The existing Amtrak service between Chicago and Milwaukee is already pretty much an express operation, with stops only at Glenview, Sturtevant/Racine and Mitchell Field. Seven round trips Mo-Sa and six on Sunday isn’t too bad. Timings run around 1:30. Frequency could be improved, but I’m not sure how far a reduction in timing would help since the distances are pretty short, 85 miles end-to-end.
Metra service beyond Antioch and Kenosha is highly unlikely without any assistance from the State of Wisconsin and may require changes to the RTA statute in Illinois, so don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen.
A Kenosha-Milwaukee local service on the former C&NW passenger line may be feasible if a Wisconsin agency is willing to step forward.
Time is valued but at what premium? I live in Antioch and used to commute to an office in Chicago. It was as black as pitch when I arrived at the station to get to the office on time. The train was a gently swaying slow boat to China. I would have paid more for a faster ride so I could leave later. More trains on s skip stop would have been an ideal arrangement. We all slept coming and going, never seeing daylight in either direction.
During this time I wrote an article for Trains that was submitted but while received a good review was not published. It began with a description of a statue that stood in front of a Skokie Valley station on the late, great North Shore Line. It was the figure of a herald holding a tablet that posed the question; “Have you ever traveled eighty miles per hour?” That was well over a half century ago. Ah, progress!
Yeah, Vic, I know what you mean. I think the housing prices in most communities reflect the wages of the area (or is it the other way around?). And in central Wisconsin you can get a nice place for less than $90K!
The influx of Illinois money into Kenosha county has really boosted the value of my house (literally doubled in value in the last 12 years!), which will be great when I sell, but for now the property taxes take quite a bite.
The Amtrak Hiawatha service is scheduled for 1 Hr 36 Min. I ran some simple computer simulations on the published Amtrak schedule making assumptions regarding braking, the weight of the consist, adhesion, HP of the Genesis Diesel.
What I came up with is that given the 79 MPH FRA limit, they are accelerating, running flat out, and then braking to make their schedule between Glenview-Racine and between Racine-Airport. Between Chicago Union station and Glenview as well as between Airport and Milwaukee station, the schedule indicates substantial speed restrictions.
Assuming that they would boost the limit to 110 MPH between Glenview and Airport but have to live with the speed restrictions at the two ends, and assuming a somewhat lighter train (Talgo?) along with higher braking rates, I came up with something like 1 Hr 15 min while I was told the WisDOT study suggested something like 1 Hr 10 min.
The somewhat higher speed doesn’t buy you all that much when you consider acceleration, braking, and the speed restrictions in downtown terminal areas. The Acela train, in addition to the 150 MPH top speed in limited areas has banking (not that big a deal in the Midwest I suppose), enormous amounts of electrically-supplied HP, and big brakes (yes, those infamous brakes – they get stressed pretty hard to maintain their schedules). The truly high-speed Japanese trains are express trains that are not stopping at Glenview, Racine, Airport either.
What I am wondering is if there are some engineering tradeoffs between higher top speed and say putting faster trackwork in the terminal areas (higher-numbered turnouts? crossovers?).
Paul M. You are correct that it is very hard to significantly shorten schedule time just by upping speed limits from the present 79mph to 100 or even 110. However, You could probably refigure by upping the speed limits as far as Mayfair or even Western Avenue and get a few more minutes. Maybe that is the source of the 70 minute goal.
The present running time of 96 minutes has to beat drive time almost always, except maybe for the driver who has a glove compartment full of speeding tickets. Still, if the running time was an hour or less, the trains would be SRO. For Chicago commuters 60 minutes is acceptable, but 61 minutes is considered to long, unless the commuter has relocated from southern California.
I know that the MILW had passenger running times at 85 minutes in the years just before Amtrak. I don’t know if they ever advertised faster times, but long ago passenger speed limit signs at the EJ&E crossing at Rondout, “reduce speed to 100MPH” suggests that may have been possible. My thinking is that the cost of getting run times below 80 or 85 minutes may just not be reasonable from an economic standpoint.
It is not an either /or proposition. If you have to drive in the Chicago area you should be happy that the 150,000 Metra daily riders are not out on the highways you have to use to get around. If it were not for public transit in the Chicago area, $10 gas could be the going price with half of it going for the taxes to build streets and highways so that the drive time might stay a little less than 4 hours.
I agree with jeaton on this. It is not an either or proposition. When I commuted on the North Central line there were several company vans waiting to pick up employees at the train. I knew of three reverse commuters from Chicago who I rode with that pooled their money and bought an old junker and used it to car pool from the station. Spouses would drop off husbands. Some rode bicycles they kept locked in the bike racks at the station where they got off. The conversion of the beltline around Chicago on the EJ&E from suburb to suburb that is planned is another way. Same for the new outer loop on the EL in Chicago for intracity travel. I car pooled from Bristol Wi to Antioch Il alot of times. If you were late to the office-everyone understood delays because-guess what-they all commuted by train-supervisors included. Did you ever pay to park in Chicago? No, trains are not a 19th century solution.
No one doubts for a minute that you couldn’t run 100 or 110 MPH with the existing equipment, although they may have to pay more attention to maintaining wheel profiles to prevent hunting at speed. The problems are grade crossings and signals – either eliminating grade crossings or providing barrier gates, and providing the kind of automatic train stop signals required for faster than 79 MPH. We complain about the FRA, but the casual operation at 100 MPH plus of days past is not something we want to consider in today’s social climate.
The problem with signals is that if there are cab signals and train stop devices, they have to be in every train that goes on that piece of track – presents a problem with freight run-throughs and pool-power arrangements. If the freight railroads could adopt some kind of GPS cab signal for their own requirements as an interchange or pool-power standard, it might solve the whole problem.
So anyway, of the 70 minute running time includes some faster running apart from the 110 MPH segments, I say that folks work on that first – there is nothing wrong with incrementally working on improving service.
I wonder if concentrating on faster trip time is really the most effective course of action.
People get antsy waiting for elevators. Rather than endlessly investing more and more to speed them up, mirrors are put up next to the elevator doors. Time isn’t a problem anymore. (Vanity at work).
Maybe there could be activities made available during the trip that would make the time spent on the train more attractive, be it treadmills, poker, or whatever.
As I showed in the first post, service seems to be excellent and a good value, if you use ridership as any indicator. Any other business I know of would be thrilled to have such a large increase in business. Why fix it, if it isn’t broken?
Some good news-Metra announced the implementation of express trains on the North Central Line ( Trains News wire ) which should cut down on travel time significantly.
I guess the traditional commuter train version of that is a club car where people can drink on the way home from work.
A person has to wonder why people put up with such long automobile commutes, lumping through traffic, etc. Most people on this forum think that trains are the answer and feel sorry for the people stuck in traffic, but I think it is important to get inside the heads of people who rather like their cars.
The Wall Street Journal had an article about Chicago Southsiders who have left their cars for the commuter trains on account of the Dan Ryan Expressway construction mess but long for their cars and would pay whatever money in gas in parking.
The way I see it that for a lot of people, the ride, by themselves (the horror, the horror!) inside their cars is probably the only solitude and personal time they get all day, between the husband/wife, the kids, the boss, and the coworkers. Yes, they have to sit in traffic, and stop-and-go driving is stressful to many people (although just because you find it stressful doesn’t mean there are a lot of people adapted to it). You have your own little personal chamber, customized to your taste in terms of clutter or lack thereof, you can listen to your favorite radio station or music tape or just turn the sound off.
Compare that with a packed gallery car – with 150 people plus in there you are not talking about a Superliner deluxe bedroom as a travel experience. Trains are kind of neat, and I love trains, but I have commuted on gallery cars to work during my summer internships and to class when in college, and well, it gets old after while. You are packed in with everyone with their colds
Basicly, I agree. I think in terms of marginal improvements that might be gotten with relativly small investments. Something such as getting top speeds to 100mph. I am not a big advocate of “High Speed” (say 125+mph), and clearly that is not necessary for Chicago-Milwaukee service.
Would 100 mph on the former Milwaukee Road between Chicago and Milwaukee require ATS or something similar, with leading locomotives needing to have it installed ?
According to the ICC order of 1947 governing train speeds, cab signals or Automatic Train Stop are required to operate in excess of 79 MPH. If a line is equipped with these devices, all locomotives operating over the line must be equipped with them in order to lead.
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by Paul Milenkovic
I guess the traditional commuter train version of that is a club car where people can drink on the way home from work.
A person has to wonder why people put up with such long automobile commutes, lumping through traffic, etc. Most people on this forum think that trains are the answer and feel sorry for the people stuck in traffic, but I think it is important to get inside the heads of people who rather like their cars.
The Wall Street Journal had an article about Chicago Southsiders who have left their cars for the commuter trains on account of the Dan Ryan Expressway construction mess but long for their cars and would pay whatever money in gas in parking.
The way I see it that for a lot of people, the ride, by themselves (the horror, the horror!) inside their cars is probably the only solitude and personal time they get all day, between the husband/wife, the kids, the boss, and the coworkers. Yes, they have to sit in traffic, and stop-and-go driving is stressful to many people (although just because you find it stressful doesn’t mean there are a lot of people adapted to it). You have your own little personal chamber, customized to your taste in terms of clutter or lack thereof, you can listen to your favorite radio station or music tape or just turn the sound off.
Compare that with a packed gallery car – with 150 people plus in there you are not talking about a Superliner deluxe bedroom as a travel experience. Trains are kind of neat, and I love trains, but I have commuted on gallery cars to work during my summer internships and to class when in college, and well, it g