The first installment in my series on ideas for reconnecting Chicago with its natural expanded region in the Midwest focused on what could be enabled by linking Milwaukee and Indianapolis to Chicago via high speed rail. This makes it a good time to talk about Midwest high speed rail generally.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the idea of creating a Midwest high speed rail network. The federal government has already designated a system of Midwest rail corridors. There’s a lobbying organization pushing it called the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. A host of environmental groups support it. I even had a (successful) mini-effort to get Louisville included in the Midwest network.
High speed rail is an area, like transit generally, where it is almost impossible to get information that does not come from some type of policy advocacy point of view. Consider the MWHSRA. I like these guys and am on their list, but they are a lobbying group for high speed rail. I think it is fair to say you’re never going to get a discouraging word about rail out of them. Their job is to gin up reasons to do rail. Unlike with local rail transit systems, where there is often significant opposition rooted in tax policy, I don’t see a lot of organized opposition to high speed rail. But there seems to be a lot of indifference and dismissiveness on the part of many. “We’re not Europe” seems to be the easiest way to sum it up.
I think there could be a case for high speed rail, but I think the arguments in favor of it have been way too simplistic to date. The benefits seem to be assumed rather than demonstrated. It is treated as a self evident good backed up by only rather generic arguments and appeals. I think we’ve got to get beyond this, and start asking the hard questions. Because it’s not just about running trains, it’s about what it can do for us.
Why High Speed Rail?
Richard Florida’s Atlantic Monthly piece has been causing quite a stir. I’ll start there by repeating his statements on high speed rail from the companion interview:
There are the fast trains along the Boston/New York/Washington corridor that have allowed Washington, in effect, to become a commuter suburb of greater New York. But how about a place like Detroit? If Detroit were better connected to Chicago, one could imagine Detroit having a better reason for existing.
Could we? I’m having trouble imaging it. Better connections to Chicago by rail will give Detroit a reason to exist? I wish Florida had helped imagine it for us. Who is going to ride those trains back and forth? Is it new trips or displaced air/auto travel? Why are they going back and forth? How many of them will there be? What is this going to enable us to do that we couldn’t do before?
Those are the questions we need to answer. The rationale in Europe is often about replacing air on short distance, high density travel corridors with rail for environmental reasons. It isn’t about giving Paris and London, or Madrid and Barcelona, reasons to exist. But the problem with the Midwest is that far too much of it is slowly dying economically and hasn’t adapted to the global economy. How does rail help with that? What is going to be different after we build the network?
At the risk of sounding Rumsfeldian, I’ll say that there are two broad categories of benefits:
- Benefits we know about that we can reasonably expect to achieve if we execute right. There’s no guarantee, but at least we’ve got a plausible business case.
- Benefits we don’t know about yet. This is based on the idea of emergent properties of a new transport infrastructure. We’ve seen this before with, for example, the internet. We can’t predict what new things it will be leveraged for, but we know it is a disruptive technology.
I think we’ve got to hang our hat on the first point. There may in fact be benefits we can’t anticipate. But that sword cuts both ways. Again, we’ve seen this movie before. The interstate highway system had benefits beyond what we ever dreamed for it. But it came with a lot of downside too. Similarly, the internet has generated huge benefits for some, but has also been an enabler of offshoring that put a lot of people out of work. I think it’s fair to say that whatever good things come out of rail, there will probably be some nasty surprises we didn’t anticipate.
Again, to follow-up on a previous post, we have to be careful not to decontextualize the solution. Rail has worked in places like Europe and Asia, but the conditions in the United States are very different. What’s more, Europe and Asia have had very different policy objectives and implementation approaches than what we’ve seen in the United States. Are those transplantable here? Certainly they would not appeal to large segments of the American community. No doubt many people would like to see us adopt more Euro-like policies. That’s totally legitimate. But let’s be clear on the basis of the debate. It’s a debate about policy and values, not about technology. And indeed often the debate over things like high speed rail is really just a proxy battle for deeper conflicts of values that we don’t want to talk about openly. It’s always easier to try to justify our position based on purportedly technical criteria rather than to make our case for why our goals and objectives are good in and of themselves. That, however, is the discussion that we need to have. Even looking purely technically, is it reasonable to assumed the same results for our system as for Europe’s when the operating characteristics and technology are proposed to be radically different? It seems dubious.
I think I’ve put my own cards on the table. To me, the goal is economic growth for our cities, and helping them to achieve success and broad based prosperity in a 21st century economy that will be very different from the 20th. I do support goals like improving the environment and having a more sustainable society. But I also fundamentally believe that people tend to act in their own self-interest, that only a limited number of people are going to ride trains or do anything else simply because it is “the right thing to do” and that people are going to choose their mode of transportation based on the optimum blend of price, end to end journey time, and quality of experience that fits their needs. So we should look to justify rail based on tangible economic benefits we hope to achieve, sustainable competitive advantage we can create with it, and solid mobility based reasons people will ride it.
I think it’s going to take a lot of hard thinking and serious research to get there. I did try to offer two examples of where rail would accomplish this with regards to linking Chicago to Milwaukee and Indianapolis – the labor force benefits and the sub-division of labor benefits. Both of these potentially offer sustainable competitive advantage. That’s possibly the lever that is most important. It’s not just whether or not you can convince someone to take a train instead of a plane or auto. It’s about what you can do with rail that you could never do before – things that other cities and regions can’t match.
The Current Midwest HSR Proposal
Let’s take a look at the Midwest high speed rail map:
You see here a vast network envisioned. High speed trains, slow speed trains, bus, local transit, street cars, regional rail, national rail, overnight rail – the MWHSRA is in favor of all of them. Immediately you see the political nature of such a construct and the key challenge to ever implementing something that achieves real benefits. Amtrak survives today because it maximizes the number of states and Congressional districts in which it offers service. You see the same logic at work here. Every state and every region within every state would receive some type of service. Parochial interests of little real significance – such as a high speed rail line from Chicago to the small southern Illinois city of Carbondale – are included as part of a throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks strategy.
Truthfully, it’s difficult to see how you make progress other than by taking such an approach. But it is hard to envision capturing the real benefits here. The types of benefits that can be achieved will vary greatly by city pairs. And of course larger cities will benefit much more than small cities. But there isn’t much political logic in that. Let’s look at a few specifics of this plan.
1. The Chicago hub. This network shows Chicago as the hub. That of course, is logical. But a hub has multiple meanings. I think what comes to mind for most people is an analogy to an airline hub. Airline hubs are principally about interconnects. That is, rather than a mesh of point to point lines, you fly everyone to a central location, have them switch planes, then fly to the destination. This is very efficient which is why companies like FedEx and UPS make such heavy use of it for freight.
But is most high speed rail traffic likely to be beyond service via Chicago? It seems unlikely to me. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t thoroughly investigated the numbers – hey, it’s a blog, not a journal article – but if I look around the world, I see rail primarily being used as a point to point technology in major, high density transit corridors. It also links peripheral cities to a national capital or primate city type of arrangement. While there is some interconnect traffic, I don’t believe that is the basis of justification for the route.
My belief is that, in practice, the vast majority of trips on any Midwest high speed rail system are likely to be point to point O&D to Chicago. If you are traveling from Detroit to Minneapolis, are you likely to endure a multi-hour rail journey to Chicago, transfer, and take another multi-hour train to Minneapolis? There’s probably some of this, especially novelty, leisure, and perhaps student type travel. But most serious travelers are going to hop the one hour non-stop flight.
We need to view the high speed rail network not primarily as about anywhere to anywhere hub and spoke through Chicago, but rather as a series of city pair links to Chicago. One implication of this model is that it eliminates the need to terminate all traffic at Chicago Union Station, which is a benefit I’ll explain later. You can instead choose the most appropriate station to use for each route. What’s more, this implies that we should study each route separately, to identify the pros and cons and specifics of each in terms of the benefits, technologies, etc. There is no one size fits all solution here. This approach also means that we should not be relying on amorphous “network benefits” via analogy from the internet. If we can come up with some specific cases, great. Otherwise, to me that is gravy. I believe it is theoretically possible to justify point to point links without regards to this. Of course, it might also mean that some city pairs don’t make sense. That hurts the case politically, but since I’m not a marketing program for high speed rail, I’m free to ignore that for now.
2. Confusion of the solution and the problem. The MWHSRA supports using corridor appropriate technology, which is right in line with the above. But what this means in practice is that for the routes shown in purple and in green, existing railroad tracks would be upgraded to support 110MPH, non-electrified service on lines shared with freight. Why did they pick this? There are a few good reasons. One, 110MPH service is the fastest the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) allows you to go and still maintain grade crossings. Two, this, along with using traditional technology, dramatically reduces the cost of the network. Previously, it was said that this network could be constructed for a little as $1 million per mile. That’s clearly a joke, and I haven’t seen that number in a while, but it is undeniable that this is a much more affordable system than say a Spanish AVE-style system operating at 200MPH. Three, it lends itself to incremental implementation over time, something that I have long supported in many other areas. A lot of times “big bang” just isn’t reasonable. Incremental deployment reduces risk and gives you speed to value, which can give it a huge surface appeal in this case.
So it is very hard to fault the MWHSRA for taking this approach and clearly it is completely valid type solution and probably the more realistic way to get something implemented. I do not think it is the right one however. Why? Fundamentally because it confuses the system with the benefits. The idea seems to be that we want high speed rail, so however we have to define high speed rail or however we have to structure deployment of the system to get there is the way we should go. But the scope shouldn’t be the network. The scope should be the benefits. It’s about the benefits and what we need to do to get them. And I don’t believe that this 110MPH network satisfies the objectives of the system as I defined them because the journey times will simply be too long.
Let’s look at some of the high density lines in Europe where we have seen the greatest displacement of air travel with rail. Paris to London via Eurostar is 2:15. Madrid to Barcelona via AVE is 2:35. Virtually no city in the proposed Midwest system will have times like this other than Milwaukee and Indy. St. Louis and Detroit are both about 300 miles from Chicago. With slower speed terminal approaches, there is no way you are going to get less than 3.5 hours on these lines, probably worse. With collection and distribution times on the end, is this going to be competitive with air travel?
What’s more, even if you could displace air travel, what does that give you? Again, what does a 3.5 hour rail service let you do that you couldn’t do before? How does it change the game? Even if environmental benefits are your driver, it isn’t clear to me that you’d reduce flights materially. There are still going to be plenty of Chicago-Detroit and Chicago-St. Louis flights because of the hub-spoke design of the air system.
It’s not even clear that it is auto-competitive, when you factor in journey times to and from the station, plus the early arrival buffer you’ll need to leave on your journey. Again, the drive time is much closer to the true door to door time than the flight or train time only is to the journey times for those modes.
The present plans being pushed envisions a five hour train trip from St. Louis to Chicago. But if that’s what you want, there’s already a service that will give it to you. It’s called Megabus, it leaves from the exact same place as trains, it’s dirt cheap, very popular, offers wi-fi service, and even better is provided 100% by the private sector – no tax subsidies required. If Megabus isn’t a game changer in the relationship between St. Louis and Chicago, why would an equivalent rail service be?
Also, I don’t think full consideration has been given to what this means practically. Most existing freight/Amtrak lines run through lots of towns that grew up along the rails. How many of those towns are going to be excited about super-fast trains barreling through at 110MPH, particularly if they don’t stop there? Inevitably, routings are going to be chosen to maximize the number of cities served and/or there will be compromises to speed that hamstring the routes. Small town and rural legislators are very influential in Midwest state houses. At a minimum, there’s going to be a lot of compensating going on.
So as someone who’s been noted as a rail skeptic, I’m coming to a rather surprising conclusion, namely that the proposed Midwest high speed rail system is not nearly ambitious enough. I think it occupies that unfortunate gap between a cheap solution that gives amazing price/value and an expensive solution that is a total game changer. I think it’s still a pretty expensive solution, but one that, even if it attracts riders, isn’t going to move the needle in terms of making the Midwest more competitive and successful.
The Way Forward
Again, my belief: the scope is the benefits and you have to design a solution to obtain them. Then you can decide if you think the ROI is there.
So what do I propose we do? Here is the sketch of a plan:
- Conduct city-pair analysis of every major (one million plus population MSA) city with Chicago, with secondary screening studies of surrounding cities. Selected other cities could be selected where we have reason to believe there might be some benefits.
- Based on this, define a plausible set of mutually beneficial results that we think we can obtain as well as a rough cut on the technology and cost.
- If it makes sense, proceed to a detailed planning study.
My hunch? In most cases, if we want to accomplish something meaningful, it involves significantly higher level of service than envisioned in the current proposals. I also think there are disproportionate benefits to cities that are closer to Chicago. This means #1 Milwaukee, which is already starting to function as a sort of part of the Chicago economy. And #2 Indianapolis, which is by a good margin the next closest major city. Then you get into ring three – Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis.
I’ve already made the case for both Milwaukee and Indianapolis. Again, read it here if you didn’t already. It’s based on an extended labor force model and enhanced hierarchical subdivision of labor.
Here are some characteristics of such a system as well as some praticalities that would need to be addressed in order to have any chance of success. Keep in mind what attracts riders to the system: competitiveness in terms of cost, end to end journey time, and quality of experience.
1. We need game changing reductions in rail journey time. Especially given the collection and distribution time requirements on each end, I don’t see how we materially enable anything different if we aren’t making major journey time reductions. That’s why I proposed the 90 minute trip target for Chicago-Indy.
2. The system must operate with absolute reliability. You should be able to set your watch to this thing. In Spain, the high speed rail network promises arrival within 5 minutes of the scheduled time or your fare is refunded. The system only pays out on 0.16% of trips. That’s what’s needed here. Clearly, that’s a far cry from Amtrak.
3. Quality of experience must be top notch. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money, but it does mean more than bare bones. It’s about being very rider focused and adopting a hospitality industry type mindset. The trains themselves should be of top notch design and quality. There should be AC power and wi-fi throughout – free. There should be quality on board services. The staff need to be extensively trained in customer service. The check-in process should be totally painless – and preferably electronic. The web site and other electronic communications channels should be state of the art. Stations need to be welcoming, comfortable, well lit, with excellent signage, etc. Again, architecture and design matter.
4. You need to solve the collection and distribution problem. This is already largely solved through public transport and taxi service in Chicago. Other cities have much worse systems and will probably need to upgrade them. Most cities with successful high speed rail service also have excellent ground transport once you arrive. However, it’s not realistic to expect everyone to take transit, so rental car facilities should be included at the station with very easy access.
5. Price to entice. The price equation has to be there to deliver the value. At one point at least it was claimed the Midwest system would break even operationally. I don’t believe this, nor do I believe we should set it as deal breaker system goal. I believe some level of operating subsidy would be required, just like with most transit systems.
6. Frequency of service. If you can’t offer good frequencies, again, how much of a game changer can it be? I’d say something like hourly service would be preferred, including at least one late night train for people departing after attending an evening event. The lack of train frequency is a big limitation, for example, on the existing Hiawatha service to Milwaukee.
7. Amtrak is not the answer. Most rail proposal assume Amtrak is the operator. I think this would be a big mistake. Amtrak’s brand in most places is terrible and the politics around it have been poisoned. Why would we want to saddle our brand new state of the art high speed rail system with Amtrak’s old school operating practices, antiquated work rules, and legacy costs like retiree pensions? Let’s start de novo on this one. We don’t need to just change technology. We need to change the whole culture around rail operations.
8. Top notch, non-intrusive security. High speed rail is a terrorism target. We certainly don’t want an Atocha situation here. On the other hand, the “TSA experience” would horribly compromise the attractiveness of the system. We’ve got to get creative here.
9. To repeat again, a high speed rail system can’t be positioned simply as an environmentally friendly substitute for what we already do today. It has to be something that let’s us do things we couldn’t do before, or that give us game changing elements of sustainable regional competitive advantage.
Changes in Federal Policy
I would also propose a series of federal policy changes and actions to make this a reality.
1. Funding. There is no way that states and local governments are going to be able to pay for this, so it has to be a majority federally funded program. Beyond initial capital, we’d need a dedicated funding stream for operations and for capital refresh so that we don’t end up with an infrastructure crisis as the system ages and there is no money for maintenance. Take a look at our major urban transit systems and see where that approach leads.
2. Proper positioning as a major urban service. We need to treat high speed rail like major airports. Not every town has an airport with commercial service. Only large cities have that. Similarly, high speed rail is for large urban centers and perhaps a very limited number of places in between. While politically difficult, we’ve got to be realistic about this. I don’t advocate ignoring smaller towns and rural communities. Far from it. I think communities adversely affected by rail should be compensated. And I also think we need to be creating policies that are tailored to the unique needs of those places. Our country isn’t all the same and we can’t have a one size fits all policy.
3. Mandate more flexibility at the FRA. Our rail rules are among the strictest in the world and are hostile to passenger service. We’ve got to have leadership in place there that will adopt a “can do” approach. For example, we should have maximum flexibility to run light European style trainsets without having 100% dedicated trackage. Perhaps President Obama could establish a high speed rail program within the Office of Urban Affairs to ride herd on the FRA and make sure regulatory red tape doesn’t kill the program.
4. Expedited environmental review. Speaking of which, the NEPA process is a good thing. But we’ve got to strike a better balance where we don’t drown major infrastructure investments in a decade plus of studies to tell us more or less what we already know. Yes, by all means let’s do environmental studies. But let’s make sure high speed rail is put on a fast track.
5. Charter a new operating authority. As I said, Amtrak is not the answer. We need a new federal authority to own the capital stock and oversee the operations of the system. The actual operations might be contracted out to private companies (or maybe not – we’d have to figure that out). But we should avoid structuring this with traditional railroad operating practices that date to the 19th century and equally avoid the civil service type structure of 30 years to retirement with a defined benefit system for life. Neither of these is conducive to running a rider oriented, financially sustainable system.<
Example: Indianapolis to Chicago
Next, I’ll turn to some thoughts on the first two connections I proposed: Chicago-Milwaukee and Chicago-Indianapolis.
A commenter, the Urban Politician, noted that Indiana had no political demand for high speed rail and accused me of showing favoritism to Indy. Well, I do admit to having a soft spot for Indy. However, this is a legitimate objecdtion that I think needs to be directly addressed. First, I believe we need to figure out how to create political demand behind the routes that make sense, not rely on progressing randomly on projects of unknown quality just because there’s some people who like them. Indianapolis is the second closest city to Chicago other than Milwaukee by a good margin. This makes the case for rail service between those cities extremely strong. Indeed, if you can get the trip time to 90 minutes, you start to see some very interesting opportunities for game changing interaction. But TUP is right, there is no political demand in Indiana for high speed rail.
I think this can and should be changed. Indiana has a reputation for conservatism, but it is actually on the leading edge of practice in many respects. Major Moves was a very creative way to fund the highway program and only a few places have done anything like it. Indianapolis is the national leader in modern roundabouts. Carmel alone has 50, which is 5% of the entire US total. And the roundabout interchange project on Keystone Ave. is the first time that approach has been done at that scale anywhere in the country. The new Indianapolis airport is the all around best in the country, and the most environmentally friendly in the world. The Indy Cultural Trail is re-imagining the pedestrian and bicycle experience in a downtown. So I think there’s reason to believe Hoosiers could get behind it – if there’s a compelling reason to.
I think I laid out the case for the potential economic development benefits. But there is one other argument for it that is an absolute no brainer. There is $9 billion for high speed rail in the stimulus and Indiana isn’t getting any of it because it has nothing to spend any of it on. I think it’s fair to say the taxes Hoosiers pay aren’t going to go down just because the feds are spending the high speed rail money places besides Indiana. This isn’t about pumping huge amounts of money into a grandiose scheme. Rather, it’s about spending a relatively small amount of money to do planning studies and environmental work, and building consensus around a solution that can be implemented. In effect, it’s about buying a very cheap out of the money call option. If high speed rail takes off or there are major federal dollars behind it, the state is positioned to succeed. If not, not much is lost. But if high speed rail does take off and the state isn’t in the game because it didn’t pay the ante, that’s not a good place to be.
So I think this makes sense for Indiana even based on a hard nosed dollars and cents view.
Plus, I think there is reason to believe that this route has more going for it than you might think. Chicago and Indianapolis have the two strongest civic sectors in the Midwest by a mile. Chicago is united by the strong leadership from Mayor Daley. If he says this is important, people will rally behind it. In Indianapolis, it can take the community leadership a while to come to consensus about something, but once they do, watch out. Once the armada is in formation, Indianapolis is a city that almost invariably accomplishes what it sets out to do. And while you can get grand visions almost anyplace, if you want to get something done, call Mitch Daniels. The long overdue departure of Blago means the state of Illinois can finally start engaging seriously at the state level. And of course President Obama means there is a friend of Chicago in the White House.
Lastly, one reason this route has gotten less attention is that there is no longer an existing high quality rail connection between Chicago and Indianapolis. The existing Amtrak routing is circuitous and horrible in its operations characteristics. This is in contrast to say Milwaukee where there is a already a 79MPH rated double-track line between the two cities. Given the MWHSRA approach of incremental improvements, focusing on cities where there is already a decent quality line in place makes sense. However, what others might see as a defect, I see as a positive. Look at my technical note for more.
What would I propose doing? It is pretty simple. The respective governors and mayors would charter a feasibility study and tier one EIS for the corridor. This would also have top level sponsorship from President Obama’s Office of Urban Affairs as well as involvement from the FRA. This would include significant involvement from the business leadership of both cities to make sure the business case is there. This would be more than a typical technical study which looks at how you build something. Rather, it would be an open dialog about the future and what we want it to be. About the types of game changing things it could enable and the willingness of the respective business communities to invest in making them real. About building relationships and trust. I believe it would also look at a system that offered true high speed service with the attributes I laid out above. I think President Obama should fund this via discretionary transportation grants from the stimulus. Some technical thoughts on this route are below.
Running in parallel with this would be a less detailed study looking at the connections from Indianapolis to Columbus, Cincinnati, and Louisville. This starts the process of determining if those corridors are worth it, and provides some information on potential through routing of traffic to Chicago. Actually, if there’s a logical hub in this system, meaning a traffic interchange point, then it is Indianapolis not Chicago. All traffic from the southeast should be aggregated in Indianapolis in order to proceed to Chicago. I’m not sure what the value basis of rail is to those cities, but that’s what we have to discover.
One this initial work is completed, then the parties can decide if the ROI is worth it.
Example: Milwaukee to Chicago
For Milwaukee, the situation is a bit different. The Hiawatha service already offers a 90 minute journey time and is in regular use. Wisconsin has been very active in supporting high speed rail. Wisconsin has already invested in station upgrades on the Hiawatha line, so I’m sure the governor and mayor would be all in favor here. I’d suggest a similar effort to Indianapolis here to focus on how to use rail to drive economic growth and benefits, and to flesh out the technology a bit. But I think this one is more straightforward.
This same approach would need to be taken with every city pair out there. Articulate the basis of value, find out what you have to do to get it, decide if there is a willingness to do so, and look at the ROI. Then make a decision and seek funding if it is a yes. I do believe as more cities are added there will be some “network effect” benefits, but I think in the short term we need to hang our hat on city pair logic.
Implementation Considerations: Milwaukee
Finally, I’ll wrap up with some technical thoughts on the two lines.
First, Chicago-Milwaukee. The 90 minute journey time is already pretty good. This is a route that I think, given the distance, is perfect for the incremental improvement to existing rail technology approach preferred by the MWHSRA. There are two things that need to be done. One is to reduce the journey time. I think it should be possible to get closer to 60 minutes than 90. The other imperative is to increase frequencies, preferably to hourly. And of course we need to absorb this into the new rail operator, so as not to rely on Amtrak and the subsidies that the state of Wisconsin is currently giving for operations.
The easiest way to reduce journey time is to speed up the terminal approaches, which often feature several miles at low speeds. You get much more bang for your buck upgrading the segments close to the terminals than you do the already fast segments in the middle. Though I do think the middle segment north of Rondout probably could be upgraded to 110MPH operations fairly easily.
The bigger challenge in frequencies. The Milwaukee Road line used by this service has well-patronized Metra service and is also used by freight trains. One problem is the A-2 interlocking where the Milwaukee Road trains cross the Union Pacific lines on the near west side at grade. It’s a serious bottleneck. Metra is well aware of the problems here and anything that improves this situation could also dramatically better commuter service. Other capacity constraints might be addressable via extended sidings or express tracks. But there’s no doubt this will be difficult.
One other item. I believe the Glenview stop should be relocated to Lake-Cook Rd., where the Shuttle Bug service will connect it to the many area employers.
Implementation Considerations: Indianapolis
On the Indianapolis line, I noted the lack of a quality existing connection between the cities. But as I’ve long said, invert the world. Turn your weakness into strength. In this case, the poor routing and condition of the current line more or less takes the inferior upgrade existing approach off the table. That means the answer is a new terrain route.
I believe the best technology for this corridor would be a European style, 200MPH service along a new terrain routing for most of its length. This would use off the shelf, proven technology from the likes of Siemens. The Siemens trains are already working in Spain at the high service levels I mentioned previously. By all means have a bake-off on the vendor, but I would suggest that EMU versus a TGV-style separate power is better.
The benefit of the new terrain route is that it enables dramatic increases in speed and service quality without any freight interference. Also, a new terrain route can bypass all the towns the existing lines pass through, so those Main Streets don’t have high speed trains blowing through them and all the attendant noise and danger and such. Northern Indiana is flat, which is deal for rail building. And the rural nature of the route means that the grade separations – which would be required – would be limited. Possibly “offsets” secured during the procurement process could mean a manufacturing plant and/or a US HQ operation locating in the corridor.
There would be intermediate stops at Lafayette (possibly on the outskirts to avoid the urban construction issue) and Lake County (just south of Crown Point). The route could be single tracked with passing sidings or double tracked as the need warrants.
Connections into Indianapolis and Chicago would use existing routes. In Indianapolis, there are two potential routings. There are two lines extending from downtown to the west, the double-tracked CSX Indianapolis Line to St. Louis (the one that parallels Rockville Rd), and the CSX Crawfordsville Sub, which is a bit south of there. The Crawfordsville Sub has a through track plus an industrial siding on the west side.
Option A involves utilizing the Crawfordsville Sub to a point just beyond Brownsburg, where the new terrain segment would begin. This is an indirect routing, but it is a fairly short distance. It should support 70MPH operation. A single tracked approach is all that is needed. Some limited amount of track construction might need to be done. If the industrial siding could be upgraded, freight could be diverted to it, then the remaining segment to Brownsburg could be double tracked.
Option B involves upgrading the Crawfordsville Sub, creating a better connection to the Indianapolis Line, then routing all freight traffic that way from the crossing point, possibly also utilizing an upgraded IU Belt around Indy which some local leaders have wanted anyway. Then the passenger service uses the Indianapolis Line tracks west to the Crawfordsville Sub crossing (near Country Club Rd), and uses a newly constructed second track along that route for a few miles to north of Brownsburg again. This completely eliminates freight interference. Again, true high speed operation isn’t needed close in to town.
Why would CSX agree to this? Good question. Among other things, there is a project called CREATE that proposes spending $2.5 billion to relieve Chicago rail bottlenecks. This has a huge benefit to CSX. I think it is reasonable to ask for some cooperation on passenger rail in return for this large investment of public funds that benefits their network. Similar upgrades to the IU Belt in Indianapolis could be in play too.
In Chicago, we take advantage of the fact that we are no longer treating the city as an interchange hub to avoid the messy route to Union Station and do something much simpler instead. We cut over on our new terrain route into Illinois and use the Illinois Central tracks into a downtown terminal at Millenium Station. Other possible terminals are a new showplace high speed terminal at Van Buren St. Station, or, if you get some impossibly large windfall, a connection into the mothballed Block 37 Superstation.
The Illinois Central line is largely separate from the rest of the Chicago rail network, which means it does not have all of the crazy grade crossings and such that the CREATE program is designed to reduce. It’s just a straight shot into downtown, mostly already grade separated. Plus this might be the widest railroad ROW in town, with many mains. There are four already electrified mains for a good portion of the length, utilized by the Metra Electric service and the South Shore. It is easy to see how one of these could be given over exclusively to high speed operation, at least outside of rush hour, enabling a very rapid terminal approach.
We have to connect, and the map looks like the logical way to do it is to turn west just south of Crown Point (hence our station), then connect with the Illinois Central around University Park. Probably there would need to be some near term movement to protect the corridor. Is this something the Illiana Expressway study could look at? If the Illiana included a rail corridor adjacent, that could be a winner. This is a bit of a detour, but at true high speed operation, not much of one.
I do believe there are some rush hour slot problems north of Kensington where the South Shore connects. But the good news is that with hourly service, you only need to squeeze one or at most two trains through during each peak period. Otherwise, the four mains make this a breeze of a connection.
I’m not going to say this is the right answer, only one answer that I think should be studied. It would require concessions on multi-mode intergration by the FRA and a host of other things. But if we looked at it with a “can do” attitude instead of a “can’t do”, I’m convinced there’s a way that could make it happen.
The downside of this? A price tag that I’d estimate at $3-4 billion. That ain’t cheap. But that’s the going rate for real high speed service. There’s a legitimate question as to whether the benefit is worth it. Ultimately, that’s one of the questions of priorities and values we’d have to come to consensus on. Even with the feds picking up 80%, that’s still around $800 million in local matching funds for construction. On the other hand, the $9 billion just approved in the stimulus would have easily paid for this line. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that a future Congress might fund it.
Another problem with it might be the opposition of places that don’t get service to something that doesn’t benefit them. That’s totally understanable. That’s another reason we need mostly federal funding. Plus, we’ve got to make the case that it does benefit them indirectly. I’ll make that case myself in my next installment of this series.
Again, this is an exploration around high speed rail. Not the answer. I hope it starts a dialog. Your feedback and contributions are welcomed and encouraged as always.
More Chicago
Chicago: A Declaration of Independence
Corporate Headquarters and the Global City
Urbanophile, a question: although this blog is midwestern-focused, what I feel we should be asking is why doesn’t the BosWash/ eastern seaboard corridor have high-speed rail already?
If you’ve ever seen those satellite maps at night of the eAst Coast, the thousand points of light are nearly contiguous along I-95. Tom Friedman repeats in his columns how he’s flown into a completely modern airport in Shanghai and connected onto a high-speed system. He compares this to the decrepit LaGuardia airport, which, obviously, does not connect to a high-speed rail system. And most of these cities along the east coast have local (subway) rail and light rail too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/opinion/27friedman.html
The east coast is OLDER, denser, more developed, has more toll roads and a different politics (monolithic uni-party vs. swingstate) than the midwest. It was the first example of what Jean Gottmann cited as a Megalopolis–what people now try to call a mega-region. Therefore, it increasingly starts to resemble the Continent of Europe with its fancy high speed railery. Or it resembles the parts of China and Japan that we know to have high speed rail. Yes, there are certain things like top-notch universities that the east coast should have before the midwets.
Moreover, the Metroliner, Acela are the divisions of Amtrak which are in the black and justify a money losing national system.
There is a funny competition between the East and West Coasts where Los Angeles tries so hard to become the NYC on the West coast. So it is there that you see urban rail schemes foisted upon a populace that just won’t give up their cars. And last November, the voters passed a Proposition for High-Speed rail down the length of CA with no way to pay for it amidst a $40 billion fisc. 2009 budget deficit.
However it comes to pass, public or private, I think East Coast rail is overdue. We’ll have to see if the provisions that Congress snuck into the Stimulus Bill concerning high-speed rail will actually give us at least a functioning system.
But as for any talk of high speed rail for the West Coast or Midwest, even your very modest and valuable thoughts, is is way too preliminary for that.
Well, there is the Acela, which is basically the high grade version of Amtrak incrementalism.
I’m not that familiar with east coast geography and rail networks, but I have a hunch that a similar problem is at work there that you see in parts of England. Namely, the rail lines are so old that they are curvy and go through many yards and small towns and such. This makes them difficult to upgrade. The Acela corridor itself was like this I believe. The curves were not high speed capable without a special “tilt” function built into the trains. The density of development also makes a new terrain route impossible.
Note that the new Eurostar connection into London solved this problem by digging a new tunnel under the city. Expensive.
Plus, funds have just been hard to come by. Why are people outside of the Northeast Corridor going to vote for that? Perhaps that brings up another plus for the Midwest network. It means Midwest and Northeast (and west coast) legislators can, in the grand spirit of political compromise, decide to fund everything.
Valuable investment or porkopolis reborn? I’ll let you decide for yourself.
Thanks for the comment.
Incrementalism doesn’t have to come in the form of 110 mph upgrades. In France, when rail skeptics within the government pressed SNCF to cut costs on the first TGV line, SNCF constructed the line only two thirds of the way through from Paris to Lyon, and routed the trains on older, lower-speed lines for the remaining third. This solution reduced costs while making the difference between high- and low-speed rail clear to passengers, creating political pressure to complete the full high-speed line.
On another note: California did in fact see significant opposition to high-speed rail, led by the same people who oppose rail everywhere else, like Wendell Cox and the Reason Foundation.
So you propose that Chicago not be a HUB, but Indy should be a HUB with connections to Columbus, L'ville, Cincy. And you maintain that the incremental improvement via amtrak lines is bad, but it is good enough for Milw-Chi. But Chi-Indy should be a new dedicated line and Obama should pay for it out of discretionary funds, even though Indana has not made any investment in HSR. and Chi-Det is a waste even though Mich has made substantial ivestment in HSR, and STL & Cleveland are a 2nd tier cities but Indy is 1st tier. And for Chi-Stl, Megabus works fine, but if we are going to do this "HSR experiment" it should start with Indy-Chi. The experiment wont work becuase too many small towns will want stops, but you propose a stop south of Crown Point. But your not INDY centric.
jp, I think you misread me on one point. It’s obvious that Chicago is the center of the system. That’s the ultimate destination of any line that makes sense, most likely. I just don’t think Chicago’s primary function is as a traffic interchange point. Rather, it would be the origin or destination of the traffic. What I describe for Indianapolis is no different than what the federal corridors on the table already provides.
Milwaukee is probably the only line where incrementalism makes sense like that because it is so close you can achieve excellent end to end journey time with it. And you are only competing with driving, not flying, the vast bulk of which would be within the heavily congested Chicago metro area.
Again, I’m not saying Chicago-Detroit is a waste. But you’ve got to have a basis beyond Florida’s logic, and I think you’d need much better than 110MPH service to do anything that might make an impact there.
Chicago and Detroit are both big enough to warrant true HSR, which right now tops at 300-350 km/h, rather than 180. The distance between Chicago and Detroit is the same as between Paris and Lyon; Chicago is slightly smaller than Paris, but Detroit is three times as large as Lyon. Between Paris and Lyon, the TGV has a 90% market share, and is so profitable it subsidizes the money-losing operations of the regular speed SNCF trains.
I do not see any ROI on this idea.
At a cost of $3-$4B it would never pay for itself.
Better/less expensive idea is to make getting to/from the airport easier and offer subsidy to the airlines for hourly flights.
Porkrail
HSR (or higher-speed rail) works on the east coast because it connects four major cities that are all relatively dense and have decent public transit systems, which includes good on-demand cab service. It is possible to go to any of them and (relatively easily) get by without a car.
I am at a loss to imagine how rail, the game-changer of 1820 (that bankrupted the state of Indiana because it was still digging canals), would become the game-changer of 2020 in the vast midwestern prairie.
There is already immense sunk cost in very good highways that cover all of the lines and routes proposed and are far more versatile (individual transit, mass transit, and freight all share the highway, and connect to an infinite number of points).
It is already possible to go point-to-point from Indianapolis to the Loop in around three hours (off peak); neither HSR nor air can significantly improve on that, and the incremental cost to a car-owner is about ten gallons of gasoline each way.
I agree with you: the benefits are not at all clear.
I’d rather invest billions in local mass transit outside Chicago first. Then, as in the east, density and habit might create sufficient demand for intercity rail. THAT is the inversion we need, I think.
Colorado is in the process of doing the study’s necessary to see if high speed rail is feasible in our region. We have a unique set of challenges, mostly pertaining to the curves and grades of the mountains. However, these same geographic features also make it difficult to add roads:
http://rockymountainrail.org/
Check out the 1/23/09 Feasibility Study Update Presentation especially. Although the study isn’t done, it looks like it may endorse the “Go big or go home” approach you advocate. I would like to hear your thoughts comparing the Midwest and Colorado.
Also important for understanding what’s going on in Colorado is the ongoing redevelopment of Denver Union Station:
http://www.unionstationadvocates.org/pdfs/SOM%20transit%20architecture%20presentation%202009-02.pdf
I find it interesting that according to the MWHSRA Spain should serve as an “example” for the Midwest. I think this is partially flawed, while at the same time offering some interesting learning experiences, which of course no one focuses on.
The first AVE line went from Madrid to Sevilla. After the success of that route, they decided to tackle a line to Bareclona. Mardid-Barcelona was a fully-fledged airline route that had very efficient (guaranteed) service, whereas Madrid-Sevilla did not. Once, my Madrid-Barcelona flight was more than 15 minutes late, and as part of the guarantee I received a coupon for a free ticket between those cities. Wouldn’t it be nice if we even had that with US carriers?
After the Barcelona AVE was started, the original line went only to the outskirts, it took extra years to get it all the way into the Barcelona Sants station. The fact that the line connects Zaragoza to the two cities is almost as important as connecting the two themselves.
Another important thing to note is that Madrid has two main train stations, one handles northern traffic, one that handles southern traffic. It is a destination city, not a hub. Many routes don’t go through Madrid, such as along the eastern coast which serves Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia, etc.
Additionally, it seems that they make some argument that Spain has super-speedy and efficient trains everywhere. A look back 10 years, that wasn’t always the case.
Even today, some places are less well served. Crossing the French border is a MAJOR issue with due to non-standard tracks in Spain. Only the overnight trains are dual-track capable, so other trips have to stop at the border, turning border cities such as Irun/Hendaye “connection hubs”.
While it’s good that Spain managed to “wow” these people, I think they were too “wowed” by it and didn’t learn as much as they should have.
I’m inclined here to agree with thundermutt and Anon 7:23AM. This project lends itself to being a major drain on the state coffers, while providing little to no benefit. Actually, one could make a case that Indiana and the City of Indianapolis should be made to pay the entire cost of the project, as Indiana has infinitely more to gain directly in terms of tax revenue, as well as indirect gains(capital draw, population gains, etc.). But I don’t believe that any project that really only benefits the Indianapolis MSA should be subsidized by the rest of the state.
If we are going to use tax proceeds to fund transit projects, we should be focusing on local transit first. There is no shortage of mileage of easily accessible transit between any two cities in the Midwest, especially with one endpoint being Indianapolis(the Crossroads of America). I find it specious to conclude that being a “hub” for a regional rail system would accrue benefits to the City or State that would provide meaningful ROI for such a large investment.
For as little as a quarter of the $3-$4 billion price tag you quote, the Metro region could be provided with something near a Tier 1 transit system, if built on a short timeline. The City, I think, would be much more likely to see a ROI from such an expenditure, especially if the Feds would be ponying up money for the project(Though I still am VERY against this, but in light of the fact that the money WILL be spent somewhere, it might be the most prudent thing to do). It’s not often a city gets a chance to build a tranit system of a high quality that has a chance to operate revenue neutral with even low ridership numbers.
That being said, providing greater connectivity between the current modes of transit(Air, Auto, Bus) and maybe incorporating the transit system mentioned above should leave the possibility open for a lower cost, higher service level inter-city transit option to be developed. Some options might be low-fare, hourly service between smaller airports. These airports have smaller facilities to navigate for the user, and lower costs to the airline. Providing last mile connectivity would be the City’s only expense, and could be provided as above. Of course, upgrades to municipal upgrades or incentives extended to private airports to do the same would definitely help, as would a cohesive strategy for pricing, marketing, and distribution.
Just some ideas that might save quite a few dollars and allow us not to revert to 19th century technology to compete in the 21st century economy.
The pricetag does not include the impact this project would have on current infrastructure investments.
IND recently spent $1B+ on new facilities and it is projected to experience a decline in passengers/operations in 2009. No doubt that hi speed rail would cause further declines.
Far better to improve the transit to/from the airport and around the metro than to waste money on hi speed rail between metro’s that have not much between them than 100+ miles of not much
LaGuardia and JFK, other airports along the eastern seaboard should be upgraded with the intention of serving more international flights than domestic. This is analagous to the documented shift of Alpha cities like NYC Chicago to nodes in the Global Economy.
Domestic point of departure will shift more towards airports with more expansion capability BWI (balto), Bradlee, Newark, etc. A high speed rail system along the East would alleviate flights up and down the east coast.
NEW YORK CITY, the examplar of urbanization isn’t even as dense as it can be and is now building a long sought-after Second Avenue Subway on the east side.
Quite frankly, the Midwest needs to undergo a second wave of urbanization. The urbanization that brought many of our families from the countryside to where we are now was not complete. By this I mean more people need to move from the small towns and rural areas to the bigger and medium-sized metros. There they will find jobs. Jesus, I’ve heard of people electing to stay in small towns and commuting 1 and 2 hours one way.
If the cost of gasoline rising back after this recession doesn’t convince them to move closer to their jobs, a movement toward tolled interstates in the Midwest will give them a better price sensitivity.
This is not pitting the rural against the urban–it is just a reality that even if our medium-sized cities are to serve our domestic economic needs resources (here, people) will need to be brought closer into interaction, interchange, synergy.
Next a de-sprawlification could be hoped for that would draw people/employment back in from the edges of the metros. What form that takes ( non-compete agreements among center cities and suburbs for employers, regional governmental structures, or otherwise) will take some time to hash out.
What the Midwest does have, however, that California doesn’t is mid-sized metros between nodal points. These are the Ft. Waynes, Toledos, Lafayettes, Daytons which will justify high speed rail between Chicago, Indy, Cincinnati, Detroit once these cities densify more first. Hard to put a number or a timeline on this process, but a next-tier cities focus on densification is the key. Sunbelt metros like Phoenix might lose some of their allure now. And the Midwest still has that most important resource of water to sustain development.
One selling point of putting high speed rail down the length of California was that, increasingly, it was thought that unlike previous migrations of Californians to other Western States, more were moving into the Central Valley. This, in essence, is what drove the bubble there.
Again you had the story of people with jobs in the Bay Area driving from Sacramento 1 to 2 hrs to take advantage of cheaper real estate prices. Speculators just thought that more and more people would keep moving from the Bay to the Central Valley.
Finally, the bubble popped. And you see towns like Stockton, Modesto, Merced and Fresno struggling with foreclosures and busted prices because they were overtaken with a Mania that they would become increasingly important as more Californians moved from the coast to the Central Valley. This is a long-term trend….but not to the extent that this Mania foretold.
Urbanophile may be right about the routing of high speed rail near people’s yards etc. But in the supersizing of emminent domain through the Kelo decision it might not matter if the right group of public or private entities unify to push HSR through.
“Just some ideas that might save quite a few dollars and allow us not to revert to 19th century technology to compete in the 21st century economy.”
Surely rail technology has changed considerably since the 19th Century.
When were roads invented, 4000 BC?
Thanks for the comments everyone – I appreciate the feedback.
Alon, Chicago and Detroit are by far the largest two cities in the Midwest. Contrary to the Windy Citizen headline (btw, thanks for all the traffic!), I don’t necessarily think Chicago-Detroit is a waste of money. I just don’t think 110MPH service will make much of an impact. the question is, if we reduced the journey same to say 2:15 via true HSR, what does that give us? That’s what we would need to discover and have to believe we’ve found before making the investment.
thunder, I’m inclined to agree with you. Rail might indeed be pork with no ROI. But the way I look at it, if somebody’s getting a ham sandwich out of this deal – it might as well be us. The $9 billion stimulus funding for HSR is vastly more than the whole rest of the state of Indiana’s share of the whole rest of the stimuls. It certainly can’t do any harm to do some studies.
Also, three hours to drive to the Loop means six unproductive hours for a day trip. Not pleasant or feasible to do regularly. But with 90 minutes of productive time on a train, you could conceivably do a day or two a week in Chicago to take in a meeting without torpedoing your entire day. Does his allow a who different type of interaction? Now might that be eliminated by new technologies like Telepresence? Maybe. I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, I’m saying it is an intuitively plausible place to look.
anon 1:06/1:08, thanks for the Colorado links. They look really interesting.
anon 1:53, you make a lot of great points about the specifics of the Spanish system. That’s exactly what I mean about decontextualizing the solution. We have to look at the specifics of our situation and what can work here. However, I don’t believe that the MWHSRA used the Spanish system as their model. I probably drew more comparisons than they did.
Out in LA, the biggest problems with the Metro rail service are the shared tracks with freight. The high-profile crash in Chatsworth a few months ago was due to this, as the MTA is at the mercy of the freight companies to upgrade/maintain the track infrastructure.
In this plan, the speed is also a huge deficit. Guess what, 110mph isn’t gonna happen. Why? Any neighborhood or city the tracks pass through at grade require a slowdown, and a blow or two of the horn. The only way to make this a safe and efficient system is to grade-separate.
I’d love to see high-speed rail, but under the current proposal, this will be nothing but a boondoggle.
First, whomever said that Newark airport has room for expansion must never have flown in or out of EWR. It has two closely spaced runways and one short crosswind runway, and it is completely boxed in. The Northeast HSR proposals make that much more sense because the airports, by and large, are at or beyond capacity. There is a lot of pressure on airlines to reduce the frequency of flights and replace much of the small, regional jets with fewer and larger planes. This gives a great opening for HSR in the region. The comparison is as easy as this. The Delta Shuttle operates at least hourly most days between Boston, New York, Philly, and DC. Yet to use the DL Shuttle, one must still arrive at the airport about an hour before a flight, fight the TSA madness, and deal with all the chronic delays in the air system. And the airports are not in the city centers, so there is travel time to and from the airport for most travellers. True, European-style HSR in the northeast on separate passenger-only fully grade-separated trackage would be successful even at 110 mph because of the city-center to city-center convenience and lack of airport hassle/delay. At something like 150-200mph, it’s a sure bet and a winner. If the infrastructure could ever get built for a TGV-style system from Boston to Washington, it would be a huge success, no doubt.
In the midwest, the airports (even ORD) still have room to expand. If money were spent for more efficient connection from the city center to the airports, frequent (hourly or better) air shuttle service would be more successful. With money spent on air traffic control upgrades, this would be more viable in the short to medium term than HSR. I’d really like to be able to hop a train in downtown Indy, stop in Carmel, Lafayette, and Crown Point, and be in the Loop in under 2 hours. But until the driving and flying options are untenable, it just doesn’t make any economic sense to build a true HSR system Indy-Chicago.
Boofer, all good points. You may be right on that. That’s why I think we should do some serious studies on it that involve a broader look at the communities and what we want them to be in the future to really see if there are scenarios that make sense and not just do technical studies. The answer may in fact be No, but it can’t hurt to take a look.
HSR in the Northeast is very competitive with flying and actually probably is faster and much less down-time than flying regardless.
The only route that could possibly make it might be Ceveland-Toledo-Detroit-South Bend-Crown Point-Chicago-Milwaukee.
There is too much distance and not enough population density on any other route to make any sense other than Cinci-Dayton-Columbus-Akron/Canton-Cleveland.
A far better spend is to improve rail/transit to/from the airports to center cities.
Another thought, if there really were demand between IND-MDW…don’t ya think that WN would schedule flights to handle it? The infrastructure is in place on both ends. Quite simply there is no demand for hourly flights to/from MDW from IND…or CMH, DAY, CVG, SDF, CLE etc. The closest airline shuttle like service in the MW exists on ORD-MSP/DTW/STL.
HSR is a boon-doggle and any money spent to study it is also money down the toilet.
That “shuttle-like” service from ORD only exists because DTW, MSP, and STL are hub airports for DL/NW and AA.
Urbanophile, the downtime argument might argue for hiring a car/driver or shared limo. Limo service is already available from Lafayette to Indy.
The best argument for rail is this: It is possible to envision rail succeeding in a time where fuel is less abundant and more expensive. Meanwhile, the airlines and automakers are struggling mightily, and I don’t see their situation improving any time soon.
Yet another benefit is that city-to-city rail has over airports is that they will place the person downtown, instead of needing to commute to where the action is.
I appreciate this post. I’m not necessarily the most gung-ho person about inter-city HSR, but I do think at least some type of improved passenger rail will be needed in the near future.
I do agree with others that we should work on improving our local transit and walking culture first. HSR won’t work unless people don’t need cars to get around a place like Indy or Columbus.
As it stands now, rail in the NE is pretty useless. I can hop on a Chinatown bus for $15 one way from NY to Boston or spend $20 for a luxury bus with WiFi while it costs as much as a flight to go on the Acela Express on the same route. The time savings (if there is any) is just not worth it.
There are many companies running those buses and they go from the City Center every 30 min (more on peak days), dropping you off right in South Station.
Aaron, there’s enough evidence from France and Spain to suggest that HSR will succeed on most routes in the Chicago Hub system and recoup the cost of constructing new 350 km/h track. Three-hour TGV service is successful on routes where the outlying metro area has 1.5 million people; for two-hour service, make it 600,000. The Midwest has the added advantage of having more medium-size cities on the way: the largest city with an intermediate stop on the Paris-Lyon TGV has 30,000 people.
Thundermutt, HSR is vastly faster than driving. At TGV Sud-Est speeds, Chicago-Detroit should take two hours; cars take four and a half hours. At Shinkansen speeds, Chicago-Indy should take an hour and a half; cars take three hours. It’s true that most people will still drive, even on HSR-heavy routes like Paris-Brussels and Madrid-Barcelona, but the volume of HSR is always enough to make hefty profits and reduce air traffic. This is especially true for business travelers, who are big on reliability (hence, no Chinatown buses), speed (hence, no cars), and being able to work without interference (hence, no airlines).
Even the NEC, with its medium-speed rail, has 50% of the air/rail market between NY and DC and 33% between NY and Boston. It makes $1.70 in revenue per dollar in operating costs, which is almost enough to offset the entire Amtrak system’s capital construction losses.
In Western Europe and Japan, the rule is that HSR is competitive at 4.5 hours, controls the market at 3, and all but ends airline service at 2. If we interpret that rule in terms of time penalties versus air – roughly, 2 hours, 1.5, and 1, respectively – then we get that rail is performing on the NEC about as well as you’d expect.
The ‘Kentucky Triangle’ should also be noted in this Midwest Hub Map. The ‘Kentucky Triangle’ is a high-speed rail corridor running from Cincinnati-Louisville-Lexington and back to Cincinnati.
The idea is that this would be perfect compliment to the 3-C Corridor that will run from Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus-Akron-Cleveland and then tap into the much larger Midwest Hub plan.
"That "shuttle-like" service from ORD only exists because DTW, MSP, and STL are hub airports for DL/NW and AA."
From STL-ORD there are 21 daily flights; 10 more between STL-MDW.
ORD is a hub for UA/AA
STL is focus for AA
MSP/DTW for DL/NW —- why would anyone in these cities need service via ORD? It is O&D that is the driver.
Bottom line…it is not just hub traffic/connections that are utilizing these flights; there is significant O-D traffic as well.
The major reason for the shuttle-like service between ORD/MDW and those other hub cities is the intensely competitive nature of the airline industry.
Northwest, for example, dumps more capacity onto DTW-ORD or MSP-ORD than demand would warrant, in order to prevent United from strengthening its presence in DTW or MSP.
If you’re fortunate enough to live in an airline’s hub city, you enjoy a disproportionate level of service (and lower average fares). HSR would not have this element of competition so intercity capacity would be more evenly balanced.
Alon Levy: Precisely because population is more diffuse outside the NE Corridor, HSR won’t work here. There are too many “intermediate cities” of significant size, and too few main cities. And there is only one real “transit-culture” city in the Midwest. And do you not imagine that, as a perceived high-value target, US HSR would be subject to the same kinds of security constraints and embarkation delays as air travel?
Anon 2:57 and 3:48, there are “rational” economic reasons for overcapacity in a dynamic economy. “Managing capacity” is an engineering constraint (or perhaps an engineering conceit?) because it too often relies on static analysis and history. And dedicated rail isn’t highly adjustable once built, unlike highways and airports.
Sorry…the case for rail outside the NE Corridor is far from self-evident.
One of the things we learned on the trip to Spain is that a core of the economic development from the Spanish high-speed rail investment came from more trips between cities than air or road provided before. Those trips and the exchanges that each of those trips represent create real busines value. Without high speed rail, those trips were not happening. And as oil gets back to $100/barrel (likely within a year), air and road travel will get even more expensive and unpleasant.
By the way, don’t forget about Madison and Minneapolis-St. Paul. I suspect the intellectual capital of those two cities are not nearly integrated enough into the Midwestern economy (and Chicago’s financial capital) because of the long travel distance. High speed rail would unlock much of that potential and allow us to recoup some of our invesment in higher education. That’s another reason why high speed rail from Chicago to Champaign-Urbana with some of the best computer scientists in the world but not a world-class business incubator makes sense. I think a 60 minute rail trip to Chicago is the best way to build up our tech industry from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. High speed rail can connect the venture capitalists and financial managers of Chicago with the next technical innovators working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Champaign.
One other anecdote: I just came from Des Moines, Iowa where I faced a travel choice of a 5 hour drive or a $600 flight. Clearly, economic value derived from closer connections between Des Moines and Chicago is not being realized from our current transportation infrastructure. Better rail is a good move to make.
Thanks, by the way, for promoting our organization. I’d encourage readers to join us and send a few bucks our way. We’re a member-supported non-profit, so those $30 and $50 members really do keep the lights on and the discussion and advocacy moving forward while we work to build consensus on investing in rail. Our website is http://www.MidwestHSR.org.
Thundermutt:
Actually, dedicated rail “capacity” can be adjusted once built, by adding more vehicle trips along a line. You’re correct that altering the infrastructure is very slow and costly, but it’s not like new major cities are springing up unexpectedly in the Indiana cornfields.
Within an existing HSR network, capacity would be adjusted to match changing demand by reallocating vehicles among various rail lines (assuming there were more than one rail line).
For much less money, incentives could be provided to Southwest Airlines (as example) to provide low cost air between Des Moines or Champaign or Springfield etc and MDW.
To invest billions for HSR to connect those cities to Chicago makes no sense; espescially since once they graduate they can choose to move to Chicago (or wherever)
Anon 3:48
“If you’re fortunate enough to live in an airline’s hub city, you enjoy a disproportionate level of service (and lower average fares).”
…really? Please check with those ‘fortunate enough’ to live in CVG or CLT.
ORD is a different animal as the size of the market assures low fares and a disproportionate level of service; same is true for DTW and to a lesser degree MSP.
HSR would never be successful competing against airlines in those markets/routes (unless of course HSR is completely subsidized by the government…sorta like how it is done in Europe/Spain)
HSR = Major Pork Train
Boofer: I defer to you on the situation at EWR. This is what happens when I reason by analogy based on lack of information. I had read somewhere how they were looking at transitioning LAX to a mostly international hub and shifting more domestic travel to Burbank, John Wayne and Lancaster(with the possibility of extending city rail to these airports). And just today I learned that JFK was a required POE for African nationals. So, then I assumed a similar case applied on the east coast. However, I do have experience with BWI and am certain that capacity can be expanded there.
Alon: it might indeed turn out that HSR on the NEC would be more of a draw for foreign businesspeople or domestic business travelers than tourists or commuters. If these foreign execs would bring their investment and money, especially now, we should make this little investment to attract them.
Anon 10:24: Not only are there the Chinatown routes, but there also is a megabus presence in the East. For what it’s worth, Megabus had and dropped West coast routes–I’m not aware of any Chinatown busses in CA.
Randy: Megabus had service to Louisville originally, but got rid of it last year. It’s hard being at the fringe of the midwest.
Urbanophile: I think if you looked a little farther over the map and included Toronto as a region to be connected via high speed rail you would see the limitations/benefits of having Indy serve as the hub over Chicago. First of all, Toronto has simply been a quiet success in the past few decades and this will continue. If this urban center was included in the Midwest HSR, the geographic center shifts more towards Ft. Wayne. But obviously FTW is never going to be the hub of any Midwest system. That means we are stuck with the fact of Chicago’s clout, economic advanced status and just raw politics mean that ONLY Chicago will ever serve as the hub. Note that Megabus’s hub is in….Chicago.
Thanks again for all the comments. I definitely appreciate them.
Kevin, we clearly need to get the local transit angle right as part of this. To me, that is very complementary. Two further points. #1 – the local Central Indiana Transit Task Force that is looking at local transit is the logical vehicle to look at HSR too – it could do that as a phase 2. #2 – the city is unlikely to get anything from the feds for local transit. It’s probably a totally locally funded deal. However, if HSR had big fed money behind it, that could pay for upgrades to Union Station, re-routing of freight to the IU Belt, or track upgrades to the west towards the airport that could be a benefit to local rail transit too (if that’s what the ultimate decision is). HSR is possibly a way to help leverage federal funds for local transit.
anon 10:18. I should clarify – Chicago is the center of the network and so is clearly the hub in that sense. I just don’t expect a lot of interchange traffic. Indy is certainly not the hub of the system, but is a potential interchange point for lines converging from Louisville, Cincy, and possibly Columbus, because you aggregate that traffic in Indy before sending it to Chicago.
Thundermutt, I don’t think HSR is obviously good – that’s why I construct careful arguments for it. Addressing your points:
1. Security is not usually an issue. The only HSR line that has anything approaching the security hassle of flying is London-Paris, which is more vulnerable because it goes underwater. Elsewhere the security checks just don’t exist, not even in Japan, where train lines are overloaded, and the subway has already been targeted by terrorists once.
2. The Midwest has fewer large cities than the Northeast, but more than France. All other things being equal HSR will be far more profitable between NY and Washington than between Chicago and Detroit or Chicago and Minneapolis. However, even the Midwestern routes are worth constructing, if our example is the success of HSR to Lyon, whose metro area has 1.7 million people.
3. Europe is a lot less transit-oriented than most Americans think. Usually the largest core cities have extensive transit systems, just like in the northern half of the US, but the rest don’t. When the TGV first opened, the Lyon Metro was about the same size as the Houston light rail system today; the system has grown since, but remains tiny, at 30 route km.
By The Urban Politician:
Appreciate the post and I think you’ve made a good case for why HSR between Indy and Chicago may make sense.
But as far as I’ve seen, the state of Indiana has such a poor, narrow-minded leadership that there is no need to hold out hope for this. In the face of potentially $15 billion of federal money towards HSR in the next 5 years out of the Obama administration, where is the Indiana leadership on this? Where is the clamoring to put together a plan? Nothing.
As they are far more advanced, I anticipate routes from Milwaukee, Detroit, and St Louis to Chicago will be upgraded long, long before anything from Indy. It is due to this expectation that I take little interest in speculative talk, because it simply raises one’s hopes and ultimately leads to disappointment.
Until I see a sign that Indiana’s leadership will get behind such a concept, I remain highly pessimistic. It is my disappointment with Indiana’s leadership that contributes in part to my decision to take a position in Wisconsin instead of NW Indiana.
“Actually, dedicated rail “capacity” can be adjusted once built, by adding more vehicle trips along a line. You’re correct that altering the infrastructure is very slow and costly, but it’s not like new major cities are springing up unexpectedly in the Indiana cornfields.”
Actually, one of the fastest growing counties in the US over the past 20 years has been Hamilton County, Indiana. Two good-sized cities HAVE sprung up in cornfields there: Fishers and Carmel.
More to the point…they’re off the alignment of Chicago-Indy rail, and there is not good public transit into Downtown for those people, who are among the most likely to travel throughout the region on business.
Rail lines, once built, can’t be moved. HSR rolling stock can only be moved to serve different HSR-equipped destinations. Airplanes, cars, and busses can pretty much go anywhere because huge infrastructure already exists to serve them.
And no one, NO ONE, has yet figured out that gasoline would have to be upwards of $12-15 a gallon before cash costs of HSR or air travel between Indy and Chicago would be equal to the cost of a single-passenger car trip.
A gasoline or diesel-powered minibus might just be the most efficient and least environmentally unsound solution.
Note to HSR advocates: where do you think today’s Midwestern electricity comes from? To make electric rail really green, you’d have to invest billions and billions more in new electrical generating capacity.
The problem with buses is precisely that they can be moved easily. Developing new office and retail space near bus stations is risky because the buses might be moved. Train stations are more robust, and have been shown to spur more development, down to the level of light rail vs. BRT. Even the US Department of Transportation under Mary Peters, who is not very pro-rail, had to build a rail bias into its cost effectiveness calculations.
Everything else you’re saying seems to hold for both rail and air. Given that there is a large air market between Chicago and Indy, it seems that many travelers don’t care much for your “Cars are cheaper” argument. Nor does it seem to matter that Carmel and Fishers are on the opposite side of Indy as the airport. Travelers whose main concern is time just aren’t going to drive the distances we’re talking about.
My main point: travelers whose main concern is time shouldn’t travel at all (physically). No matter the mode, physical transport wastes time.
The Urbanophile argues for the game-changing solution. The game-changing solution here is alternatives to business travel, not a “better” mode of business travel.
Move electrons, not people. Work from anywhere. Use hi-res, hi-speed videoconferencing:
face time for a new generation and a new world. Those of us over 40 overestimate the importance of in-person face time to our younger colleagues and children, I think.
There already exists the technology for videoconferencing, but business travel is generally up, not down. Even in places that have adopted new telecommunication infrastructure rapidly, like Japan and South Korea, intercity travel is up. Regardless of improvements in telecommunications, many issues have to be ironed out in person.
For example, take the two industries I know something about – the academia, and publishing. Academia works well with email more than any other field, but conferences where the experts meet in person and present their work are still crucial. Publishing is so meeting-intensive that some literary agents who are not based in New York have to apologize for it and reassure prospective clients that they travel to New York frequently to meet publishers and editors.
Those arguments sound suspiciously like “because we’ve always done it that way”.
NASDAQ asked why a physical trading floor was necessary and stole the tech companies from the hidebound NYSE.
Nineteen-year-olds roll their eyes when their parents ask “why not just call” as they are sending hundreds of texts per day. (At least the ones I know do that.)
I’m betting on the nineteen-year-olds. Bill Gates was one.
thunder, I think you’re missing a key point in the debate.
Globalization and virtualization had a flattening effect, letting people work from anywhere to anywhere. Some expected this to lead to everyone moving to small towns and the domination of telecommuting. But a funny thing happened. Yes, the flat world led to massive offshoring and labor arbitrage, but paradoxically, place became more important than ever. Read Sassen’s work for more details. But the bottom line is that globalization and virtualization technology created the need for “spiky” places where close face to face interaction was required. Hence the rise of places like Chicago’s urban core.
The real question is whether there is anything between those two extremes, and whether something like high speed rail could enable it. That is, can there be something that generates competitive advantage based on the importance of space, but on a “near shore” basis. I’m not sure there is, but the fact that we can communicate via the internet is not reason to dismiss the idea.
Well, the nineteen year olds voted overwhelmingly for HSR in California; the sixty year olds voted overwhelmingly against it. On Brad DeLong’s blog, one commenter actually argued against HSR on the grounds that only naive young people support it…
I dunno, globalization and virtualization are still relatively new things. The movement to anywhere continues unabated and if anything will accelerate in the current economy.
Just with my own experience, there are 3 senior mgrs of a very large company that live within 15-20 mins of me. We all telecommute and travel extensively. HQ is NYC. This would not have happened 10 years ago; maybe not 5 years ago.
The importance of ‘place’ much depends on the work you do. For the 3 of us ‘place’ is where the customers are not the ivory tower.
I would add that the customers we work work with are not here either but we can get to them more easily and less expensively from ‘here’ than from ‘there’.
As far as HSR is concerned, thin k it would be an enormous waste of tax dollars outside of the NEC and maybe Chi-Det. Think a much better spend of that money is metro light rail/express bus or inner city neighborhood redevelopment that minimizes the need for a car.
The sprawl this country has created the last 40 yrs or so is such a waste of resources; has also contributed to the decline of ‘family’ and ‘neighbors’.
Make that a priority then revisit HSR for this part of the country in 40 years or so.
This bears repeating:
“As far as HSR is concerned, think it would be an enormous waste of tax dollars outside of the NEC and maybe Chi-Det. Think a much better spend of that money is metro light rail/express bus or inner city neighborhood redevelopment that minimizes the need for a car.”
I fully agree. Start micro.
And Urbanophile, the mere existence of virtual face to face communication isn’t what I’m touting. It is the economic fact that it is nearly free (measured in both dollars and time) compared with intercity travel via any mode. It is more economically efficient, and I don’t think younger people perceive it as a “less good” alternative the way us older people do.
The shape of the world to come (cultural, social, economic) is very much in question. Will we live in a connected web of “small worlds” where all our immediate needs can be met nearby? That’s the green/local movement’s view, which seems to be in ascendancy.
Think numbers: how many people live in the US’ handful of “world cities”? A small minority. How many of the rest of us need to be in the US’ “world cities” regularly? Probably fewer people than already live in them. I think that the view of the whole US (or just flyover country) is pretty distorted from a world city or a major university campus. The US is still pretty close to that “local village” model, even though the majority of our people live in cities, and it’s not clear that we’re evolving away from it. You’ve pointed it out yourself: Chicago has net out-migration.
It’s clear the academy and publishing worlds are changing and will change more. But how? The world of vetted “knowledge” is under attack by free information on the web. Yet even there, a new web-based model of vetted knowledge is emerging. (I doubt if there are Wikipedia conferences and seminars that people fly to from around the world.) Will the publishing world go the way of the music world, with lots of indie book chapters and journals downloaded at the iBookstore for 99 cents? There’s certainly a chance.
How all this local/worldwide economic, social and cultural tension plays out will shape our cities and towns for the next century. Massive investment in HSR before we build up green energy sources, good local transit and inclusive networking is a bad idea IMO.
How many of the rest of us need to be in the US’ “world cities” regularly? Probably fewer people than already live in them.
Well, maybe according to you. But business travel volumes between major US cities are large, and cities like New York and Los Angeles attract millions of tourists every year.
Will the publishing world go the way of the music world, with lots of indie book chapters and journals downloaded at the iBookstore for 99 cents? There’s certainly a chance.
There isn’t. Writers need publishers for quality control, editing, knowing who to market to, etc. When they do try self-publishing, disaster ensues: at vanity presses, POD companies, and the likes, the bestselling books ever tend to sell a few thousand copies, which wouldn’t even make back the advance at a real publisher.
The Internet just doesn’t have the standards to ensure quality in this area. If you don’t believe me, go to a fan fiction website, read some of the stories, and try to think whether anyone would ever pay for them, even people who have entire libraries at home of SF and fantasy.
There is one publishing-related industry that did get a hit with the rise of the net – porn. The rise of porn sites has killed video porn. But even then, the online porn industry seems very centralized to a few places, like San Francisco and New York. An adult photographer might actually be very interested in taking advantage of a high-speed train from SF to the San Fernando Valley.
Thanks Thundermutt.
Would add that the whole ‘world city’ thing and the attitude and arrogance that goes with that has caused much of the current economic disaster. That blame can also be placed on all those private/liberal arts colleges that cost updwards of $35K/year. Guess what…you are no longer relevant.
Midwest/Upper South cities have an opportunity now to do what they do best…be real!
Flyover country will do more to save this country from its current mess than Wall St/DC combined.
It should start with a resounding no thanks for billions on HSR that will NEVER pay-off in this part of the country.
Alon, methinks you are part of the intellectual elite. I work in the publishing world…BIG PUBLISHING. Fortunately it is online centric.
You have no idea what you are talking about. The disintermediation that has happened in music and is currently being played out in newspapers, magazines, video, books, journals etc will forever change how all that content is produced….and where it is produced…and where the decision makers are located who make those decisions.
I know what am talking about as have been in the in the on line biz for 25 years….w BI (Way before the Internet)….and it is not some fly-by-nite organization.
The ‘intellectual set’ themselves are now using POD and starting (maybe finishing) research on the Web (thanks Google).
I am not suggesting the demise of ‘world cities’ as much as am suggesting that ‘world cities’ are like museums…nice places to visit and look at…but when you really want to get something done and make money…they are not the places to be.
By The Urban Politician:
I certainly agree with any notion that American cities, and particularly midwestern cities, don’t need to be linked by HSR to be economically successful business centers.
To the contrary, look at our European counterparts, whose cities are linked by a large continent-wide network of high speed passenger trains that make our system look like a joke in comparison. What advantage has it really given them over us, at least in regards to economic growth?
What it has done, however, is equip them for an energy-deprived future. To me, America is like a candle that has burned brightly for a century but may soon go out in smoke if it doesn’t invest wisely now.
My point is, if we try to sell the economic advantages to HSR we need to tout its long term advantages, not its short term ones. Talking about having a train that can get you from Indy to Chicago in under 3 hours (or whatever) to get to that meeting is nice and all, but the REAL advantage of the HSR system is how it preserves America’s ability to move people and resources around efficiently in an energy-poor future. And that is the real investment we are talking about.
First, an apology. I did not intend to provoke a “coast vs. flyover country” debate. After all, I am a graduate of one of those elite Eastern universities who chose to return to his Midwestern roots while my classmates headed for Goldman Sachs, Lehman, and Merrill Lynch.
Clearly there are significant differences between the NE Corridor and the US heartland that must be taken into account.
One is that the heartland deals in manufactured goods and commodities, not software, financial products, ideas, and government. Moving goods is more important than moving people in our transportation network. And we already move lots and lots of stuff by regular old air and rail…much of it by intermodal transfer to regular old semi-trailers. Note that FedEx has its two main hubs in Memphis and IND; UPS is in Louisville. The centers of the US rail network are in Chicago and St. Louis, as that is where the legacy “eastern” and “western” carriers interchange.
Quite frankly, we cannot do without highways in the heartland. The population is too diffuse to efficiently run rail lines to every fair-sized city. In fact, this country has been ripping up Class I rail mainline for decades now….but what is left is highly efficient and highly utilized, made possible by intermodal facilities.
I am flattered that Urbanophile has dubbed my position “the thundermutt theory”, though it’s more of a conjecture. While in the abstract, I agree that we need to be ready for a non-fossil-fueled future, I don’t believe HSR is THE answer without which the US is doomed to a second-class existence.
As advanced as they are, please note that the Western Europeans were shivering when the Russia-Ukraine dispute shut off their natural gas. We in North America (as Boone Pickens has suggested) can use our rich gas resources to build our bridge to the non-fossil future.
“We in North America (as Boone Pickens has suggested) can use our rich gas resources to build our bridge to the non-fossil future.”
When do you propose to start?
Anon, could you name a single book that sold over 50,000 copies without being published by a trade publisher? Even 10,000 would be fine – the largest vanity publisher, PublishAmerica, can barely handle anything over 1,000, and topped at 5,200.
Thundermutt, everything you say about highways is true in Europe and Japan, too. Remember Lyon’s paltry metro system. Nothing about the amount of auto dependence in Kentucky or Tennessee says that Chicago-Detroit HSR won’t be successful. Even Japan doesn’t have nearly the auto independence you think it has outside Tokyo and Osaka proper – Tokyo’s suburbs have an auto modal share on a par with large cities in the US Northeast, like Chicago and Philadelphia, rather than New York; and yet, the Tokaido Shinkansen is so profitable and congested that JR Central is designing a parallel maglev line to be funded purely out of the existing HSR profits.
"Who is going to ride those trains back and forth? Is it new trips or displaced air/auto travel? "
Uh, for Detroit it's all those people who live in Detroit and can't find jobs there — plus people who are priced out of housing in Chicago etc. and can buy a house for a dollar in Detroit.
Simple really. Detroit-Chicago is a booming transportation opportunity.
I find it almost impossible to have just read through this amazing comment section that not a single person has mentioned that by building HSR, there will likely be a reduced strain, or slowed growth, on highway traffic and airports. This will result in lower future costs of expanding Midwest airports and lower maintenance costs for highways as a result of either lower vehicle movements. So, in addition to all the potential benefits of reduced time between major centers, there will be a reduced future need to spend money upgrading the road and air infrastructure that exists today. Or is this just too obvious to mention?
My thanks to Kyle for his post on the bleed-off from roads and airports.
This whole mess is a bed-rock American issue – MONEY. We've burned through an enormous amount of cash in roughly a half century of spending on roads and airports. I would be afraid to read an HONEST report on historical spending on mobility (roads, rail, water, air) because the numbers might be enough to make me puke. Do NOT forget that one part of Uncle Sam's largesse covers canals, dams, and locks used by barges (Army Corps of Engineers). Passenger rail in this country has long been in the position of Oliver Twist – namely getting laughed at when asking for a second helping of slop.
Let's set aside all of the feel good items. Instead, let's look at the money. Options :
1) Do nothing – cheap, but leads into a death spiral;
2) Build roads/runways – expensive, dirty, incurs high maintenance costs and eats lots of land that could be used for farms and parks;
3) Build rail corridors – seemingly expensive (until compared to roads/runways), minimal dirt, medium maintenance costs and eats some land that could be used for farms and parks.
We do NOT have rail corridors at this time. What we have are pathetic excuses for corridors that are balkanized, archaic, and have a Paul Bunyan-sized piper handing us a bill for fifty (50) years of neglect. I think that the only out left to us is to follow the canal/dam/lock model and go federal. This is an interstate commerce issue since most of the links (other than Calif. and Texas) cross a state line or two. We've got a Gordian Knot and Uncle Sam needs to use a sword-pen on it.
P.S. Why is Hong Kong's transit system the only profit making one in the world ? Because it isn't a transit system. It's a property management firm that offers transit services to its tenants. Now think back to our transcontinental railroads and how they were lured into their herculean labors.
P.P.S. I've worked in the aviation field in a support role for a decade. I'm also a rail-fan who enjoys living in what amounts to the world's biggest railroad museum – the San Francisco Bay area and northern California (e.g. The Skunk and Roaring Camp ).