Hi all. I am about to regain the St. Louis market as part of my sales territory and would like to use Amtrak as an option from Chicago (Joliet) to St. Louis and at times to Springfield. I am wondering how Amtrak’s service along that line is doing what with the lines HSR upgrades. Can anybody shed some light on this question? Thanks.
Not sure exactly what information you are looking for. There has been track work done during the past two summer construction seasons making the ride reportedly much improved. The on-time performance for the trains looks to also have improved after the track work this past summer. But significant trip time improvements are several years away until the grade crossings are upgraded with quad gates and the signal system are upgraded to allow for 110 mph operation.
Additional funding was awarded last May to upgrade another section of the corridor from Dwight to Joliet with a double track segment and upgrades for 110 mph speeds. Construction work on that will likely start next year. There may be service interruptions next summer to allow track work to be done so you need to look out for that.
New bi-level corridor cars will be purchased for the Chicago-St. Louis and other mid-west corridor services, but those cars are probably at least 2-3 years away from entering service.
The service frequency for the corridor is likely to remain 4 daily Lincoln service trains and the Texas Eagle so you will have 5 trains a day to pick from. There is a IL DOT website on the corridor project if you are interested in the details: http://www.idothsr.org/
Most of those grade crossings already have quad gates, from the initial upgrading many long years ago. I would have expected the circuitry to have been upgraded at the same time with variable-length warning systems capable of handling the 110-mph speeds talked about even back then. I can see the probable need for block-signal revisions, and some sort of ATC options (not to mention the mandatory PTC by 2015).
To this point it appears that the work done has focused on track upgrades in preparation for higher speed operations, but absent signal upgrades, I don’t think there has been any change to the schedules. The first train south in the morning is carded for 5 hours, 20 minutes Chicago Union Station to St. Louis. The others with a few more stops get about 10 more minutes. Mapquest put the drive time at 5 hours, 12 minutes. I check a round trip fare at least a week out at $48. Take off 10% for a NARP membership. At 30MPG, gas for the drive might run about $75.
Obviously there is always the risk of delays. I check the performance of several of the “Lincoln Service” trains going back a week and found everything from a few minutes early to an hour late.
I put the modal choice on this one to personal preferences. Driving provides somewhat better reliability and flexibility. The train leaves the driving to someone else.