point. Probably looking at another $4-5B for Chicago Union.
As someone who lives near the Detroit area, I really would like this to be a reality in the near future!! Also I thought the Chicago Union Station was gonna be the hub for High-Speed rail, No?
That is currently the plan, but they didn't get any money for it this year, so I made it easy on myself. I may explore the idea of leaving Chicago as a terminus in future videos.
@@LucidStew another thing to add is that Detroit is rebuilding itself, so adding high-speed rail network to it would be a great way to help out with its rebuild
As a former freight train conductor of the CC/IC this is not what we should be focused on .....I live in Florida now and bright line hits 2 to 3 cars a week....
@@LucidStew I'm saying we should be worried about other things like homeless vets and more important things ....sure I worked on the railway and I support it to this day....but Americans are not the smartest of the bunch....people use tracks as walking paths, atv trails, and in the last 15 years were at a record high of grade crossing accidents....maybe don't make illegal drugs legal to start ....I still don't understand how anyone can get hit by a train ....
I mean, if we're talking about stuff that could happen pretty quickly, I think electrification is easier to achieve logistically and politically by sticking to the current Wolverine route. But in terms of serving population centers, Fort Wayne and Toledo make more sense than Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, so yeah, this is pretty good.
Problem is this route doesn't go through Toledo either so that it can go to DTW airport. In that case the airport connection is quite useless because I assume only less than 20% of people who use DTW airport actually lives in DOWNTOWN Detroit.
@@tomhwm913 100%. When the Ann Arbor-Detroit commuter rail was on the table, they were looking at adding a stop in Wayne/Canton area and running feeder buses to DTW. To me, that makes more sense, or even better, an AirTrain. Connect the airport with the high-traffic corridor and you're good.
@@izzygcphoenix Yep. Reducing a 45 min bus ride to 20-30 min isn't really a sweet spot for high speed rails. Plus a bus that pulls into the Grand Circus or Campus Martius would be a lot more convenient than a train into Michigan Central. If we're doing proper planning, the Inter-CITY rail should serve Toledo (which also opens up another branch to Cleveland). If Detroit needs an airport connection, they should do it with its own commuter rail.
I forgot to compare this to flying. Just looked up flight times. ~80 minutes + ~75 minutes for airport stuff + ~20min drive on either end means something like this would be about AN HOUR faster downtown to downtown. Also would then fair very favorably in most other scenarios you can imagine.
Unfortunately this route isn't more direct than the present Amtrak Wolverine route. Since Indiana isn't going to spend a penny for HSR, nor will Uncle Sam without state contributions, Amtrak would be better off spending a billion or two to upgrade the Wolverine route more and be happy running at 125 MPH top speed. Furthermore, the Chicago NIMBYs won't allow trains within the Chicago city limits to go over 80 MPH. While your plan is wonderful, it is also far too expensive for any of the states involved. Cost vs time saved isn't worth the investment....
@@ronclark9724 These are nitpicks, really. The routing is somewhat irrelevant. There are many different ways to route this connection. I just picked one and made a video about. Indiana will spend money on a good idea that drives economic growth, just like any place and so will the federal government. If you think Wolverine service can be upgraded significantly for $1 billion, I have a bridge to sell you. North Carolina is spending $1.4 billion to upgrade 1/10 of the S-Line route between Raleigh and Richmond to 110mph. Even if you did "upgrade" it, you're saving minutes on a 5 1/2 hour trip that is not able to compete with air travel. And you're talking about what isn't worth the investment? You're going to save 200,000 person-hours for several billion. The time saved here is 3 hours over a route with 420,000 train trips and an hour for a million current flights per year, not to mention the environmental advantage of pulling that many trips off fossil fuels and onto much cleaner and more efficient electric rail. I'm talking about saving 10 TIMES that amount of time for MAYBE 5 times more investment. The ROI here is vastly better than what you're talking about.
Even if its true, the Chicago speeds criticism only makes about a 10 minute difference. You'd have to slow this thing down by a half hour or more for it to have any significant impact on travel demand because it would be that much better than anything else that exists.
@@LucidStew I don’t know if City Nerd has covered it, or anyone else - but I know you both share a disdain for the incremental, iterative, unambitious approaches to rail upgrades.
Have you seen or done a video comparing the cost benefit of spending $1B to upgrade rail to “higher speed” rail vs vs say, spending $20B on upgrading a rail line to HSR (numbers are meaningless, just looking at the relative benefit of spending more).
The way I see it, is that only once you hit high-speed rail, or at least speeds approaching it (avg 110 mph or faster including stops) does there start to be a true net economic benefit in time saved.
The model that City Nerd uses to highlight the potential benefit to society (that triangle) shows it really well. If a train isn’t is fast, there is almost no triangle whatsoever - and thus no net benefit to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep passenger rail creeping along at 50 mph. It’s not to say we shouldn’t, for many without cars (or second cars) it’s the only practical way to visit friends or family in some locations. But if we are looking at ways to truly improve the productivity of society, high speed rail is worth the seemingly larger price tag so as to save every person time vis-a-vis the other mode of transportation they would have taken (flying and/or driving, primarily).
That’s without even factoring in the net environmental benefits which are arguably more important but much more difficult to quantify. Anyways - could be a great video and maybe in your wheelhouse!
@@rebeccawinter472 : interesting approach, but I am not sure if this will work. We have many "upgraded lines" here in Europe. Upgrades here are relatively easy because existing lines are already electrified, and the majority of our freight rail runs on electrified lines using electric locomotives (th-cam.com/video/AT8KV-B845k/w-d-xo.html). This is why the German ICE can reach acceptable travel times without the construction of thousands of miles of passenger-dedicated lines.
In the US, electrification poses a limit on freight loads, so either the "higher speed" services have to be diesel/battery/hydrogen powered, or the freight services cannot support double-stack containers.
@@rebeccawinter472 The thing is, we're talking about high speed rail corridors and what we're getting really is mediocre regional rail. So my main argument in most of these videos is: let's stop pussy-footing around and talk about high speed rail FOR the high speed rail corridors. The other places, like Phoenix-Las Vegas is more for fun. My experience in comments so far is that a lot of people think its an either-or choice. However, I keep a very wide ear open to the European commenters that have lived this for 50 years now. They have both kinds. Region to region, you really only need one high speed trunk. Everywhere else IN those regions, you're going to want a competent regional rail system, capable of 110-125mph. Wolverine service can be that and provide great service to those customers, but it's really not straight enough to act as a high speed trunk. So, my argument is rather than choose between the two, if both make sense build both.
The thing about diving into the numbers is that you need specific studies to compare things adequately and those mostly don't exist until someone decides to look into building one of these things. The purpose of THESE videos is kind of intermediate between the two.
Using unity genuinely puts you so far ahead of the competition it's wild
Don't get why other people aren't doing this
UE5
So that's why it kind of looked like it was done on Cities: Skylines. They use the same engine! (Unity)
its not, its Unreal Engine 5
@@edwardmiessner6502
Indiana would benefit from this more than anybody, but they would fight it tooth and nail.
Agreed!!
I'm surprised they haven't banned HSR yet. Like they have light rail and maybe BRT soon?
Any HSR route from Chicago to Detroit will have to go through Michigan (I-94 or 96 route) rather than following I-80/90 as a matter of political reality. Both the prior government (R) and current government (D) have been willing to purchase and upgrade track and subsidize rolling stock. There is too much internal use for Michigan for this to get routed through places that don't necessarily want it.
@@miketimmerman6336 as someone who lives along Stew's purposed route, I agree with you 100%. Indiana politicians just hate efficient transit.
Republicans (and all too many corporate Democrats) hate anything that is for the public good. And the voters are too brainwashed to see it.
Lucid, you have done it again. This content has recently been blowing my mind! Keep it up!
If you sent the train north from South Bend to Niles thrn used the old Michigan Central route to Detroit youd pick up a lot more cities with several major universities. And theichigan Central route is already 110 mph between Niles and Kalamazoo so it wouldnt be hard to upgrade it further. It would also pass close to Detroits airport. And the route would be about 50 miles shorter than the route you propose as well as giving it a direct shot into Canada and Toronto.
Like I said in the video, there are a lot of permutations, which is part of what makes the Chicago-Detroit pair interesting. That route is not very good between Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, though. You generally want a high speed trunk to be straight and fast. If you're looking to service a lot of cities and make a lot of stops, that sounds like a regional line to me.
Battle Creek to Ann Arbor is, I believe, the real problem on that route. Another possible routing you may have considered would be Chicago, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit Metro airport, and Detroit (with option on to Canada) or branch at Lansing to Port Huron, Sarnia and Toronto. The cost and NIMBYism to developing such in our lifetimes would be prohibitive unfortunately.
Loved the visualization, it's next level!
If I had to make one suggestion, I would recommend using more background music, I was going slightly insane listening to one song for 20 min haha
I was hoping the voiceover broke it up enough to not be annoying, but this reaction was one I was also kind of anticipating. I'll adjust these as time goes on.
and more dialogue please @tew
I think a stop at Toledo's airport would've been a good addition.
You deserve so many subscribers, great visuals!
I agree, I do deserve more! :D
@@LucidStewAND YOU'LL GET THOSE SUBSCRIBERS. Just continue to put out great videos, full of substance.
This would essentially make Chicago a border crossing destination ! Great idea
Another brilliant video. Thank you! I reckon if it’s hitting 150+ mph in such an urban area, I don’t know what the decibel level would be, but there may be some sound buffering needed where there is condos and such adjacent to the line.
I would live there to be a constant speedometer and odometer to give one a sense of where we are and how far along it is. You bring it up occasionally but perhaps a small box always present in the corner could work?
The stop in Hammond - or a similar suburban stop - would be important to have so that folks living south of the city and in Western Indiana don’t have to trek all the way downtown to grab the train. Thats its main benefit, not as a place to get off, but as a place to get on. It could be skipped for some express trips of course.
I’m imagining the HSR would have to have its own tracks and not share same tracks with south shore route. Could be room on same alignment maybe, tho there’s a national park and such that could get tricky. I like your choices for routing otherwise. And bypassing Toledo (for the direct High Speed route). Smart.
I did make a stylistic choice not to include any sound or barrier protection so you can see the train better. There are also places where this is elevated due to various map-related issued where it probably wouldn't be in reality. From the studies I've seen, sound on these isn't bad with proper protections. I will probably add an on-screen speed element at some point when I have time to start hooking logic up to the set-pieces I'm constructing currently.
Strong agree to the speedometer and odometer.
Over in Japan, they have noise barriers in urban areas, plus sprinklers on the tracks that they use for noise abatement. Interesting technologies over in the original home of high speed rail.
We've been pushing for high speed rail in the Windsor to Quebec City corridor for decades. There has been some progress, with almost high-speed under construction for Toronto-Montreal. Unfortunately, the route they've chosen in order to make it run through Ottawa makes it cover twisty lake country where it's not practical to run at real high speeds. Windsor is just across the river from Detroit, so a Chicago-Detroit high speeder linked with the Canadian one would be a real backbone for the Great Lakes / St. Lawrence / Midwest region in general. The new Gordie Howe Bridge is nearing completion.
. . . Grand Rapids has been showing spectacular growth in recent years, and looks like it will become a major metropolis. Its Metro is already well over a million. So a route through Michigan City, Grand Rapids and Lansing might be practical, if slightly longer.
I live in Chicago and I visit family often in Detroit so getting there in just over 2 hours sounds superb. I hate flying
I LOVE this animation, the fact that you actually visualize it is amazing.
I think a better alignment is:
1. Head toward Toledo from your alignment then turn north to follow I-475 and Michigan US-23 and return to your alignment.
2. Follow Route I-94 past the NSRR to Michigan Avenue and duck under the avenue until the Michigan Central tracks where the HSR pops up to the surface and into the terminal, where it would meet Canada's HSR or HFR to Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City with local services for the major towns in-between.
1. I dunno, that branch line is extremely fast. You're going to have trouble keeping up with that in freeway right of way.
2. Not a bad idea. Tunnelling makes everything easier. :) Maybe even keep it underground. That would make it easier to get under the river into Canada.
This is really cool. I wonder if it’s possible to cross the Detroit river into Windsor and potentially provide high speed rail service to Toronto?
I'm not sure if you've done a video on this yet but here is my take:
Start out at Millennium Station and use the Southshore Line alignment until you reach the Amtrak / MDOT owned Wolverine Corridor trackage. It's already electrified and the Wolverine Corridor is rated / being rated for 110mph service. I see no reason to go to Fort Wayne with HST. That could easily be served with 125mph service no problem.
What's neat about the wolverine corridor / the CHI-DET HST in general is the potential for an HST connection to a Canada HST Corridor that would serve from Windsor to Montreal / Quebec City. THAT would be huge.
I did not look at it super close, but the Wolverine service route is anything but straight, thereby making it unsuitable as a high speed trunk.
What I like is how you manage to create a route between Chicago and the biggest city in Michigan that can absolutely not benefit anyone who lives in Michigan. Great work.
Man, you must really dislike Michigan. Was it the "uncommitted" thing?
Fort Wayne is a lovely town (I used to live there. Go Komets!) but I feel like a more direct route through South Bend on an improved version of the South Shore line would be much more practical.
It's sad to see an average speed of under 140 mph on a basically flat piece of land. But still, centuries better than what we have today
138mph average including stops in not bad at all. You could always make it faster with more demolition, but part of the purpose here is to show that its possible to accomplish these things without a lot of hurt, so I tend to pick routes that avoid driving straight through things that are already there. Sometimes can't be avoided, though.
Thing is half of this route between Chicago and Fort Wayne may have already been that fast if the rumors about the Pennsylvania Railroads Duplex locomotives are true.
Thanks for the video, we need this built irl!
Hammond to Millennium Station was my commute for a while!
While I think upgrading the south short line is a pretty critical piece of an eventual Chicago hub - I'm really concerned about the state of Indiana completely blocking any attempts to do so. Current leadership is actively hostile toward transit - including going so far as to outright ban dedicated bus lanes this week - in addition to bans on light rail systems.
Incredibly asinine to think that regressive Indiana leaders could stifle any hope of the most plausible and sensible potential HSR hub outside the East Coast.
There's always Milwaukee, Minn/St. Paul, and St. Louis... :D
@@LucidStewAbsolutely! Tangent: would you expect the northern focused routes to run out of Union station or is there enough capacity (or potential) at millennium?
This route would not get much support in Michigan because it completely misses middle-sized cities such as Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson and Ann Arbor. The Wayne County Airport Authority zealously guards their parking revenue and this train would be seen as a huge threat to it. Also, the platform would never be elevated at Michigan Central Station because it is likely the tracks would either follow the existing tunnel under the Detroit River or a new tunnel would be built under the river. Toronto, Montreal and Buffalo are ideal pairs to Detroit in the east by high speed rail.
Based on the amount of high speed rail currently in Michigan, one assumes support is low on every route.
I prefer an alignment on NS and CN ROW with intermediate stops in South Bend and Toledo, Fort Wayne is pretty small and the freight ROWs are pretty much perfectly straight for a majority of the way
Unfortunately this route, while looking good as a concept, is impossible to implement.
The Michigan Central Station is reopening in June, but because Ford owns it, there's no news that the building will be used as a train station again.
Note, when I say that Ford owns it now, that means that there's no way that it's going to happen.
In the video, it looks like the only way this thing would work is if most of the route is elevated.
The current Chicago to Detroit route, which ends at Pontiac is pretty much the only blueprint to work off of.
The route that was in the video is a great route, but there's no way that it can be implemented unless it's off the current Chicago-Pontiac route.
A HSR from Chicago to Detroit would also require that Detroit build a new train station.
Sadly, it won't be as elegant as the MCS, but it will have to be built to at least house HSR.
The track from Kamalazoo to Detroit, would have to be bought up from the freight companies, probably CSX. Otherwise there's no way that the train could run above 110 mph.
What's really important now in order to make all of these projects work, is to find a way to make passenger rail more prioritized than freight.
Otherwise, we'll never see HSR take off in the US.
Cleveland Columbus Dayton Cincinnati next. Be interesting to see if you use tower city as the starting point or not
I had an idea of a HSR route to LAX by taking over parts of the 405 freeway
Do you mean to say you want to Take Back The Streets?!
@@LucidStew yes
Do you think you could ever make a video on how you make your 3d animations?
If I did, it would be some time. I know the subject well enough to just barely use it, not well enough to teach it.
Thanks. Up until America burned the boats with Amtrak there was daily commuter service from Valpo to Chicago. The big steel guys built some great Victorian homes there.
If I were you cross it into the Canadian border at Windsor then extended to Toronto eventually Montreal and Ottawa. In the case of Toronto to Chicago high speed rail train the front section is the New York City where they will be split in Hamilton Ontario for Chicago via Detroit and Windsor the other is New York City by Niagara Falls Albany. Excellent idea overall
Yeah, I will get to this eventually where I will talk about connecting Chicago Hub Network, the Empire Corridor, and the Northern New England Corridor with whatever the Canadians call their hypothetical corridor. Seems like there is a lot of potential there.
please do a video on a michigan alignment for this! indiana is so politically toxic to HSR i think a MI alignment is more realistic even if its connecting less people
I'm not leaving Chicago Hub behind by any means, but it may be a while before I get back to this pair. Detroit-Grand Rapids is far more likely first.
Since the highest mountain range between these two cities is a highway overpass that part is easy, the tough part is that nobody wants to go from centre city D to cc C, D is an already dead city and C is working overtime to get there. Most businesses in these two disasters is connected to the suburbs, in Chicago's case they do have this connection made via transit and commuter rail, Detroit has neither nor any chance of getting any, ever. Spent that capital on its go nowhere people mover that very few use anyhow. I suspect that air traffic between the two cities is mostly someone connecting to a flight in the other city (the best way to get to an airport is by plane { until TSA starts checking passengers getting off planes}).
So I have a question about the visualizations - they are amazing - but why is the train switching from running on the right to running on the left to right to left again? Stylistic choice?
In some parts, the map data was in the way of one or the other.
"speed is initially slow" The train is going 60mph lol. I don't think I've ever even been on a train exceeding 40-50 mph lol.
I bet you really liked that part out in the fields between Ohio and Michigan. :>
@@LucidStew Oh, I definitely did lol!
Our commuter trains drive 130kmph (80mph) between stops, intercity trains drive 160kmph (100mph) between stops and our intercity direct drives 200kmph (120mph). The high speed trains drive 300kmph (185mph), faster is possible, but only abroad because of the bad soil in our country, which is mostly peatland. The US should try driving their trains faster, but only on dedicated passenger tracks and without at grade crossings.
How do you animate this??? It's amazing!
Unreal Engine 5
There is no way this line doesn't connect either of Ann Arbor or Toledo. And I would argue the airport connection (with that expensive tunnel) is pretty much useless if you don't connect those 2 cities.
Why don't I "visualize" myself winning the lottery instead: More enjoyable AND more likely...
Would make kind of a short video.
Great topic. Some visualization was to long
millium station in downtown chicargo might by the easyest ad cheapest place for the termial but i conects yo nothing but busses north and ot even well to the extensive nothern chicargo express buss service.
Given the current state of Chicago, its various terminal stations, and the currently remote prospects of connecting them downtown, I think it's realistic and reasonable to talk about connecting one at a time to intercity and then let Chicago figure out how to disperse the riders at the endpoint.
Is it worth going around Toledo instead of connecting it to Detroit and Chicago?
You can still connect it, but yes it's not only worth bypassing, but this is one of the best available bypasses in the country.
We need Tampa FL to Jacksonville FL hsr
Sure, lets run it through Orlando, call it Brightline's future. I smell a winner.
@@LucidStew yeah I was thinking either Orlando or the college town Gainesville :)
Any way we can get NYC to Dayton?
Dayton, OH?
The route of this train is not wahat Amtak does.
Mach 3.5 on my channel.
It's about robocop
why not put a station at toledo airport?
It's a pretty small airport.
Build new york chicago bullet train network
Like anyone wants to go to Detroit....
*Promo SM*
Cant have high speed rail in detroit
Why, because Nebraska first?
@@LucidStew highway 34 is called the Detroit - Lincoln - Denver highway 🤓
For $21 billion, this seems like a no brainer. Honestly, I wish the feds would pass a national HSR act like we did for the freeways, maybe even diverting some of the funding we currently spend on that to HSR.
Wow! That was totally awesome!
Chicago could be the hub of a Midwestern network connecting to Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Green Bay, St Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Des Moines. I'll probably be long dead and turned to dust before that happens but it would be cool to see.
Chicago IS the hub! :) They are looking at addressing huge structural issues with Chicago though, and I'm not sure that's the best way to go. They want to make Chicago through running, but does it need to be? As the heart of the hub, maybe the various terminal stations are enough and then find better ways to connect THOSE? It was suggested to me a while back, but I'm still planning to look at the European idea of bypassing the metro, and that is key to Chicago being a true hub in its current terminus form.
One problem, Chicagoland is losing its high earners to other midwestern cities like Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Wisconsin etc.
@@LucidStew yeah, there have been a number of plans for Union Station, including some grandiose ones.
Digging a separate tunnel for HSR to go under Union and Ogilvie Stations makes the most sense. That way a station could take up the space between Union Station and Ogilvie Station making connections to all those Metra and Amtrak lines easy.
@@aimxdy8680 Net population growth for the Chicago area has been +0.27% in 2021, +0.5% in 2022, and +0.53% in 2023 adding about 146,000 people since 2020. While not huge, judging from the number of high rises that have gone up in the last couple of years, business isn't slowing down.
@@bryanCJC2105 Chicagoland 2023 metro population figures hasn’t been published by the census so it’s made up. Chicago reported a net loss of 159,000 people since 2020 from a metro population is 9.6 million people to a metro population of 9.4 million people. It’s even worse considering it has been stagnating since 2009, same years chicago sold its parking meters to big corporations.
I've taken Amtrak between Detroit and Chicago. It occasionally hits 120-130 on the better bits of track, and it's so smooth and rapid, you want more. I'd love this upgrade.
wtf, i had no idea trains outside of the northeast corridor was hauling ass like, time to take a trip to detroit
Amtrak's Wolverine is a maximum of 110 mph and much of the rest is considerably slower due to curves and freight congestion on NS between Chicago and Porter, IN.
Speed limit is 110 so this isn’t true.
@brandongregory9542 I'm not gonna counter anything. GPS observation from my coach seat. Maybe that's bunk. Idk. If it was 110, it was still nice and comfy and I want more train travel like that.
Why would you do this in Indiana and not straight through Michigan? You can connect Western Michigan Univ., U of M Ann Arbor, and maybe even Eastern Michigan if you were looking for University connections. It might also pull traffic off of I94. Maybe it's because I'm from Michigan, but going through Indiana for anything seems silly.
What's the route straight through Michigan? As explained in the video, this choice was partially due to Amtrak considering this in their long-term plans.
The Detroit line of he Michigan Central Railroad runs from Dearborn to Niles Michigan with the stretch from Niles to Kalamazoo owned by Amtrak and the stretch from Kalamazoo to Dearborn owned by the State of Michigan. It basically parallels I-94 and runs through Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor and Dearborn, continuing onto Detroit. Michigan has been gradually upgrading it for a number of years and on several sections Amtrak trains currently run at 110 MPH.
So you’re telling me, we could have 150 mph service right now on the Metra Electric line right now if Metra wanted to!
I imagine they'd have to switch out the tracks and adjust the superelevation, but the geometry is there, yeah.
They're working on bumping it up to 79 and then 90 currently. They ran a train at 79 in October with no issues
If METRA had the capital and the external political will. People have been dreaming of what if they could have in Chicago and dreaming of well thought logical plans like yours.
I think 150 is a bit of a stretch, due to station spacing and having to share track with slower express commuter trains, but I'd imagine 110 or 125 could be viable. Also, the two eastern tracks are currently not electrified and are owned by CN.
The way I got emotional seeing the train pull into Detroit
I smiled so big when I saw it enter Fort Wayne as well
Visualization request... SE Wisconsin + NE Illinois loop. The combination of short distance, population, legacy infrastructure, and lack of major hills makes this an intriguing HSR option.
- Chicago Union Station > O'Hare Airport - 16 miles
- O'Hare to Rockford (147k) - 73 miles
- Rockford (147k) to Beloit (44k) - 29 miles
- Beloit (44k) to Janesville (66k) - 13 miles
- Janesville (66k) to Madison (270k...metro 560k) - 40 miles
- Madison (270k) to Milwaukee (529k...metro 1.5m) - 79 miles
- Milwaukee (529k) to Milwaukee Airport - 8 miles
- Milwaukee Airport to Racine (77k) - 23 miles
- Racine (77K) to Kenosha (99k) - 11 miles
- Keneosha (99k) to Chicago Union Station - 65 miles
Total miles: 357
Total city population: 3.9 million
Combined metro population: At least 10 million
Sure. I like that its broken up into sections. That makes it a little easier to fit visual pieces together. One ~2 minute clip for each. I'm going to make a list. It won't be resolved in any particular order, but this will go on the list.
Might be worth noting the semi-recent announcement of Metra service to Rockford via Belvidere. Might be useful ROW for any Rockford involved video. Looking forward to some more north IL rep!
am stressed over hs2 cancellations
watch lucid stew
am happy now
go to bed and have dreams about fun trains
This made me think about an Acela expansion down through Virginia into Richmond as it's a fast growing city and the DC suburbs have built up strong transit connections
It's not got electrification though and speeds on the line are mostly only 70mph. Also I thought there were some restrictions on the tunnel from DC station heading south.
@@BigBlueMan118 I mean that is fair, Amtrak and Virginia have pushed to modernize the line so some investment into electrifying it or improve its speed could help reach that
@@KarateTeddy27 They've declined to do electrification through Virginia. I think it mostly had to do with the fact that they bought diesel electric trains that can operate both electrified and not. Also, DC has the major hub where diesel trains are switched to electric, and moving that to Richmond would likely be quite costly.
Still, I think the entire network should be electrified as it just makes sense, but you can't reason with politicians these days.
@@jamalgibson8139There's also CSX, which puts the kibosh on electrification on their two shared tracks at least for the near term. Honestly the wires are more likely to extend south to Alexandria (two dedicated passenger tracks) for MARC, potential dual mode VRE, and Amtrak as the first move south. Hopefully with both VRE and Amtrak using the line it gets extended to Fredericksburg and then Richmond, but that's a big lift from what we have.
@@daniellewis1789and the National Environmental Policy Act will prevent any additional trackage ...you have a lot of Civil War sites as well as former American Indian settlements in that corridor.
Great visualization! Have you thought about a possible Chicago-South Bend-Kalamazoo-Ann Arbor-Detroit routing? It would be just as direct and serve a larger population.
Yes, I did think about that. I found its geometry to not be conducive to a high speed trunk. However, you may be referring to some other combination. As the video indicated there are, without exaggeration, 1000 different ways to do this, and this is just the one I picked.
@@LucidStew My preferred routing would be Chicago-Michigan City-Benton Harbor-Kalamazoo-Detroit
As a former Chicago resident whose family entirely lives in the Detroit metro, this would have been a dream!
That reminds me, I forgot to look up flight times. This would compare very favorably to flying!
As a resident of Warsaw, Indiana, I felt so honored to be mentioned. Indiana Department of Transportation is planning on making US 30 a limited access freeway through the area, but I'm not they will include enough median for high speed rail.
I would have liked to show your city in better detail, but Google stymied me. 45' will do it ground level, but you only need enough to fit the columns if you elevate. At a minimum it would be nice if freeways provisioned for this even if isn't built, as freeways usually have a lot of excess room in the right of way unless they're completely built out.
Lucid, AMAZING work! I have sketched out this route also, and arrived at something very similar to this. The only major difference for mine would be to avoid the airport tunnel/station for a side station on the Norfolk Southern tracks by the airport using the Ann Arbor railroad ROW.
Also, map commentary would be greatly appreciated with your fairly witty style.
Nice. I decided to be bold with the airport. Please expand on what you mean by "map commentary". I was anticipating the dead air being an issue for some, so I can use ideas for adding more voice over to these. These videos are more about the trains, but the VO should also retain a good cadence with the silences not being too long.
@@LucidStew Re commentary: I guess what I mean is the type of commentary from your previous videos where you explain your rationale for the route that you've chosen. Given the length of the pauses and the dueling content of 3D train vs wider map talk, perhaps you could have a insert in the corner where you go over the stuff.
I'm remembering back to your Atlanta to Charlotte and Gulf Coast videos. You made great arguments for choosing Columbia+ Augusta vs Greenville+Spartanburg for example. And looping to include Jackson. This one has so many different options, there are quite a few choices (I.e. Union vs Millennium station, Ft Wayne vs South Bend, Toledo bypass, etc.)
Essentially, commentary from your old video + visuals of this video = success!
Hope that helps!
@@Whatneeds2bsaid oh, ok, talking about different routes in comparison. yeah, that's a good idea. With this pair in particular the possibilities are a little overwhelming, which is why I kind of consolidated that in the beginning to "this is 1 route out of 1000" or whatever, but that would be good to include if you're only looking at a few choices. There is some additional room to slip that in various places here like Gary or by DTW. There is also some of that in this one, like the discussions about U.S. 24 and 30, or the Toledo bypass. In addition, I still plan on doing the City Pair style, where its a lot more focused on the route and less so what the train is doing.
Just as always keep up the great work. Your videos are so informative and go into depth that I like as far as give cost estimates per route. The 3d animation has just taken it to the next level. Maybe and I do mean maybe in the future you can even go a step further and show those regional routes or commuter routes that could work. 3d it out but you might actually need a team to get to that scale. Regardless great work and keep it up. I'll be supporting and rooting for you all the while.
Its a body of work and there are plenty of topics to address, so it might happen eventually, but probably not on the scale of packing it all into one video.
@@LucidStew oh I would expect it to. For example if you were to look at say altanta marta or florida tri rail masterplan for they're systems you'd need to probably do it in three parts maybe more. Commuter system anyway. Maybe for fun in the future you can just do a fly through
Two things might be a fun improvement: periodically show where we are on the large point to point map, and then at the end show the point to point map with speeds shown in color along the route, red being slow, green being fast, something like that maybe. Maybe just a small area map in the corner the whole time.
The color coding of the route would also show where the value of straightening curves is.
Edit: and you’re actually doing some of this. Nice! Shoulda finished the video first…
I really, really appreciate the constructive criticism and try to work that in when I can. I'll give some thought to how I can accomplish something like that.
@@LucidStew Hey, just happy to see somebody doing the speculative route building. I’ve had this itch for a long time, more for local transit, but it’s nice to see regardless. Another thought, I love the nerdy details, it might be fun to include the curve radius when you mention the speed through a section.
Love the Video. Why does the United States build space ships/probes that cost billions of dollars just to be sent to take films and pictures of Mars and galaxies but will not
spend billions to take much of the traffic of the overcrowded interstates here on earth? What a total misuse of funds that could alleviate a continuing problem of travel.
There are too many politicians, corporate heads that fight against high speed rail since they can afford their own planes and can avoid highway travel. The future belongs to those that want to and can fix this situation.
Politically, it would be smarter for the leaders of Illinois and Michigan to have this go through as much of their land as possible. Indiana would never build this.
The problem is that Indianans(?) haven't watched enough Lucid Stew videos.
Ye this would be serene and cool this visualize high-speed Toronto or Vancouver train !
예, 이것은 고요하고 시원할 것입니다. 토론토나 밴쿠버 고속 열차를 시각화해 보세요!
As someone who lives along the hypothetical route, I keep rewatching to keep myself hopeful, and maybe manifest it. If you ever cover Indiana again, I’d love to see if the proposed Midwest Connect Corridor (Pittsburgh to Chicago) advocated by groups like the Northern Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance, would make sense for maybe some hsr sections.
Also fun fact: Warsaw is the orthopedic capital of the world, with multiple companies such as Zimmer Biomet employing lots of people in the area.
if you're bored Stew I have the phone numbers of some of the Northern Lights Express committee members and if you could do a visualization of the route with HSR vs what is planned now I'd make sure they see it. Worst case is we'd get electrified instead of Diesel and hit 125mph the whole way.
Awesome video! Honestly the amount of criticism just shows to the extent and influence this route has on the populations as me personally being someone who uses the Wolverine often would prefer a similar route that connects Ann Arbor and DTW. I would probably cost cut the DTW connection instead of a tunnel and try to better utilize the existing Detroit Amtrak station in midtown by expanding that footprint as much as I would like service to be based in Michigan Central.
You should do a visualizer for the Southeast High Speed Rail proposal, if you haven't done one already?
It would be cheaper and faster to follow the existing Wolverine/Michigan Corridor, as Amtrak already owns the portion from Portage (IN) to Kalamazoo, with MDOT owning the tracks from KZoo to just west of Detroit. Start at the same point in Chicago and use South Shore Line to Michigan City (in the process of being double-tracked). From there, you could have two options:
1) Follow the existing tracks to New Buffalo, Niles, and then Dowagiac, or
2) Follow the South Shore Line into South Bend. Instead of branching off to the South Bend Airport, parallel the freight rails into Downtown South Bend for a joint Michiana station. From there, it can parallel the CN tracks into Michigan and then divert back to the Wolverine Corridor.
It's quite the diversion just to reach Fort Wayne. While bigger than South Bend/Mishawaka, its metro population is only 100K larger. A separate rail corridor from South Bend to FW, and then FW-Toledo-Detroit could be built, but I think a dedicated Chicago-Detroit HSR corridor should be more direct and the FW diversion wouldn't be worth it.
From Kalamazoo, the MDOT corridor could be straightened to eliminate many of the curves and achieve HSR speeds. Rather than a station at DTW, an AirTrain could be built connecting the two DTW terminals, a new joint rental car facility, and then the Dearborn station (which will also serve commuter rail throughout SE Michigan). The Chicago-Detroit HSR station continues to the new Michigan Central Station in Corktown, with connecting trains into Canada.
Yep, there are a lot of different scenarios possible.
I think that there's an opportunity to split off west of Toledo and then continue on to Cleveland OH and Buffalo NY
Would love to use a service like this, it would be a lot easier to visit some of my family or go on work trips. Hopefully there is enough incentive for this line to be built in the future. I also want to see a high speed line that goes from Detroit to western Michigan, but I'm guessing there's some good reasons why the route shown in the video was chosen instead.
Great video. I think the look of the station interiors would be better if there was more overhead lighting. They all seem rather dark. There are the translucent or backlit walls that are letting light in but some bright overhead lighting would make it seem more inviting. The interior platforms look like a gloomy subway.
Please do something similar for the Windsor-Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor :)
For your next visualizing high-speed video, do Detroit to Cleveland
Being from this area I always find the maps routing the HSR through Fort Wayne to be interesting. I am not sure if the assumption would be that the current AML becomes higher speed, or if a 200mph route would skip it. Beyond Fort Wayne there isn’t too much to stop for in Ohio or Indiana on this proposed route. As a local and normal rider of the Michigan line, you have much more dense population, universities, and overall density on the existing route when compared to going through Fort Wayne. As for your approach to Detroit, I would say staying on existing ROW/ or rejoining the old Michigan Central would suffice compared to the massive Conrail shared Assets yard flyover the last 5-7 miles to downtown. The Michigan line from 94-MC station is light freight traffic for the most part. Great visualization, I love the theory and watched the entire analysis.
These videos are becoming an exercise in offering options to appease previous commenters. I likely would have gone with a more direct route into Detroit from Carleton, but wanted to hookup with DTW for the people that weren't fans of bypassing it last time. :) In this format, I imagine you could legitimately join the two cities with 100 different routes and have most be somewhat reasonable. That is one of the interesting things about the area to me.
@LucidStew thing is you could also use this line to go to Pittsburgh from Fort Wayne at a good clip. Thus, it might be desirable to build the connection for both directions to reduce costs or as an alternative if the current line is down for any reason. Even could be a case where expresses and locals run different routes.
Another posibility is from Ft. Wayne Follow the Wabash line directly to DTW, its open country and reliativly staight, maybe a stop at the half way point in Adrain, that would be the moderen version of the old Wabash-Pensy joint service that competed with the Michigan Central. From New Haven it is almost all open flat farmland.
Wow, great visuals! You've done an outstanding job!
I'm hoping the federal railroad association will get this grant to upgrade the Chicago Ft. Wayne & Eastern RR. This is a perfect example for high-speed 🚅 from Chicago to Detroit to develop soon. Flex from N.W. Indiana. I still remembered as a kid growing up in Gary seeing Amtrak Turboliner trainsets passing through the former Penn Central now Chicago Ft. Wayne and Eastern. In the late 70's to 1982. Thanks Lucid for this video.
There are a lot of Midwest routes entering the Corridor ID program. If Congress can follow up on the current FSP-National program funding, some of these routes might be working toward a similar service standard to the line along I55 in Illinois with 110mph speeds in 5-10 years. However, given the current performance of Congress, that's a big if.
Can we visualize this but continuing to toronto
We surely can.
I'd love to see Detroit to Atlanta or Chicago to Atlanta! This is awesome!
Thank you! Live in Fort Wayne and would love rail to return. Great options to fly out of DTW or transfer to the blue line to hit ORD. Anymore I drive to and park in Micigan City and catch the SSL to Chicago.
Nice to see someone from Fort Wayne speak up. Everyone in the comments has been dogging you guys saying you shouldn't have HSR.
This would be incredible. I use the the Wolverine line between Detroit and Chicago at least a couple times a year. Otherwise I just drive it. If I could ride a faster, newer train, I’d utilize it way more. Probably in a monthly basis.
Would be nice to save 3 hours each way, right?
Would the FAA allow that rail tunnel under the Detroit airport? If they don't like metro/subway stations stopping right at airports for security reasons, they may throw a fit about a HSR tunnel under an airport.
The station would be no closer to the terminal than someone "dropping off passengers" at the front door.
I am so shocked at how inexpensive it is once you get out of NEC or California. 21.8 billion seems like a no-brainer to me but what do I know?
This is about 1/3 the cost per mile of CAHSR, but that is a very expensive project. Overall, I think it's a reasonable cost for what you get. I would assume similar costs for the various other possible permutations between Chicago and Detroit ASSUMING Millennium Station as an end point. Probably looking at another $4-5B for Chicago Union.
those graphics look great. I didnt realize what we were missing. I hope transit youtubers see this.
This or something like it would be amazing, especially if you could connect it/keep going across the border and onward to Toronto.
I think in most cases, the more you have the more more makes sense, if that makes sense.
You know, Toronto has about the same population as Chicago and is only 230 miles from Detroit.
Yes, I talk briefly about connecting to Toronto from Detroit in my Chicago Hub Network video.
I just love these videos. You could make one of every single city pair and I would watch them haha
might happen. there's a lot of time between now and when even Brightline West and CAHSR are running.
As someone who lives near the Detroit area, I really would like this to be a reality in the near future!! Also I thought the Chicago Union Station was gonna be the hub for High-Speed rail, No?
That is currently the plan, but they didn't get any money for it this year, so I made it easy on myself. I may explore the idea of leaving Chicago as a terminus in future videos.
@@LucidStew another thing to add is that Detroit is rebuilding itself, so adding high-speed rail network to it would be a great way to help out with its rebuild
If only it were real
As a former freight train conductor of the CC/IC this is not what we should be focused on .....I live in Florida now and bright line hits 2 to 3 cars a week....
Are you saying we should be focused on grade separating Brightline instead?
@@LucidStew I'm saying we should be worried about other things like homeless vets and more important things ....sure I worked on the railway and I support it to this day....but Americans are not the smartest of the bunch....people use tracks as walking paths, atv trails, and in the last 15 years were at a record high of grade crossing accidents....maybe don't make illegal drugs legal to start ....I still don't understand how anyone can get hit by a train ....
I've never seen a presentation like this... cool
I mean, if we're talking about stuff that could happen pretty quickly, I think electrification is easier to achieve logistically and politically by sticking to the current Wolverine route. But in terms of serving population centers, Fort Wayne and Toledo make more sense than Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, so yeah, this is pretty good.
Problem is this route doesn't go through Toledo either so that it can go to DTW airport. In that case the airport connection is quite useless because I assume only less than 20% of people who use DTW airport actually lives in DOWNTOWN Detroit.
@@tomhwm913 100%. When the Ann Arbor-Detroit commuter rail was on the table, they were looking at adding a stop in Wayne/Canton area and running feeder buses to DTW. To me, that makes more sense, or even better, an AirTrain. Connect the airport with the high-traffic corridor and you're good.
@@izzygcphoenix Yep. Reducing a 45 min bus ride to 20-30 min isn't really a sweet spot for high speed rails. Plus a bus that pulls into the Grand Circus or Campus Martius would be a lot more convenient than a train into Michigan Central.
If we're doing proper planning, the Inter-CITY rail should serve Toledo (which also opens up another branch to Cleveland). If Detroit needs an airport connection, they should do it with its own commuter rail.
Need the music for this one. Idk why it made brain go brrrrrr
Do me a favor and talk to the guy that thinks it sucks.
Your 21.8 billion has disappeared in Ukraine.
Possible, or on golden toilet seats for the Pentagon, or a ship that gets mothballed after 3 years, or what-have-you.
Good job.
thank you for saying so!
It would be nice.
Can we get one of these for the bright line west corridor? 👀
Yes. That will likely be the next one of these.