Why is there no reasonable rail service between PGH and CLE? We have several trains daily between PHL and Harrisburg, why not maybe 4 daily between these two sizable populations? It would allow for easy travel for business and leisure activities, possibly even open up new airport options if there were ever some decent competition. The one rail line between them is long-distance and travels in the middle of the night both ways.
Many reasons, alas.
( a ) Amtrak has barely enuff equipment to run the trains it does.
Without multibillion orders of new coaches and locomotives,
it's stuck with the same routes it's had for years and years.
Amtrak has a Fleet Renewal Plan. On Amtrak.com, look at the bottom
"About Amtrak" and you can find it among the various Reports and
Documents. To update it as you read it, simply postpone all estimated
dates a few years to account for the failure of Congress to act on this
(or any other) problem.
Simply put, the plan is to order about 700 new single-level cars for
the East Coast Fleet and 600 more bi-levels for the Western trains.
Billions and Billions.
( b ) If Amtrak did scrounge up enuff cars for more train sets meanwhile,
it would need to clear another slot on the freight lines that host the
passenger trains. The State of Pennsylvania inquired of NS about a
second frequency of the
Pennsylvanian Harrisburg-Pittsburgh (and
potentially beyond in either direction). Reportedly NS replied, 'For us
to give you another slot,
we'll need another track'. Rebuilding another
track here, where once there were four, would cost a staggering sum.
( c )
The LD trains are usually timed to leave the East Coast big cities
late in the day and arrive in Chicago in the morning, in time to make
connections from there. As a result, Pittsburgh and Cleveland are in
the wrong places to get daylight stops. Srsly.
The WB long distance L
ake Shore Ltd., from NYC via Albany and
Buffalo, reaches Cleveland well after midnight on its way to Chicago.
The WB
Capitol Ltd out of Washington likewise passes thru Pittsburgh
around midnight and thru Cleveland pre-dawn. EB they again hit
the midway cities in the dark.
These schedules can't be tweaked by an hour or two to solve this
problem. And the cities can't be moved closer to Lake Michigan or
the Atlantic Coast.
The only solution is new trains with schedules built around convenient
arrivals and departures in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Toledo (and
perhaps Detroit). So we're back to needing more equipment for
more trains using slots on the freight railroads that will likely cost
hundreds of millions in upgrades to obtain.
( d ) Nobody is going to invest hundreds of millions to upgrade routes
that carry one or two or three LD trains each way. The projected
Return on Investment would not justify the cost.
But new intensively used corridors can sometimes get funding.
Most of the money came from the Stimulus, but Illinois is dramatically
upgrading the Chicago-St Louis line, which will improve service for
the LD
Texas Eagle that covers the same route before heading beyond
to Texas.
Michigan is upgrading the portion of the Chicago-Detroit route
within the state, to take an hour out of the schedule. But that segment
doesn't share tracks with a LD train.
The next major step for the Michigan trains will take place
outside the state,
on the tracks from Union Station to the point in Indiana where Amtrak-owned
tracks head into Michigan. This crucial segment, called South of the Lake,
now carries the 5 trains supported by the State of Michigan (a number
which could increase when more equipment becomes available), as well as
Amtrak's
Lake Shore Ltd and the
Capital Ltd.
Recently a Draft Environmental
Impact Study was released on plans to
upgrade this segment -- currently the most congested freight route in the
country -- with the aim to reduce the schedule by an hour and get the
Chicago-Detroit trip under 4 hours. If they can cut one full hour here, it
would cut the same hour from the routes NYC-Chicago and D.C-Chicago,
making slightly better departures and arrivals. But Cleveland and Pittsburgh
would still be serve at night.
Tricky problems with the South of the Lake, tho. It's estimated to cost $2.5
to $3 Billion. Tricky part is who will pay for it? About half the mileage is in
Illinois. A few of the projects might be part of CREATE, Chicago's master
scheme for improved rail and roads in ChicagoLand, and so get some
state funding. Michigan stands to benefit the most from the results,
but
spending Michigan tax money in Indiana? What do you think? LOL.
Indiana, OTOH, won't get so much out of it, except and until the Cardinal
and Hoosier State trains heading Chicago-Indianapolis move to this route
(and a new station is built on the higher-speed line around Gary) before
branching off to the south.
Building a higher-speed line South of the Lake would also cover about
a third of the cost of corridor service Chicago-Cleveland-Pittsburgh.
That full route could cost, oh, $5 to $10 Billion all together, by a wild
guess, and
looking at the costs of the higher-speed St Louis- and
Detroit-Chicago routes. It could also require cooperation and some
funds from three or four different states. Uh oh.
As a corridor, Chicago-Cleveland would have 8 or 10 daily trains, with
well over a million passengers a year, so the project would make sense.
With more than a million riders on the Michigan routes, close to two
million probably, and a million or two on the Cleveland trains, the
corridor would deserve federal support. Back to Congress again.
Uh oh.
And in conclusion … Zzzzzz ...
A Chicago-Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor, cutting say three hours out
of the schedule,
would also cut about three hours out of any LD trains
sharing those tracks. And as dedicated passenger-train-only tracks,
the corridor could easily allow new or restored trains thru Cleveland,
thru Detroit via Toledo, and to Pittsburgh. The existing LD trains would
also be transformed by the faster running, departing and arriving at the
endpoints at much more attractive times.
So all we need is about 10 years and $10 Billion and we've got your
Pittsburgh problems almost solved. Um, still not getting thru the Allegheny
Mountains very easily, but Hey. You probably could get a second frequency
of the
Capitol Limited and that would help a lot.
The railroads are currently more profitable than even. So why were they sitting on their thumbs all these years while getting overwhelmed with traffic, for which they collect the revenues readily and then routinely fail to meet their end of the bargain? What is it that was keeping them from investing the money they already have? What makes you think that if they were given an additional windfall they'd spend it any more productively? Faith?
