Carl,
What have they done between Alton and St. Louis. When I rode many years ago I think we spent an hour to cover that 25 mile or so stretch.
Mac
What can be done between Alton and St. Louis? Also, I have a memory that the Merchants Bridge needs work; is my memory correct? Or, does the passenger traffic use the McArthur Bridge?
I don’t think very much has been improved Alton to St. Louis except perhaps some new rail/ballast, alas, but I haven’t been there in the last few years either. There is a new Alton station. The track from there into St. Louis has multiple owners–indeed Amtrak has inherited GM&O rights over two different bridges.
Both that segment and Chicago to Joliet are subject to future projects with future funding. I know there is a long-term plan to look at a reroute over the Metra Rock Island Line from Joliet, with some sort of new flyover to get onto the line into Union as opposed to La Salle Street Station, but this has a 1.5 billion dollar price tag–so it will be awhile!
That’ll give time to see if the current experiment works: massive increase of ridership, and concurrent massive increase in income.
And, “locally”, we will see how the experiment between Merced and Bakersfield works out. I expect to be driving past the construction site tomorrow, and look forward to viewing the progress.
Hopefully, these evaluations will be more objective than subjective.
Ed
If the schedule doesn’t turn out to be an hour faster, who goes to prison?
In California, people thought they could make the trains run SF to LA in 2 hr 40 min by passing a law that said the trains had to do that. Think the trains will obey the law? If not, will they go to prison?
Non-performance on a contract is not a criminal violation.
I’m not familiar with that particular California law. If it states that they are offering a contract to build such a railroad, and you accept, and it doesn’t, then that is failure to perform on a contract. That frequently goes to civil court, unless the subject of fraud comes up. THAT would be the prison part.
Note that no one in California government is expected to go to prison just because they didn’t perform on their contract with the federal government. Probably. It will likely go to civil court, as the feds try to get money back from California. Also, California could go to court to try to get more money.
Ed
Yeah, Contractual obligations are a civil matter. Is this ignorance of the law or a bad attempt at humor? If they don’t meet their obligations, they can be sued by the state.
Not only by the state, but by the USDOT as well.
First and foremost, hasn’t the investment made train times more reliable in the area of ontime departures and arrivals. One could argue the addition of fencing and quad gates as very expensive but also having a direct impact on ontime arrival by avoidance of train vehicle or train pedestrian incidents along this line. They also replaced the signal system in most cases along this line and that is going to be more reliable as well.
Also the above look at cost vs benefit is very narrow. I am pretty confident the project will definitely pay back in a LOT faster than 200 years into the Illinois Treasury at least. Though the ancillary impacts are more difficult to measure. What are the increased property values along the line and what is the annual bump up in property taxes collected? There HAS to be some impact here with all the stations they built as well as rehabbing they did. Did the line contribute to a raise in family incomes and perhaps Illinois State Income tax collections? Didn’t increasing the speed of the line along with train frequency make living further out from Chicago and St. Louis more feasible by using the high speed train to commute?
Has the increase in speed resulted in more train frequencies being more feasible economically and if so, has the increased mobility generated additional Economic benefit in anyway through increased spending in the communities along the line?
How much has the increase to 110 mph…lowered the incremental cost to increase from 110 mph to 125 mph?
Another question to be asked:
Would adding just a point to point Chicago to St. Lo
If it was written into the Ray LaHood grant from the Obama Administration as a performance measure and that performance measure was not met. They need either a waiver from the Feds or need to consider paying back the grants from the Obama Administration in which were predicated on achieving a completed project that met specific performance measures. In other words they would be in the same situation California is now.
BTW, outside of DoD contracts or contract violations that place human lives at stake, few people in this country go to prison for contract violations, they usually are remediated by fines, waivers or arbitrated agreements.
I ride the Lincoln Service frequently and have noticed some spots where we are going 110 mph, asked conductor who confirmed it. They did have to replace many crossing gates and signals. I usually take the 6:40 am train out of St. Louis if I am connecting to one of the later trains, Eagle is often late and will not rely on that one to get me there in time for a connection.
The Texas Eagle slows down sometimes North of Dallas and into Southern Arkansas, not sure what is going on there but there has been some recent UPRR track construction. Laying of a second or third track in places in Texas as well as re-engineering one or two of the cutoffs to take up less real estate when they branch off the mainline. Usually the stop at Texarkana is used by UPRR to get some frieghts past the Texas Eagle while it is in the station. Same deal at Marshall, TX. You can tell the train is hindering freight operations.
Also, South of Dallas is a problem sometimes as well as far as time keeping is concerned. I was told that even the TRE line can be a problem if Herzog dispatches a commutter train in front of Amtrak prior to leaving Fort Worth it makes the arrival into Dallas 20 min late (they need more double track on the TRE line). I’ll bet not a day goes by that UPRR is not celebrating they got rid of Amtrak between Dallas and Fort Worth. 
Even though Dallas and Fort Worth are talking on and off again about putting commuter trains on that line as well or using it as a route for a HSR line.