This is one of those questions that is almost macabre to ask, really, but how much more capacity does Chicago's Union Station have to spare? I know that Amtrak does not want to use more than one station in downtown, but CUS is basically a pair of stub-end terminals...and when I look at the mess of long-term plans to run various services into Chicago, I do wonder how many of them CUS can actually handle.
This question butts up against the consistent efforts to route everything that isn't a commuter train into CUS, to the point of looking at very expensive rebuilds on various tracks. I know we're not at capacity at the moment, but I can't help but wonder if the long-term plans for Michican, Illinois, Iowa, and the floated ideas for Ohio and so forth could all actually fit.
(I'm assuming that the main issues are going to be on the south side; from what I can tell, the north side seems to be fine, and on top of that there aren't nearly as many plans for piling services up on that side of the station...just Hiawatha expansion and, in theory, Madison/Minneapolis services and the NCH...which doesn't seem nearly so daunting as all the other stuff.)
This question butts up against the consistent efforts to route everything that isn't a commuter train into CUS, to the point of looking at very expensive rebuilds on various tracks. I know we're not at capacity at the moment, but I can't help but wonder if the long-term plans for Michican, Illinois, Iowa, and the floated ideas for Ohio and so forth could all actually fit.
(I'm assuming that the main issues are going to be on the south side; from what I can tell, the north side seems to be fine, and on top of that there aren't nearly as many plans for piling services up on that side of the station...just Hiawatha expansion and, in theory, Madison/Minneapolis services and the NCH...which doesn't seem nearly so daunting as all the other stuff.)