How fast is this train coming?

Rail planners have long dreamed of high speed passenger service
in the Midwest. But the plan rests on shaky financial
and political foundations

by Charlie Schlenker

Amtrak’s high speed Acela Express whizzes along a stretch of track between New York and Washington, D.C., at 135 miles per hour. Passengers read or work on laptops in seats as large as those found in first class airline cabins. The train drops them off just a couple of blocks from Capitol Hill without the hassle of baggage handlers and long cab rides to and from the airport.

Rail planners hope to bring this comfort and convenience to travelers in the Midwest. But the dream has been a long time coming. Plans for a high speed rail corridor serving the center of the country are more than a decade old; it could be at least another 10 years before they’re fully realized in Illinois and nearby states.

Even before they could leave the station, fast trains rested on shaky financial and political foundations. Development of high speed service has been dependent upon partnerships between the states and chronically cash-short Amtrak, the nation’s passenger rail carrier. Because many state and federal lawmakers have been critical of Amtrak’s efficiency and management practices, the carrier has never found it easy to get plentiful operating support, let alone capital funding.

In fact, Amtrak CEO and President George Warrington recently resigned amid contentious debate over the future of the financially troubled railroad. Warrington’s surprise departure in early March came only a day after he testified before a U.S. House Transportation subcommittee. According to an Associated Press report, he called for “sustained federal commitment to build the kind of passenger rail system Americans need and want.” Warrington had threatened to cut long distance trains unless Amtrak receives $1.2 billion in federal funding next year.

The continuing furor over Amtrak could further decelerate the pace of high speed rail planning.

In its present form, the plan for Midwestern high speed rail, with a projected cost of $4.1 billion, would span nine states, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin.

It promises to link city centers with airports and link cities across states. And it promises to accomplish this with dramatically lower travel times.

In Illinois, for example, the St. Louis to Chicago trip would take less than four hours, a reduction of about two hours, and the Springfield to Chicago trip would take about two hours, down by an hour and a half. The travel time between Chicago and Detroit would drop from five hours to three and a half.

When they are up and running, though, Illinois’ fast trains aren’t expected to match the speeds of those on other routes. And those speeds can be considerable. European trains are widely expected to break the 200-mile-an-hour barrier within the next few years. Amtrak’s Acela briefly hits 150 miles an hour between Boston and Washington, D.C.

But Gary Williams, chief of the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Railroads, says the federal government requires separation of roads and tracks when trains run at those higher speeds. The high financial, social and political costs for high speed rail, he says, include the disruptions grade separations could mean for communities and commerce. The technological limits of some sections of older and curvier track are a consideration, as well. The top speed along the St. Louis to Chicago corridor will be 110 miles an hour, with an average speed over the length of the trip of 71 to 77 miles per hour, according to the transportation department.

Still, Rick Harnish, director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Coalition, an advocacy group that lobbies Congress, says 110 miles per hour once in a while would be enough of an improvement to make trains competitive with automobiles. Further, Harnish and other promoters of fast trains believe high speed service would cure many of the problems critics have with the passenger rail system: poor on-time performance, lack of an attractive schedule and inconvenience.

Indeed, former Amtrak head Warrington has said frequency would be as important as favorable trip times in generating significant new ridership. Each day, there are 48 departures from 30 Illinois communities, and, over the course of a year, some three million passengers climb aboard. Amtrak officials expect higher speeds will mean an increase in the number of arrivals and departures — and a subsequent increase in passengers.

For example, Amtrak expects to gradually increase the number of daily round trips from three to nine on the St. Louis to Springfield to Chicago route, one of three designated high speed corridors in Illinois. The other two designated corridors are Carbondale to Champaign to Chicago, where two scheduled daily round trips would increase to five, and Quincy to Galesburg to Chicago, where daily round trips would increase from one to four. Meanwhile, passengers traveling between Chicago and Milwaukee would see their options go from seven to 17 scheduled trains. The number of round trips between Chicago and Cincinnati would increase from one to five; the number between Chicago and Minneapolis would increase from one to seven; and the number between Chicago and Cleveland would increase from three to eight.

Illinois transportation Secretary Kirk Brown believes the expected additional passenger revenues would be enough to cover the state’s $10.3 million annual Amtrak subsidy for some lines.

High speed coalition member Harnish argues there would be other economic payoffs. He cites the exper-ience of Dowagiac, Mich. Even the mere prospect of high speed service two stops out of Chicago on the line to Detroit, Harnish says, has spurred an increase in apartment rentals and business starts in that community’s deteriorating downtown.

Yet a lot will have to happen before high speed service can become a reality in Illinois. Work is progressing on the St. Louis to Chicago corridor, which economic and political analysis has shown is the most likely to generate new ridership and legislative support. But there are hurdles to overcome.

A major concern is the freight trains that clog the Chicago area and slow passenger service. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin quips that the cross-country timetable for freight is “two days from the East Coast to Chicago, two days to cross Chicago and two days to the West Coast.” Aside from its potential impact on high speed service, Brown calls the logjam “one of the most significant economic problems facing the state that will take hundreds of millions of dollars to fix.” It appears intractable, he says, because freight companies are unwilling to make changes that might help competitors. And government, he believes, is not in a position to compel a solution.

But one way to speed passenger travel would be to bypass the existing Amtrak route from Springfield to Chicago and use other tracks between Dwight and Kankakee. That also would enable passengers to stop at the prospective airport at Peotone. Another possibility would be to shift to other tracks between Joliet and Chicago.

Transportation officials say there is little incentive to make a decision on either of these alternatives until money becomes available, ownership of some track lines settles and state leaders decide the fate of the third Chicago-area airport.

Meanwhile, Lockheed-Martin is developing a so-called “positive train control system,” which uses global positioning technology, wireless communication, computers and track sensors to better schedule trains and switch them from track to track, allowing faster speeds and fewer slowdowns without fear of collisions.

The state’s $12 million contribution to develop the system has leveraged $28 million in federal and $20 million in private funds. Workers will starttesting the combination of technologies in late spring. If they stay on schedule, next year the state will ask for federal approval to operate the system.

But there are other technological issues. Officials will have to upgrade track on the St. Louis to Chicago corridor so that it can safely carry faster trains. The transportation department’s Gary Williams says this spring and summer workers will spend a second construction season replacing rail ties on the Springfield to Dwight stretch, strengthening the bed, pouring concrete crossing lanes and installing special gates at 69 rail and auto intersections where trains will hit speeds of 90 miles per hour or more.

The fast trains will need better engines, too, and the state is evaluating two design proposals to that end. Brown says Amtrak has agreed to pay for half of the $120 million approximate cost of five or six new locomotives capable of operating at 110 miles per hour. They are slated for use on the corridor between St. Louis and Chicago. Even after the state has chosen a prototype, he says, it will be three years before the company delivers the new trainsets. By fall, though, Williams says the state wants to begin testing diesel locomotives currently in Amtrak’s fleet that already are capable of going 110 miles an hour. That’s not ideal, he says, because the existing technology takes a long time to speed up and slow down, meaning trip times will be longer than for new engines.

Nevertheless, a service that can be called high speed could begin late this year on 120 miles of Illinois track between Springfield and Dwight.

Michigan also recently began testing high speed service of up to 90 miles per hour on a short stretch of track. Indiana is in the planning stages. But all depends on money. And dollars are not now plentiful at either the state or federal level. Thus, Illinois, Michigan and other states in the Midwest High Speed Rail Consortium are working with the federal government in a piecemeal project-by-project fashion.

Here in Illinois, the projected cost of the St. Louis to Chicago corridor will run between $385 million and $435 million, depending on which route option the state chooses for the final leg into Chicago. Transportation officials say the state has put about $130 million into the effort so far. After spending most of the last decade working on feasibility, engineering and environmental studies, they are making infrastructure improvements. Through the Illinois First program, $80 million is going toward track improvements on the rail line between Springfield and Dwight. But that’s the extent of the money in the pipeline, Williams says. He says improvements to the St. Louis to Springfield leg are expected to cost $95 million more, and work on the Dwight to Chicago stretch would follow at an as-yet-to-be-determined cost. Work on the other two corridors isn’t even on the horizon.

Furthermore, the state’s budget will be tight in the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. There is only $27 million in Gov. George Ryan’s proposed budget for high speed rail track and crossing improvements, which are needed to complete work on the Springfield to Dwight stretch. State Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, an Elgin Republican who heads his chamber’s appropriations committee, says he anticipates that amount will stand without objection, but he holds out little prospect of more. Even if significant federal matching money were to come the state’s way, Rauschenberger says, “You can’t get it on this year’s radar screen for most legislators. They’re just too consumed between primaries and general elections and the kind of uncertainties that new districts cause.”

Federal money is questionable anyway. The U.S. Department of Transportation budget for fiscal year 2003, which begins October 1, contains a capital request of $521 million for Amtrak. If past practice holds true, the bulk of that money will go to projects on the Northeastern corridor, leaving little for other regions of the country, including the Midwest. But even that amount is essentially meaningless. According to federal transportation budget documents, the figure is merely a “placeholder, pending development of a new paradigm for intercity passenger rail service.” U.S. Deputy Transportation Secretary Michael Jackson said in a budget briefing following the rollout of the Bush Administration spending plan: “We must decide precisely what intercity passenger rail service we need, what we can afford, and how we can sustain it over time.”

There is little consensus about what kind of service the nation needs or what it’s worth. Before September 11th, the $12 billion High Speed Rail Investment Act, co-sponsored by Durbin, called for an 80-20 federal/state split of development costs funded through bonds. Since the attack, Amtrak has had another round of financial woes, culminating in a recommendation by the Amtrak Reform Council, a federal oversight agency, to break the passenger rail company into smaller pieces.

Yet, Warrington said the company’s performance since September 11th might be an opportunity to resolve the long-simmering political battle over Amtrak and allocate significant capital dollars to bolster service. Amtrak ridership was 4.5 percent above the January 2001 level, and passenger miles were up 5 percent. The corresponding numbers reported by the Air Transport Association for domestic airline service showed declines of 14.7 percent and 12.8 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, as the airline industry hurts, Amtrak’s passenger revenues have gone up 12.4 percent.

Still, recent discussion in the U.S. House has focused on de-federalizing or even privatizing passenger rail service. Consortiums of states or regional corporations would oversee corridors that could include development of a high speed option. If that were to happen, Paul Weinstein Jr., a fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank for New Democrats, says developing high speed service could become a lot more costly for states. That’s because, Weinstein believes, regional coalitions would wield a lot less political clout than even an anemic national Amtrak system has been able to muster in budget battles. Weinstein says doing away with Amtrak might even change the premise of rail development. He says the most growth in ridership over the last few years has happened on commuter systems. So instead of starting with long corridors, Weinstein believes high speed rail might evolve out of metro systems, though the benefits of reductions in trip times through sustained speed come mainly on longer distances.

The National Association of Rail Passengers has yet another idea: a trust fund supporting capital improvements to the nation’s rail passenger routes similar to the trust funds for the aviation and highway sectors. Association Director Ross Capon acknowledges the only way to generate meaningful dollars in such a fund would be to use some fiscal support from airline ticket fees and gasoline taxes on rail, an idea facing spirited resistance in Congress.

The obvious deadline for an end to a rail policy and funding debate is September, when Amtrak’s funding authorization runs out. U.S. House Transportation Committee member Rep. Tim Johnson, an Urbana Republican, says the terrorist attacks last September have solidified the idea that the nation needs to do more to preserve the rail option and make high speed service more common. But what “more” means and when that would happen is far from clear.

Illinois Issues, April 2002

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