New York to Chicago – A Transformative Proposal

Guest Post by: Alexander Kofman

Make no small plans. In the same 20 years that it would take to design and build high-speed rail between Chicago and St. Louis, Milwaukee, or Detroit, a wider-ranging effort could instead design and build a line of national scope and importance. Industry and government are equally capable of planning small projects and megaprojects. If it would take us the same 20 years to fight for a short line as for a long one, we should go big. We should aspire to meet the moment and demand the project the country really needs: a high-speed line connecting Chicago and New York.

The route proposed for this high-speed line essentially follows the current route of the New York section of Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited, which follows the shore of Lake Erie to connect to the population centers in Western New York before turning down the Hudson River to serve New York City. A high-speed line will require a dedicated right of way for much of its length, but limited track-sharing may be possible, especially in the approaches to Chicago and New York. The exact routing is beyond the scope of this proposal; we can envision the route at a high level and call out the larger communities that would be expected to receive service, but without getting into route choices at the local scale.

Adding up the population of all the metropolitan and micropolitan areas on the main route comes out to about 37.3 million people, or about 11% of the US population. There are two obvious short branches off this corridor, running from Toledo, OH to Detroit, MI, and from Cleveland, OH to Pittsburgh, PA. Adding in the four new cities served brings the total corridor population to 45.9 million, or about 13.5% of the entire US.

The proposed corridor is 960 miles long, which is substantially longer than an HSR line should be according to the received wisdom; the typically cited upper limit is between 400 and 600 miles. But this particular corridor should not be written off simply for its length: east of Toledo there are communities distributed evenly along the corridor.

For a corridor with a critical mass of population distributed along it, serving an incrementally longer corridor provides a boost in demand as more city pairs become available. The following graphic, which we have used before to advocate for better conventional end-to-end service, makes this point well. Any service that is limited to 400 miles will land just short of serving an important community, which adds critical travel demand.

The effect of adding service and city-pair options is especially great when the anchor cities at either end are large. There may not be many Chicago-New York through riders, but riders from each endpoint would be able to reach cities halfway or more down the corridor easily – the train will carry a rider from Chicago to Buffalo as well as it will carry a rider from Cleveland to New York. If the service is comfortable and affordable, a 7-hour end-to-end journey may even remain competitive with air travel for some passengers. The following graphic illustrates the benefit of a longer corridor that can cater to both through riders and those transiting only a portion of the corridor.

Travel within the region is predominantly by highway and air travel. Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited served about 400,000 passengers in FY24, which is commendable for a train that operates once daily in each direction, but it only captures a tiny share of the travel market in the proposed corridor. Below is a map showing average daily car counts along the key interstate highways outside city centers on the route and a table showing weekly flight counts between the commercial airports in the corridor.

The city pairs in this corridor are served by a truly stunning 3,550 total weekly flights, carrying at least 300,000 passengers per week. Instituting high-speed rail service would significantly cut into most of these air travel markets. In particular, the 44 daily round-trips between New York City and Upstate New York and the 45 daily round-trips between Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago may experience significant cuts, relieving the demand on the large international airports in New York, Chicago, and Detroit that could put the newfound capacity to better use flying larger planes to further-away destinations.

Credit: Visual Capitalist

Collectively, the states served by the route account for 23% of US GDP, but they are struggling with population loss, particularly in rural areas. The region has fallen behind the explosive growth of the South and Southwest. Implementing high-speed rail would reconnect communities and revitalize the regional economy. While the project spending itself is not insignificant, the true benefit comes from the finished product: High-speed rail service transforms cities and gives them the label of being forward, modern, and worth living in. Much easier access both east and west will provide communities in the middle with a much-needed shot in the arm.

A New York to Chicago high-speed line would enable a wider regional network and all of its attendant benefits as well. Electrified tracks leading into Chicago could transform not only diesel-powered Metra services, but Amtrak regional services leading into Michigan as well. Any high-speed line into the Windy City immediately starts the conversation for where else the trains could go: Milwaukee, Madison, and the Twin Cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, and Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville are all obvious expansions to the network. On the eastern end, improvements and expansions to the Northeast Corridor beckon. Fast trains from New York and Detroit to Toronto and from Boston to Atlanta start to seem more reasonable against the backdrop of a thousand-mile trunk connecting the East Coast and the Midwest. But we do not need a complicated network to think big: we only need one line.

The impact of this project would be enormous. If completed, the corridor would cover more mileage and serve a greater population than the California HSR and Brightline West systems combined. And yet, this transformational project, which would rival the interstate highways the tracks would parallel, has no real advocates. We must step into the breach and take up the cause in every state capitol along the way.