Why Can’t I Take the Train to Indy?

Indianapolis and Chicago must be connected by high-quality trains.

California’s Capitol Corridor shows how.

Guest post by: Theo Anderson

Key Takeaway: Indiana should partner with CSX to create a phased plan for hourly service. Extending the South Shore from Dyer may be a good option.

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How can it be that there’s no usable train service between Indianapolis and Chicago?

Together, the two metro areas are home to 11 million people—meaning 1 in 30 US residents live within their borders. The cities are less than 200 miles apart. There is a world-class research university right in the middle—Purdue—with close connections to both cities. And Illinois and Indiana have some of the best, densest legacy rail infrastructure in the nation.

Quality train service should be an easily win. Its absence is a spectacular self-own for Indiana. And I take this personally. As I wrote here, I catch a bus from Chicago to Indianapolis about once a month for work and family reasons. Yes, you can catch the Chicago-Indy segment of Amtrak’s long-distance Cardinal route (from Chicago to New York) three times a week. But the trip takes five hours. You’ll arrive in Indianapolis around midnight. So, effectively, there is no passenger-train service between Chicago and Indianapolis.

In truth, there wasn’t much service even when Amtrak’s Hoosier State was a thing. That line made its last run in 2019, after Indiana Gov. Eric Holcombe killed its $3 million subsidy. The Hoosier State ran four days a week and made just one round-trip per day. It attracted fewer than 28,000 passengers—or about half the number of people who regularly fill Indianapolis’s football stadium to watch Colts games—in its last full year of operation.

So the Hoosier State isn’t much missed, because it wasn’t much used—and also because most Americans have no choice but to drive everywhere, so it’s hard to conceive that things could be any other way. Even when there is an alternative to driving, in theory, the service is often so sparse and janky that it isn’t a viable option for most people. I think of a friend who often comments on the sidewalks when he visits me in Chicago, marveling that you can actually walk to restaurants and stores. In the small Indiana town where he lives, as in the Indianapolis neighborhood where I grew up, you get in a car to go literally anywhere. It’s just the way things are.

Cars are superior to trains and transit, so the theory goes, because they offer freedom. But a couple of times a year, when the bus doesn’t work out, I actually drive the Chicago-Indy route. It’s then, when I’m behind the wheel, that the madness and absurdity of this idea becomes horribly clear.

You can set your own schedule, sure. But cars subvert freedom in so many ways. The loan payments and the cost of gas, repairs, and insurance, for starters. And then the endless stresses of the road. The stretch of Interstate 65 that connects Indianapolis and Chicago ranks 58th of the 100 “most loathed” highways in the U.S. The whole route is jammed with semi trucks. And northern Indiana is especially prone to wind gusts. Lanes are often closed for repairs and construction for long stretches. And that’s the least of it, in some ways. Because getting to I-65 means navigating the stop-and-go traffic on the highways that wrap around Chicago.

When you’re stuck in Chicago traffic or, even worse, going 75+ mph in a narrow construction zone, pinned between concrete barriers on one side and a semi on the other, you have to wonder: If we can’t make trains work here, can we make them work anywhere?

Learning from the Capitol Corridor

The answer is yes, of course, we can make them work if we choose to.

California’s Capitol Corridor is a good example. It’s relevant because it runs from a mid-sized city, Sacramento, to one of the nation’s biggest metro areas, the Bay Area. So the endpoint metro regions are similar. Both Sacramento and Indianapolis have roughly 2 million people. The Bay Area has 7.5 million people. Chicago has 9 million. And the distances are similar. The Capitol Corridor runs about 170 miles. Chicago to Indy is about 180 miles. Both Sacramento and Indianapolis are also state capitals.

For these reasons, Indiana should look to the Capitol Corridor story for goals and takeaways.

It offered four daily round trips and struggled to find a ridership after its launch in 1991. The state weighed whether to kill the service. Instead, it ended up doubling down. It could do so because Caltrans had bought the rights to 20 round-trip runs in 1991. The Capitol Corridor ran just a fraction of that number for several years, but planners had set the line up for later success by securing more right-of-way than they intended to use immediately.

Thus the first key takeaway from the Capitol Corridor is that quality train service begins with good, early, and ambitious planning.

Communities served by the train formed the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) to operate the line in 1998. And the CCJPA hired Gene Skoropowski as its head. As the Alliance describes here, here, and here, Skoropowski led the Capitol Corridor through a rapid transformation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. By 2006, it offered 16 daily round trips. By 2008 it attracted 1.7 million riders. Its fare box recovery rate spiked from the high 20s to nearly 50 percent.

A second key takeaway from the Capitol Corridor’s story is that when trains became a real alternative to driving, ridership spikes. And it’s frequent service that makes them a real alternative. For the Capitol Corridor, the tipping point—when the train became a serious alternative to taking a car—was a seventh round trip.

Most train routes in the US never come close such a tipping point, unfortunately. Like the Hoosier State, they usually offer one or two daily runs. And—because a train with just one or two daily runs isn’t a viable option in most cases, especially commuters—the ridership is low. So state DOTs end up cutting the service to save money, and the cuts leads to a downward spiral in ridership and revenue. The line then becomes yet more evidence that Americans just love to drive and won’t support trains.

The truth? Americas aren’t in love with their cars. People stay in the relationship mainly because they have no choice. In a community with no sidewalks, you don’t walk much. In a community with no practical access to trains, you don’t take the train much.

CNN recently noted that people might turn increasingly to trains and transit as the costs of car ownership spiral. Vehicles are already the second-largest expense—15% of household income—in the average household. The recent push for tariffs will drive those costs much higher.

But to choose other options, people must have other options. In a recent proposal for train service in the corridor, INDOT affirmed this truth. Its survey results showed that “avoiding driving and road traffic” was the most-cited reason for taking trains. And the top two motivating factors for potential riders were “convenient departure times” and “enough frequencies to encourage travel by rail instead of driving.” (Trip time, cost, and comfort ranked third, fourth, and fifth.)

Despite these results, INDOT’s proposal for the Chicago-Indy corridor calls for just two roundtrips daily. That’s too few to move the needle much in favor of taking the train.

Five reasons to connect Indianapolis and Chicago with frequent, high-quality trains

Leaders like Indiana Gov. Eric Holcombe often cite costs as the reason for cutting train service. What they rarely mention or take into account are the steep costs of having few or no train options—and relying so heavily on driving. Our “freedom” isn’t free.

Indiana is less prosperous, less vibrant, and less productive than it would be if Indianapolis and Chicago were connected with fast, frequent, and affordable trains. And the state can use help on this score. CNBC recently ranked it the seventh worst state in the US to live and work in, and Indiana consistently ranks poorly in national surveys of such things.

Here are five concrete benefits of investing in train service from Indianapolis to Chicago, with a minimum of 10 daily round-trips.

• It will double as commuter rail. Adding daily runs on the Capitol Corridor spiked its ridership because residents of suburban Sacramento and the Bay Area began using it to commute to work. Which is predictable. Few people ride a rail line from endpoint to endpoint. Many take it for just two or three stops. A line offering frequent service will connect downtown Indianapolis with some of the city’s fast-growing areas on the northwest side—and with job-rich communities farther north, like Lafayette. So, people in any community on or near the line will have an easy, affordable commute to any other community on or near the line. You could live in a northwest suburb and easily commute to Lafayette, for example. Or you could live in downtown Indianapolis and easily commute to a northwest suburb. And that’s just the southern end. At the northern end, low taxes and affordable housing are competitive advantages that Indiana cites to attract Chicagoans to relocate to the state. Commuter rail in northern Indiana will thrive as one segment of a rail line that stretches from Chicago to Indianapolis (and eventually Louisville). Heavy commuter use at the line’s northern and southern ends will create a virtuous cycle of more ridership, more revenues, and more investments in better stations, railcars, and infrastructure. In turn, those investments will lead to superior service and a great overall experience—and eliminate one of the big obstacles to living in Indiana and commuting to Chicago, i.e., fighting the terrible traffic.
• People in greater Chicago will take more day trips and weekend getaways to Indianapolis. The city’s investments in revitalizing downtown mean there’s a lot to do within a short walk (or rideshare) from the train station—art museums, quirky and vibrant neighborhoods like Fountain Square, the city’s convention center, the food and shopping scene along Massachusetts Avenue, and the city’s major sports stadiums, which double as concert venues. Downtown also has an excellent stock of quality hotels. For short getaways from Chicago and northern Indiana, there’s no reason to bring a car. And there’s no better way to keep building the city’s core than having 10 or more trains arrive each day with hundreds of people ready to eat, shop, and spend money. A bonus: they’ll save enough money on tolls, gas, and parking to cover the cost of a ticket. (I pay around $40 for a bus ticket to Indianapolis. Tolls alone are about $17. Gas and overnight parking are at least $50.)
• Commuters and business customers will be less stressed and more productive, and tourists will be happier with their overall experience. Trains offer distinct benefits for different customer bases. Commuters and business customers have space and quiet time to work, prepare for meetings, and get ready for the day by reading, talking (quietly) on the phone, and meditating—instead of stressing over traffic. For tourists, taking the train is a social experience that adds to the whole adventure of a getaway. Members of a group can move around, have a meal or a drink in the dining car, read, relax, and just be together without being trapped in a car.
• Passengers will be safer and healthier. As one advocate for road safety noted, “The most dangerous thing most people in our country do in a single day is use the U.S. roadway system.” Indiana DOT (INDOT) describes the I-65 corridor between Chicago and Indy as a “heavily traveled and vital highway freight corridor connecting Lake Michigan to the north with the Gulf of Mexico to the south.” That’s one way of putting it. Another is that it’s jammed up with trucks and feels dangerous. Because it is dangerous. The statistics justify the loathing. In one 14-mile stretch of I-65 over an 18-month period in 2018 and 2019, there were 336 crashes that resulted in five deaths and 96 injuries. (That was in a construction zone, true. But construction zones are never-ending on I-65.) By contrast, all railroad travel in the US in 2023 resulted in one passenger death and 692 injuries. (Nearly 45,000 people in the US died in vehicle crashes that year.) So, trains help save lives and help reduce the financial burdens, heartache, and physical trauma that result from tens of thousands of non-fatal accidents on our roads each year.
• It will improve the city’s quality of life—and economy. It’s in the best interests of Indianapolis to be as closely connected as possible to Purdue and Chicago. You should be able to put down roots in Indianapolis and have fast, easy, and affordable access to one of the country’s great universities and its third-biggest city. And this kind of connectivity isn’t a frill. It has profound implications for the city’s economy. Driving is an option, but I-65 is as much a barrier as a connector between Indiana and Chicago (for the reasons described above). Quality trains will make Indianapolis the southern hub of a seamless, thriving, 200+ mile innovation corridor. People and ideas will mix and move easily throughout, leading to new partnerships, new businesses, and a stronger local economy.

The service should extend to Columbus (about 50 miles south of Indianapolis) and Louisville as soon as possible. Easy access to Columbus, one of the country’s great architectural shrines, will be even more incentive for tourists to make the journey from Chicago. With creative marketing and cross-state collaboration, the corridor could easily be one of the Midwest’s most popular day trips and weekend getaways: A pleasant train ride of ~4 hours would connect two architectural meccas plus Purdue and Indianapolis. And extending it to Columbus/Louisville will boost the line’s value as commuter rail.

The route(s) forward

A new report by the Transit Costs Project at the New York University Marron Institute argues that passenger-rail planners should focus on high-impact projects that deliver the most value from existing infrastructure. It encourages Amtrak and commuter-rail agencies to “make big plans,” as Bloomberg City Lab notes. “In regions with lots of older rail infrastructure, like the Northeast and Midwest, the existing tracks are full of untapped potential.”

The Chicago-Indy rail corridor is nothing but untapped potential. The status-quo remedy is to go small and aim to launch the service with one or two runs, adding frequencies incrementally. But that approach is self-defeating, because the ridership on low-frequency lines never justifies the added routes.

What’s needed (as the Marron Institute’s report rightly notes) is a bold approach that will leverage the corridor’s advantages and possibilities. It could begin with the operator.

Amtrak is of course one possibility, but there are others. For example, the South Shore Line will complete an extension of its Chicago-northern Indiana commuter train service this summer. The eight-mile extension takes the line from Hammond to Dyer, Indiana (about 30 miles south of Chicago). South Shore’s president, Mike Nolan, recently noted that the line has already spurred new housing construction around it, thus showing the power of commuter rail to drive development.

Extending the line from Dyer to Indianapolis—i.e., about 150 miles—is no doubt a “stretch” goal for the South Shore line. But it’s doable. South Shore already delivers quality train service between northern Indiana and Chicago; its routes into and out of Chicago Union Station are better than Amtrak’s; as a commuter-rail service, it already prioritizes frequency; it’s an Indiana-based agency but has expertise in working with Chicago and Illinois DOT; and in 2024 it completed a major service expansion and upgrade project. An extension to Indianapolis would be an ambitious, next-level leap—which is exactly what US railroads need right now.

In that vein, the Capitol Corridor’s story offers a third key takeaway. Whether the operator is Amtrak, the South Shore Line, or some other entity, a positive and proactive relationship with the host freight railroad, CSX, will be vital. The Capitol Corridor implemented its ideas for better service only because it had the buy-in of CSX. It got that buy-in by linking its own on-time performance to financial incentives for CSX—and actively partnering with the host railroad on infrastructure repairs and upgrades. Big ambitions and bold plans come nothing if they don’t begin with productive passenger-freight railroad relationships.

Getting to a better place—the place Indiana should be in terms of train service—will require substantial investments. And it will require political will and a sustained push by leaders and advocates at the local and state levels. Status-quo interests will balk at the costs. They’ll push for a less ambitious plan.

At this point, though, the relevant question isn’t whether Indiana can afford to invest in quality, high-frequency trains. The relevant question is: Can Indiana afford not to?

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