dose any one think high speed rail would be a bad idea in chicago
i am chicago born and rasied and railfans here say it would not work i think so to but maybe they see something many of us do not see
I’m curious as to why “railfans” don’t think it will work. They must have something specific in mind, because there’s an entire Midwest High-speed Rail Association out there thinking that it can and will work. Perhaps they’re defining “high-speed” too strictly–we’re not going to see a TGV-style system in my lifetime. But it’s entirely possible that there will be a dedicated right-of-way for 110-mph passenger trains from somewhere in Chicago through Gary, possibly as far as Porter. A properly-built and properly-maintained Class 5 (FRA) line could handle 90-mph passenger trains with freights; that would probably suffice for Porter east to Toledo and Cleveland, for now.
Judging from the recent past conversations and written material available, it seems to me wherever HSR might be built, the 100-110 mph makes the most sense for the money spent…More value and more usefullness for the system.
High speed rail for Chicago? No way. Highspeed rail between Chicago and another city, perhaps. The higher the speed, the farther apart the stops must be to make it feasable. Perhaps it would be better said that the farther apart the stops are, the more time high speed rail will save.
Unfortunately the city pairs that would benefit most from high speed rail between them are so densly populated that the cost of eliminating the sharp turns inherent in our 19th century railroad ROW system would be astronomical. Most places we cannot even maintain the current 79 MPH standard.
It’s time to get out the clean sheet of paper and start over.
One part of the French TGV system that seems to have been overlooked is that the high-speed right of way does not extend into the city centers. Existing trackage is used in the built-up areas and the high-speed trackage starts up at the edge of the urban area. This would be similar to a Chicago-St Louis HSR line built new from about Joliet to Alton and using existing lines to the city centers.