America’s passenger rail sector has a reputation for barely existing in many parts of the country. Since Amtrak’s inception in the 1970s, it has been besieged on all sides by forces seeking its demise, while its attempts at expansion have been haphazard and without a cohesive strategy. That’s all changed now.
Last month, the FRA’s Corridor ID Project has released its choices for support for the year, and lists a ton of new route that are going to be researched further for future service. On top of that, research into expanding Amtrak’s current services to new cities are also on the cards, and two mega-grants going towards several projects including the long-beleaguered but steadfast California High Speed Rail project and the soon to begin construction Brightline West high speed rail project. Rail service is a seriously desired thing in a lot more places now, including some you may not expect. Let’s go over (i.e. ramble) about the proposed services, and where we may see great rail service once again.
Link to the list I based this off of: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/full-list-of-passenger-routes-in-fra-corridor-program-released/
Hey everybody it’s Steve here and today I have a bit more of an impromptu video compared to the lengthy pre-planned documentaries that I normally busy myself with and I do mean busy if my recent upload time frames been anything to go by in the background will be just
A bunch of rail faning footage I’ve obtained mostly sented around the Northeast Corridor of course which I have a massive project surrounding in the works but this is all the more fitting since this project has a a lot to do with Amtrak but also other rail projects across the US recently a wave
Of federal funding grants have been distributed to various projects and particularly to the F’s Corridor ID project which is aimed at finding and establishing new Amtrak services and generally more rail Services a good amount of the roots that have been ided have been alluded to as potential candidates beginning in Earnest about 2
Years ago when Amtrak released the first of their Conexus plan maps and then a year later when the second one was released it’s worth pointing out off the bat that these Maps Were Meant to demonstrate a long-term vision for Amtrak’s network with these Maps meant to represent what it could look like in
2035 but these Maps definitely serve as valuable insights into what Amtrak wants to accomplish at certain points in the Project’s life cycle looking at the whole concept from both the perspective of a business which despite the federal government being the majority shareholder is what Amtrak is and it’s
Quest to Have services that are profitable but also from its perspective as a public service Amtrak seems to be making good plays to me as the majority of the routs currently being pursued under the corridor ID project as of this round of funding definitely appear to be ones with good ridership potential and
While they’re not exactly hosting the same kind of potential in the short term as Amtrak’s most profitable Services by a country mile they being the Northeast Corridor Services between Washington DC Baltimore Philadelphia New York New Haven and Boston they do have considerable potential and with proper investment not just at the federal level
But also the state and local levels some of them in my opinion could ultimately give Amtrak second most popular and profitable service that being the Pacific surf liner in California between San Diego LA and San Louis abiso will run for its money and hopefully without nearly all the problems that the surf
Liner is facing right now due to erosion damage from ocean waves halting surfaces and classic California nism great video about that here by the way speaking of California the Golden State gets the biggest contributions in this funding event by far and the two biggest ones go
To two massive projects the first one of them is the m pole of controversy that is California High-Speed Rail cahsr will be receiving a boost of 3 billion dollars to help its cause along and frankly it’s a good time to do so since there are a fair few things to think
About and maybe even celebrate with this project no I’m not even joking the whole topic of California highspeed rail is a 2hour plus video in and of itself and fellow Creator aier beep has been doing a hell of a job keeping tabs on the project and explaining it for those who
Want the details but I shall explain here for the uninitiated California High-Speed Rail is a High-Speed Rail Project sanctioned by the California state government aimed at bringing global standard 220 MH rail services to California that’s currently under construction in the state’s Central Valley the first phase of the project officially is between San
Francisco and Los Angeles but it will truly begin with an initial operating segment between Bakersfield and mered before being extended to connect the Bay Area and the LA Basin long dog by nimbyism lawsuits Elon mus creating hyperloop just to spite the project get more people to buy his cars that’s not
Even a joke that’s the only reason why hyperloop’s even a thing he confessed to that I wonder how that whole idea went oh wait oh no anyway and that’s alongside the soaring construction cost and slow goinging largely due to the project getting bugger all from the state’s
Transport budget from calr as well as troubles with contractors the California High-Speed Rail Authority who oversees the project got a massive reshuffle in 2019 a full four years after the project officially broke ground in 2015 now before I go into what it is a little explainer the construction of the
Bakers field to Merced right away is divided into four sections called construction packages or CPS and right now the big thing that people who follow this project are looking at is the completion of the southernmost construction package cp4 that’s right a portion of the California highspeed Rail Project is
Going to be complete either by the end of this year or January next year and track laying is scheduled to take place not long after though I will say if you were to be technical or pedantic the first part of California highspeed rail was actually completed long ago and
That’s the Cal train line between San Francisco and San Jose which will also see the beginning of electric services next year with the completion of their electrification of the route and the arrival of their really quite cool Stadler kiss double-decker emus to run their services replacing the diesel
Engines and gallery cars that have held sway for the last 40 years but Cal trains route will also be used as California highspeed rails Northern most portion of his line and when the baker field to mered portion is complete in the late 2020s and early 2030s San Fram
Will be more than likely be the first of the major cities to get connected to the highspeed network that being said there are a number of issues with using the Cal train line in its current state for cahsr and Banks rail actually discussed that point in one of his videos but
While far from a perfect idea and far from trouble free it does make this section of the project easier overall but more to the point Point while cp4 is nearing completion cp1 is making progress too though it’s had more struggles it’s slowly gaining Pace back the problem child though is
Cp23 the middle portion of the route has been pled with change orders and rebuilds and is struggling to find momentum what is this recent injection of $3 billion of the project going towards well conveniently it’s all laid out it’s going towards the design of the route from San Jose to Merced a crucial
Link from beyond the Central Valley to the Bay Area as well as the extension south from Bakersfield to Palmdale this will be a good step to actually start utility relocations so they won’t get in the way of the future tracks something the current section still struggles with
Also included as the funding to actually double track the whole initial segment which apparently they didn’t have before it’ll also cover the design of the extensions of the initial segment into Merced and Baker field proper and the construction of the station in Fresno and as if to put the ice ing on top
It’ll go towards the first six train sets that will run the service currently we don’t know what the trains will be but we do know that three manufacturers are currently putting their names out there for consideration seens Hyundai rhm and everybody’s favorite Rolling Stock maker these days alom that last
One was clearly sarcastic of the three Rolling Stock manufacturers I see seens as the leading Contender not only do they have a good track record with recent Rolling Stock order and have a solid track record for high-speed Trains being the Builders of the famous German IC trains as well as export models for
China Spain and even Russia until that became untenable but they also revealed recently a high-speed train set concept specifically for the North American Market called with typical American points for Showmanship the American Pioneer 220 while obviously designed more for the second California project that I
Will get into into its 220 mph top speed makes it evident that this will also be seamen’s foot in the door for the California highspeed Rail Project too to top it all off seens has an American Rolling Stock manufacturing plant in Floren California just outside of
Sacramento as well as a second one under construction in North Carolina which will have more bearing on another project mentioned later Seaman Mobility definitely has a lot of aces in their cap for sure but I’m curious to see what other makes can bring to the table alam’s pick will most likely be a
Specialized version of the ailia Liberty sets aka the next generation of cell trains for the Northeast Corridor if there has been a train that has been the dictionary definition of development hell it’s been these things as I’m reminded every single time I travel into Philly just to see them lined up in the
Coachy yard at 30th Street Station just waiting for olom to get their together for the last 3 years alam’s precarious business situation at current time only Amplified I this point long and short olom needs major wins and fast if they are to salvage their reputation and not be considered a desperation
Option the biggest wild card for me though is definitely Hyundai rhm Hyundai rhm has had a share of success in the US with the silver liner 5 cars for SEPTA and the RTD in Denver and byle Passenger cars for metrol Link in LA and the MBTA in Boston but they also make highspeed
Trains for their native South Korea among a few others though largely inspired by the tgv trains built by olom now one curious thing about them though is that as opposed to the other two makes Hyundai rhom no longer has a factory in the US since their Factory in
South Philly was closed after the last of the silver liner 5 cars were built in 2016 and a lot of cars that they build now are just direct imports from South Korea and under normal circumstances federal funds could not be utilized to buy Hyundai rhm equipment due due to
This because of by America regulations however what shows just how serious interest is spiked in this project California highspeed rail actually got a waiver from the by America laws simply because no American manufacturer or American Division of a foreign manufacturer has ever built World standard high-speed trains before
This in turn can make competition from other makes more enticing as they would not have to Shell out additional resources to cater specifically to the project all in all this is a significant Boom for California High-Speed Rail and with construction segments nearing completion it seems we may get positive
Results here sooner rather than later so now we move on to the other big project of the West Coast getting funded which is brightline West this is another High-Speed Rail Project but rather than run by a government Authority this will be run by a private company bright line
Who are already making a solid reputation for the themselves with their higher speed rail operation in Florida between Miami and Orlando airport yeah I just had to dig at them for that there and funnily enough something similar will be happening with bright Line West which will be running a
186 mph operation between Las Vegas and Los Angeles’s metro area by which I mean Rancho cam manga another $3 billion is going to this project to basically get a kickstarted which is good because the pieces are falling into place for bright line to apparently FasTrack this project
Due to the fact that the majority of the right of way already exists and that’s because over 95% of the route will be situated in the median of Interstate 15 with the main exception being the stations at the ends of the route in Rancho and Vegas with this supposedly
Shovel ready project in place on a $3 billion injection bright Line West intends to get the project complete by 2028 around the time of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles that year I always take fast completion days with Hefty doses of salt especially in the US and
Even more so in California but while I’m not sure if 20128 is a reasonable time frame to be banking on I can definitely see the reasoning why this one will be faster than csr’s current rate the topic of using Highway rights of way to build High-Speed Rail projects is definitely
An interesting one and worth researching for consideration for the future even if it’s not totally unheard of and it’s something that bright line might also do for their Florida operations for their future attention to Tampa and I feel like the ramifications of bright line from its private ownership to using
Established rights of way to FastTrack projects is one to be studied and perhaps examples to be taken all told we’ll know more about the true pace of this project when the shovels are indeed put in the dirt and construction gets underway which is likely going to be in
The middle of next year Honestly though if they go with the American Pioneer 220 sets from Seamans as their trains which I think is extremely likely since they were tailor made for bright Li West and bright line and Seamans have a strong relationship anyway I can’t wait to ride
In that party car on top of the two big grants there are a couple of smaller ones as well the biggest of those is easily the $1.1 billion to restore part of and upgrade the rest of the CSX s line formerly part of the Seaboard
Airlines right away as part of a bid at improving rail service between Richmond Virginia and Raleigh North Carolina and to improve rail service in North Carolina generally this will not only involve restoration of the part of the line that was torn up a while ago between Petersburg Virginia and orina
North Carolina near the Virginia border but also upgrading that section as well as the remaining section from norina to Raleigh via Wake Forest to highspeed standards which I must clarify is not highspeed rail by the international definition this is High-Speed Rail by the inferior Federal Railroad Administration definition which is to
Say 110 mph sustained speed maybe 125 if you’re lucky this makes it more akin to what was recently achieved on the Lincoln service in Illinois and even bright line in Florida rather than something like California High-Speed Rail bright Line West or even the asella and the upgrades of the Northeast
Corridor which do meet Global definitions of High-Speed Rail nonetheless this will be a major upgrade to rail service heading down to the southeast as this will bypass a needlessly long and slow way that Amtrak trains currently take between Richmond and Raleigh and become a crucial link between a booming Amtrak ridership
Market in Virginia and another booming Amtrak ridership Market in North Carolina and perhaps be a stepping stone to creating the southeast equivalent of the Northeast Corridor in the coming years and believe you me this is far from the only time I’ll be visiting this part of the country in this video
Because especially in North Carolina there are a lot of things on the table NC DOT is is getting super serious about Inter City rail and I love it another big one is the funding going to Virginia as part of the transforming Rail and VA plan this whole plan is generally meant
To improve service between Washington DC and Richmond as well as the Virginia suburbs of DC but given that this section of the line is a main spinal cord for Amtrak Services generally this one is desperately needed the biggest and most notable thing that this project will deliver is building a second Long
Bridge over the pomac river now for context here the Long Bridge is a railroad bridge over the pomac river from DC to Alexandria Virginia which is owned by CSX that ownership bid is a big problem because CSX directly limits the amount of trains that can go over the
Long bridge in a day and being only two tracks this obviously leads the capacity concerns going forward especially since that not only is Amtrak looking to increase the number of trains heading into and out of Virginia but but also Virginia Railway Express which is a commuter rail operation going into DC to
Manasses and Fredericksburg this second Long Bridge Project and the parallel tracks next to the original CSX line which will be owned by the Virginia do will be absolutely essential to improving the amount of trains that can be run while also potentially freeing up capacity for CSX not only that but the
State-owned right of way makes the DC to Richmond line immensely easier for what every line in the US should do electrification which by the way fun fact the Long Bridge used to be electrified and now it’s not if only the S line had that right off the bat but I
Can see that being easier to wire up once the DC to Richmond line gets finished one last little thing confirmed to get direct funding though is the launch of a second round trip of the Amtrak Pennsylvanian service between New York City Philly and Pittsburg obviously very good news there since one train in
Each Direction between my home State’s first and second largest cities picking up the fourth along the way that being Harrisburg is just incredibly stupid I’m sure it’s something all rans about in the future but it’s a step in the right direction to add this second train it’s
Also worth noting that this expansion of service was vocally supported by representatives and citizens of the more rural Appalachian communities that the line serves such as Johnstown in Altuna rather than the expected suspects of Philly and Pittsburgh all this goes to show that a desire to have better rail
Services expanded is a generally agreed upon good thing amongst the American general public and when properly presented to elected officials who are willing to hear you out it’s more likely to happen than a Doomer may have you believe and that’s something that I’ll be going into about a few of the
Corridor ID routes as a surprisingly large number of them are coming from States and regions that you would expect to be anti-public Transit and anti- rail hope for us all perhaps okay so on to the things that get me the most interested for the long term and the
Broad scope of the country and the ones that will have the biggest ramification of America’s Inter City Transport industry I think the grants towards improvements to current Services as well as future Services being considered and put in the funding pipeline for implementation it’s worth mentioning off
The bat that while the majority of these projects will go towards Amtrak Services there are a few that stand out as being unlikely to be Amtrak services for reasons that will become obvious as I list them off and I’ll largely do so on scripted from here on out just so things
Are a bit more fluid all right then let’s get into it now full disclosure here I’ve cated pretty much all of the major projects being considered into a list that I made on a Google doc and mostly derived from a trains.com article that handily lists
Them now I obviously go into a bit more detail than the list is cuz it was just a list but let’s have a look and see what they all are okay first off is one that I thought was dead in the water after last year and that’s extending a
Few of the Northeast Regional Services onto Long Island going to Ron cona New York now uh the reason why this one is a bit of an odd ball for me is because we saw this in the original connectus map back in 2021 but it was taken off the
Conexs map for 2022 the very next year and there’s a lot of reasons why I was skeptical about that happening a because you’re running on Long Island Railroad territory and that whole area is incredibly well served to begin with also that you would need to do a locomotive switch at Penn Station
Switching over to uh right now would be a p32 acdm uh one of the Dual mode Genesis engines and then eventually maybe to a dual mode charger which Amtrak is not ordering right now they may have to dive into Long Island railroads and Metro Norths eventually pull for that unless
They order a R few for themselves and it’s just so kind of weird that I get the idea that you want to extend a northeast regional service out to Ron cona you want to run from like DC maybe even Virginia up to Ron cona or from
Boston to Rona up on the Long Island proper but it just seems like there’s a lot of complications here especially with MTA and who owns the Long Island Railroad mind you that’s going to be a hard one to P that’s going to be a hard one to pull off I think uh so
Interesting to see how it will go but I’m definitely skeptical so yeah not a great start but the next one is actually a good one the next one takes us all the way to the other coast it takes us over to California and it’s a proposed extension of the capital Corridor uh
Right now for those who don’t know uh the capital Corridor is an Amtrak uh California service that runs between San Jose and Auburn California it serves the uh the capital region of California basically around Sacramento and it also serves places like Oakland and all it
Serves a bunch of cities uh in the Bay Area but it doesn’t go to San Francisco proper but that’s what this whole idea is looking to do so the thing about this one is that the only way that this can actually work going to San Francisco
Itself is to send it up the Cal train line uh which is going to be difficult both in the near term and in the long term for two reasons one the uh Cal train line is going to be very very very busy uh with the new electrification
Plan that they have starting next year they plan on running a lot more service on that line than they do currently and that’s to say nothing of um at least a maybe a decade down the line when California High-Speed Rail finally reaches the Bay Area that’s going to
Make the situation even even more insane because not only you’re going to have Cal train to negotiate you’re also going to have the California highspeed Rail trains you’re going to have to negotiate there so the extension from uh San Jose to San Francisco already a bit of a
Question mark but the rest of it is actually good the rest of it uh extends from Auburn California all the way not just into California uh Auburn for those who are uh not very famili amiliar with the geography um the geography of California Auburn is just passed uh
Sacramento just to the Northeast but this idea sends the MTR Capital Corridor service all the way across the Sierra Nevada mountains to Reno Nevada yeah they plan on extending this one to Nevada I really like that idea uh Reno definitely needs more train service Nevada in general needs more train
Service than thankfully we’re getting that with bright Line West down south but um but the capital Corridor going into California that is going to be a major Boon here because it would basically supplement the California Zephyr and being the capital Corridor Capital Corridor gets a decent amount of
Services per day if that were to hold true going over the sieras at least for a few of them that is going to give um Western Nevada Eastern California that is going to give them a lot more service and definitely a lot more ridership opportunities so I’m definitely happy
With that uh it’s not going all the way to Salt Lake City but frankly I wouldn’t expect that in any case and frankly you may need a bit more to encourage people to do that especially in Utah Utah already does a great job with their um with their uh public transport services
In Salt Lake City and that general area with something like front runner and a whole bunch of other um with their Light Rail services for example they do a very good job but extending um Inter City rail that may take a whole different commitment uh from The Beehive
State moving all the way back over to the east coast yet again uh is a proposed extension of the down Easter Service uh from Rockland M from Rockland Maine to Brunswick Maine now the down Easter is an Amtrak service that runs out of Boston it runs out of Boston
North Station uh basically following uh some the mvta lines that go north uh the former Boston and Maine lines and they go uh through Portsmouth New Hampshire into Maine and right now they stop at um they stop at Brunswick Main I should say Brunswick is the end of the line for
That route and they want to extend this to Rockland which is another major town in Maine now the interesting thing about this one uh the down Easter is a good service it runs a decent amount of trains per day uh this one though the the main Department of Transportation
Actually had a interesting idea I actually alluded to this in uh one of the videos I made um my video on the Westchester line towards the end I alluded to the idea that the main do wanted to run uh what they call a light commuter service between Brunswick and
Rockland to sort of supplement the down Easter and the way they were and the way they wanted to do that was by uh bringing in uh Bud RDC cars from the 1950s from a tourist Railroad in Upstate New York so they wanted to bring those
Cars in and run them as a basically a shuttle service between uh uh Brunswick and Rockland uh this idea I think is better overall you get direct service between uh Rockland all the way down to Boston and onto one of the very few rail services period let alone Amtrak lines
That go through New Hampshire New Hampshire is just a basket case when it comes to rail Services uh I I think that’s been alluded to by a few other creators as well I know Alan Fischer has probably mentioned it a few times and so as a peny fan 19 for that matter but
Extending the down Easter to to Rockland that is a that is really cool I definitely like that idea and hopefully it would be more than just the uh just a few trains per day that runs up there they would have to negotiate with CSX to do it uh but ironically enough I think
CSX may be easier to work with than PanAm who previously owned that line because uh I think I heard from places that the owner of PanAm was a bit of a jerk when it came to Amtrak Services uh the fact that they run more than five
Trains a day round five round trips a day I should say in each Direction on that line is impressive uh next one is an extension of the Green Mountain Corridor uh the Green Mountain Corridor is uh so if you ride on the Northeast Corridor and you go to New Haven there’s some Amtrak
Services uh Northeast Regional services that go to Springfield Massachusetts and to do that they have to switch to a diesel locomotive at New Haven to go up the uh the the um to go up the CT rail Hartford line going up to Harford Connecticut and then all the way to
Springfield this would um and eventually if you ride on the longest train to serve that route which is the vermonter service uh you go all the way up to St Alin Vermont uh I believe this one though um this one though is a very different thing this one goes via New
York so this one follows the Empire Corridor going from New York Penn Station up to Albany and then and then Rutland Vermont and then this one would extend it to Burlington basically following the route of the Ethan Allen Express and basically joining up there it really is impressive that Vermont is
As serious as they are it would seem about uh improving rail Services there for such a tiny state it is genuinely impressive uh I I definitely would expect it from a state like Vermont given their given their streak and the fact that they own pretty much the state
Of Vermont pretty much owns all the right of way in uh in Vermont so that makes uh things a bit easier to work with but it it does genuinely impress me that Vermont is as serious as they are about this uh I can definitely see some uh redundancy on this route here but
That redundancy does come in the form of increased frequency going up to places like Burlington cuz I think the Ethan Allen Express is only a once a day thing and of course the vermonter is a once a day thing going up to St Albans which runs on a different line that’s actually
Another one I’ll be talking about later meanwhile running into the middle of the country another extension here uh this first bit I should note is going to be mostly extensions this is going to be extensions of current Services the new services will be coming a little bit
Later so this one here is an extension of the Illinois Zephyr and the Carl Sandberg Service uh that is an Amtrak service that runs out of Chicago it runs along I believe it runs along the Metra uh BNSF line uh going out towards Quincy Illinois they want to extend this one
Over the Mississippi River into Hannibal Missouri definitely I think a pretty cool thing uh I imagine Hannibal has been missing uh a decent rail service for quite a while especially since the Burlington kind since the Burlington Route zeph kind of bit the dust um so this one definitely really
Good I love a lot of the stuff that Illinois is looking into uh they seem genuinely interested and a lot of Amtrak Midwest services are slated to uh uh to be in line for improvements I definitely like this I’m hoping that uh the Illinois Zephyr and the Carl Samberg do
Increase their frequency though I think it’s a it’s definitely one of the uh the Lesser run trains on a daily basis uh in the Midwest compared to something like the Lincoln service and the hawaa that we’ll talk about later uh another one this next one by the way is actually
Pretty interesting this one is coming from an area that you really would not expect to be uh sort of a rail friendly place that is Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas this is an extension of the Heartland Flyer which is an Amtrak service running between Fort Worth Texas
And uh Oklahoma City they want to extend this one to Newton and Witchita Kansas and and sort of connect with the Southwest Chief from there so this one is definitely a bit of a surprise I was not definitely not expecting uh a place like Oklahoma I mean you to be this
Interested in inter city rail service Beyond uh going down to like Fort Worth uh I’ve also seen that a lot of people in Kansas particularly in like Witchita and Newton they definitely seem interested in this service and they’re sort of the big uh the big pushers for
This they want to service down to Texas definitely good I want to see a lot of old roots in the midwest come back and at least see extensions this could be a good thing uh the main thing for me though uh even if it extends there uh is
To improve frequency between Fort Worth and OKC uh that service um I know it probably doesn’t get much from uh the Texas and Oklahoma d but that service I think could be a really good one if you improve the frequency and maybe even upgrade the track as well between OKC and Fort Worth
If you were to do that I think that could be a major major Boon for the Heartland Flyer and for rail service in the uh in the mids South to begin with uh staying in the midwest the next one is an extension again of the Missouri River Runner this is a proposed
Extension of this service this runs between Chicago and Kansas City via St Louis following uh the same route as the Lincoln service does which I likely will be alluding to later uh actually I believe I am going to be alluding to the Lincoln service later this is going to
Be running uh Beyond Kansas City staying in Missouri though it’s not going to go over the border into Kansas uh apparently they’re going to send it uh up north to St Joseph uh not too familiar with St Joseph but I did see on the connects US map there was an idea to
Extend a line from Kansas City to St Joseph and South to Branson and I know Branson is a major uh resort area in the Ozarks that could definitely be a good uh service to run especially in the summer months uh extending it to St Joseph definitely an interesting idea uh
I’m I’m definitely Keen to see what the Missouri DOT uh will contribute to it if they’ve gotten it onto the corridor ID uh I onto the corridor ID project I think it could be majorly interested because uh the thing about the cter ID uh before I go much further is it’s uh
Basically giving the Dot’s funding to directly um to directly research uh the statistics of a proposed service um so if you were to have a corridor lined up for this you would have money to you have a dedicated stream of funding to uh pursue Research into this Corridor and then eventually
If it proves like it’s going to be something that could work quite well uh the dot will continue further working with the F and with amtr or whatever operator they’re going to be working with to uh go further and further along here some of these projects are a lot
Further than others I’m not sure how far the St Joseph idea is I would like for it to be the case because uh again the Midwest had a lot of rail Services a lot of really good rail Services too and then they lost it after the 50s 60s and’
7s to get that back again would be amazing especially to like a lot of smaller communities that haven’t had it for years next one is a Improvement project and an extension idea for the Pacific surf liner I talked about this train before it’s Amtrak’s second most popular and second most profitable
Corridor this runs currently between uh um San Diego Los Angeles and all the way up to North to San Louis abiso uh about roughly halfway between the Bay Area and the LA Basin in that case um but this idea is to extend it a bit further south
This time going south past San Diego to Sandy Cedro which is right near the Mexican border definitely an interesting idea Sedro I’ve definitely heard of it it’s um definitely a I wouldn’t say a major city in California but it is definitely a noteworthy City and not only is that extension to Sandy Cedro
Being considered but also uh funding for the improvements to reliability and oh my God does the Pacific surf liner need that uh I I mentioned a link earlier that I put in the video about um the channel is called metamodernism the guy is fantastic he’s from La uh he
Definitely knows this idea really he definitely knows the area incredibly well and he goes into great detail about the problems that the surf liner has but the main things is the fact that the track is out of action for the last few years on and off because of erosion damage from
Ocean waves cuz it runs right along the coastline in certain places it’s an absolutely beautiful Journey but that Coastline run is going to be a problem with rising sea levels and more erosion damage in fact you even see uh along that line there’s a lot of like multi-million dollar mansions that were
Built above the line they’re completely abandoned because the ground beneath them is eroding rapidly now obviously this warrants a lot of attention it really should calr as I mentioned before is a bit of a jerk when it comes to rail Services because they kind of got that
Car brain going on there with all those freeways that’s a whole other thing but it’s definitely something calr has to work through but there’s two main projects to improve reliability and that’s two tunnel projects to move the line away from the coast and in and generally make it so that you don’t have
To deal with this problem anymore uh one of those projects is moving along a bit better than another one and the one that isn’t is in a notably nimy area when it comes to any sort of public transportation and that’s Orange County California uh metamodernism explains it
Better than I do but uh yeah definitely going to be taking a bit of a while on that one especially since uh orange countyy is probably going to be dragging its heels but all told if this is going to be primarily going towards improvements and reliability I would
Definitely take that over the extension to Sandy Cedro not to disrespect anyone in sany Cedro if you’re watching this but it’s good to have a major rail Corridor be reliable ideally double tracked as much as you can and electrified uh before we look to extend further it’s good to have a core section
Before you Branch outwards in my opinion for that sort of thing and speaking of a core branching out the next one we head back to the Midwest this one I definitely really really like uh this one is an extension of the hawaa service which right now is a fairly short Amtrak
Route but a a fairly frequent one as well uh between Chicago and Milwaukee they want to extend this up to Green Bay Wisconsin yes that Green Bay the home of the Packers uh so yeah for all the cheese heads out there you might be getting trains again as if you couldn’t be even
More insufferable there uh the main one of the main things that they want to uh improve is uh line speed they want to improve it to 90 m per hour operations but they also want to improve frequency they want to go from Seven daily round trips to 10 daily
Round trips definitely a good Improvement I my main thing is that it really starts to get good around uh around that point around 10 round trips a day ideally I’d say 13 to 16 if you can all make it possible but that is definitely a good Improvement and if you
Have some of those trains going further up north to Green Bay that would be fantastic as well maybe you get like at I’d say at least five maybe seven maybe even all 10 that’d be fantastic cuz if I’m being honest the highwa is kind of short as far as Amtrak Corridor routes
Go if you get a little bit further up into uh Northern Wisconsin that could definitely be a major Boom for them you get a lot more Riders and you get a lot more trains going through a lot of places uh jumping back to California again the
Next one is an improvement to the Amtrak sanin service and it’s kind of funny I’m mentioning the San wiin here because finally they got their new Seaman Venture train sets that they have been waiting what is it 3 years to get on that line uh and for those of you who
Don’t know the San wiin is an amtr service that runs uh between Oakland and Sacramento there’s two branches one that goes to Oakland another goes to Sacramento and right now it goes to Bakersfield down south uh they want to extend the Sacramento leg of the line from Sacramento to Chico and reading
Which is further up in Northern California and they also want to improve frequency definitely very good uh all very good stuff uh one thing that I did hear that could give me some pause for thought on this one is California highp speed rail because when California highspeed rail
Uh gets started a in the Central Valley and then extends the Bay Area and eventually to La that one I think will come after the Bay Area um but once the Bay Area gets connected it’s been suggested that the San wiin service may be truncated uh to uh to just connect with
California highspeed rail from there I really don’t want that to be the case because I would love to see uh cahsr become more of an Express service by comparison with the sanin staying on on the current right of way to uh serve more local communities I would
Definitely love for that to be the case uh there’s been some question over whether that will be the case I hope it’s uh I hope that stays I want the San wiin to stay alongside California highs speed rail it’ be a great little supplement to it uh especially since uh
Calr uh actually seems to um actually seem to do something and they got the new trains that they wanted for the sanin service I I I’d hate for those trains to be uh uh being shipped off to other places um only a few days after it us only a few years after its
Introduction especially since those trains are kind of bespoke and by bespoke I mean uh they don’t have a cafe car is one of the main things they’re uh they have vending machines uh for Food Service which is uh definitely a let down as especially if you’re used to
Amtrak Cafe cars like I am on my Amtrak trains here in the Northeast but uh yeah that is um that’s going to be an odd one maybe if they do get rid of it the trains could find life on other corridors especially with all the corridors that we’re looking to get
Down the line but on the whole I definitely want California to get more rail service that is definitely going to be a big uh step towards not only clearing up the complete cluster that is all of the freeways in California but also to improve their climate situation because they got pretty lofty climate
Goals and calr is currently screwing them over right now and improving uh rail service and getting California highspeed rail online that is going to be absolutely vital and it’s going to be a major Boon to uh California at large uh moving back to the east coast is actually a service I alluded to
Earlier it’s the vermonter so right now the ver monter is a once daily uh one daily round trip Amtrak service that runs between Washington DC up the Northeast Corridor and then when it gets to New Haven it switches to a diesel locomotive it runs up the Harford line
Up to Springfield and then up into uh both New Hampshire and Vermont and it goes up to St Albin Vermont now St Albans is a town about got to be less than 20 miles away from the border with Canada and what they want to do here is to
Extend the vermonter into Canada they want to extend it to Montreal and basically uh serve as another uh another route um to supplement the Amtrak atar Ronda service which connects New York City to Montreal as well and this would go of course by uh Massachusetts by Vermont by New Hampshire by Connecticut
Uh would give a different uh ridership demographic going up to Montreal and not only do they want to extend it but uh this is going to be a common theme for am tr services that go across borders they want to set up a customs pre-c facility now I personally have never
Ridden an Amtrak service uh going across uh going across National borders uh but I do but I have seen on the maple leaf they do have to stop the Train on uh I think both the American side and the Canadian side at Niagara Falls and check passports on both sides before you go
That is definitely very very tedious uh if you have a pre-clear facil facility somewhere along the line you get everybody clear before they get on the train and uh it would make the trip incredibly smooth they would be um it would be just as easy as going across
The state border ideally that’s what I am that’s what I’m hoping will be the case so that’s going to be a common recurring theme for Amtrak services that go across borders is they’re going to uh aim for getting Customs pre-clear facilities and some and the vermonter
That runs very close to the Border will actually run over the border and into uh Montreal which would be fantastic so then and now the next one is an interest a very interesting one this is an extension of Amtrak Northeast Regional Services further south which could be an interesting uh illusion to
An idea we have later but this is an idea to extend um some Amtrak services that go into Virginia particularly the ones that go to Rowan Oak uh some of them go to Rowan o some of them go to places on the Virginia Coast but this
One is to extend the route from Rowan o going through Christiansburg and going down to Bristol uh which is right on the border with Tennessee in fact Bristol straddles the Tennessee Virginia border it’s also home with Bristol Motor Speedway by the way and me being a
Racing nerd I know what that is and uh pretty cool to actually take a train to Bristol baby but um but this would be very interesting I do know part of this line uh was bought by the Virginia do I believe it was this one that was bought
By the dot off of Northfolk Southern uh so this one could be very interesting uh it could uh finally get a rail Service uh just touching the border with Tennessee and serving some very underserved uh Appalachian communities in uh rural Western Virginia so that I think very very cool idea I’d love to
See how that goes uh I’d love to see if uh how much interest there is uh from those communities uh I’m sure that if it does get implemented they would love it anyway because hey you get train service out to these uh more rural places off the beaten path in Western Virginia
That’d be fantastic uh going back to crossb Services by the way two of them in a row uh after both this one and the one after the first one is the Wolverine now the Wolverine is an Amtrak service that runs from Chicago to Detroit uh they want to extend this one to
Windsor Ontario Just across the Detroit River so the idea here would be to extend the line going through a um going through the Michigan Central railway tunnel that that directly connects Detroit and Windsor and that would be really cool because that could be a direct connection to the uh Quebec City
Windsor Corridor which is VIA Rail Canada’s most popular service that could be amazing major Boon for uh not just uh crossb Services uh in Michigan but also uh Services uh in in Canada as well because that could be an interesting connection going into Detroit and if they have a customs pre-clear facility
Uh like what they want to do with the um the services like the vermonter and as I’ll talk about in a bit the adarac and the maple leaf if they were to do that that would definitely be a major major Boon and make things a lot easier going
Across borders Honestly though with the Wolverine in general I think the first thing I would do is to try and push for improved frequency because right now the Wolverine has three daily round trips so that is three daily round trips only going between two major cities in the US
Of Chicago and Detroit um if you were to expand that to I’d love it to G be around 10 maybe five or seven if you were to slowly improve that that would be a major boon espe especially since um the Michigan do has improved the speeds
On the line they run 110 mph on that service kind of like uh what you see with the Lincoln service so that could be major major major Improvement right there if you were to improve frequency so uh good uh good idea for extending it to Windsor in the future uh I would uh
Push for frequency first and foremost though on your core service and as I alluded to for the next Improvement is to the Adera Service uh not much uh what happened here the main thing is the Customs pre-clear facility which would majorly improve uh your journey time uh just by the fact that
You’re not stopped at the border for so long but I will say another thing that uh this is not so much what Amtrak would be able to do because it would be on the Canadian side because once you get over onto the Canadian side of the Border it is apparently
Ungodly slow going from the border into Montreal like what are you doing uh what are you doing Canada that that route needs better track there I’ve heard stories of like trundling along at like 20 M an hour from the border going into Montreal that is shameful that is just
Unacceptable that needs a major major Improvement that’s not so much something Amtrak or any American uh rail operator would do that would be more on the Canadian side of things so Canada I know there’s some uh uh rail projects you want to do uh some of them
Uh have more worth than others and some of them I definitely question but that is one I think that would be majorly majorly good for crossb services it’s probably not that high up the totem pole for you but definitely consider it I can’t imagine it’s a it’s a back
Breaker moving on now to the Pacific Northwest and an improvement to the Amtrak Cascades Corridor now the Cascades Corridor runs between Eugene Oregon and it runs to Portland Seattle Bellingham and Vancouver British Columbia on certain trips uh the core of the route is of course between Portland
And Seattle uh the idea here is uh one that I’ve been pushing for for a few of these frequency uh they want to get uh 16 daily round trips particularly between Portland and Seattle which is the core of the route and six and at least six trains continuing to Vancouver and Eugene in
Each Direction uh right now the current frequency is seven trains uh seven round trips uh between uh in the core section of the route you would have to negotiate with BNSF I would imagine and BNSF are jerks especially uh with what they’ve been doing with Sounder which is H
Seattle’s commuter rail but it’s definitely going to be worth it especially if you can find ways to uh run your own right away or even if wash dot just buys out the lines out right which I would love for them to do uh not sure if they’ve got the Macho to do it
Yet but they really really should but this is definitely one of those uh one of those ones I really like because it’s doing something that genuinely improves the service and that’s running more trains especially since the uh the Cascades Corridor is going to be one of the first routes to
Get the new Seaman Venture train sets the uh the Amtrak Arrow sets they’re going to be one of the first ones to get them in 2026 that is going to be a major Improvement to service I would think so and getting that to improve service to
16 round trips especially on the core of the route that would be amazing especially for the Vancouver British Columbia stuff have a and especially for the trains going to Vancouver if you have Customs pre-clear again that would improve the service overall uh you find small little improvements and new
Equipment and you are going to be having major improvements to the Cascade Corridor uh I think that’s going to be a major major boom there uh it’s going to be a booming ridership Market if they manage to improve it like that um right now it’s like the eighth busiest
Corridor on Amtrak system that should improve drastically with a improving service frequency and improving speeds on the line if you can at all do it and now here’s one that I honestly didn’t know was for consideration and this is one of the ones that will not
Have anything to do with Amtrak this is in Alaska it’s improvements of the Alaska railroads main Corridor that runs from Seward Alaska to Anchorage and then all the way up to Fairbanks uh I haven’t been able to dig up too much about this project it’s definitely going to be like
Track improvements I would imagine uh like the clear bottlenecks maybe double tracking on certain areas and hopefully that could get not not just better Freight Service but also to improve passenger service in Alaska that would be fantastic um it’s going to be the Alaska railroad that of course runs at Amtrak
Has never run in Alaska before uh but if you were to have uh not so much um cuz right now uh the Alaska railroad runs a more tourist oriented train from Anchorage to fairback from anchor to Fairbanks going through Denali National Park uh generally considered uh to be
One of the most beautiful train Journeys period but if you were to have a more uh a more utilitarian train service at least between Anchorage and Fairbanks maybe going down to Seward and serving a lot more rural communities that would be a major Lifeline to a lot of more rural
Communities in Alaska and improving uh like public services in rural places that is definitely something that I will always support if we can all do it and I hope the Alaska railroad can uh get this together and to improve the service because Alaska needs trains it needs
Like a lot of a lot of good public services for its rural communities this one definitely has my seal of approval so the next one is actually tying back to the sine which is one of the main funding grants that I alluded to this would improve the Carolinian
Service to run along the sline instead of along the uh much slower route via Selma going from Washington DC to Charlotte uh the service starts in New York City actually but it runs down to Charlotte North Carolina this would be a major Improvement to Journey times cuz I
Believe it’s like a 12-hour trip between Charlotte and New York City and the reason why is because of that very slow section past Raleigh where uh you’re outside of NC DOT territory you’re getting held up by freight trains and if you were to run along the sine which NC
DOT is really um putting efforts for and it’s getting a billion dollars in federal funding to renew uh a long lost section of the route and to improve it generally to 110 plus mph operations that is going to improve the Carolinian service dramatically and any future service to the southeast that is going
To be major absolutely major I love it that the Carolinian got better frequency but I think with the sine coming online that’s going to make the cause of uh improving U service from DC to Charlotte a lot a lot easier and now for the next few uh we stick to
The Midwest for is an improvement to four different Services all at once and I think I have an idea of what it may allude to uh it’s improvements to the Ali and the Saluki which runs along the old Illinois Central mainline from Chicago to Carbondale Illinois uh an improve improvements to
The pier Marquette service which runs between Chicago and Grand Rapids Michigan improvements to the Blue Water Service which runs between Chicago and Port hon Michigan and improvements to the Lincoln service which runs between Chicago and St Louis which I actually alluded to earlier now what I’m thinking
Of here is uh I imagine most of it is going to be service improvements cuz if I look at something like the Lincoln service which uh the Illinois dot has really been touting as like a highp speed operation because they got to 110 miles an
Hour um it only runs four round trips a day between Chicago and St Louis that is definitely a route that I think you could do uh what they’re planning to do with a highwa you could definitely run 10 trains a day there uh you’d have to argue with Union Pacific and you
Probably have to double track a lot more of that line that currently exists and this dealing with a freight railroad that’s going to be costing a fair bit of change perhaps because Union Pacific uh uh has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to working with
Amtrak but that sort of service uh between Chicago and St Louis that is going to be absolutely essential to improve um Ser improve service improvements improve service reliability especially with new trains coming online that’s going to be very very important the two Michigan Services the blue water
And the Lincoln Service uh the blue water and the param Marquette I should say but yeah um but they definitely need better service the param marquet is only one round trip a day that is ridiculous and the same is true with the blue Blue Water Service as well the blue
Water only on runs uh one round trip a day between Chicago and Port hon um that is again I think the main thing there is to improve frequency and also improve the right of way as well but I also think that these service improvements could well be at the core
Of the Chicago Hub the Chicago Hub is a massive topic for another time but it’s basically going to make Chicago a proper um rail hub for like Regional services in the Midwest and perhaps future highspeed Services uh it would allow for through running at Union Station a lot
More trains could run through Union Station because uh Union Station is probably underutilized uh because of uh its own shortcomings right now but there’s projects to improve that that’s definitely a bigger topic for me to discuss uh later on down the line and I know other YouTubers like uh uh for
Example Lucid stew has talked about uh possible highspeed Rail Chicago hub projects and there’s going to be probably a fair amount of talk about it from a lot more people in the Midwest and the next two routes by the way that are getting improvements these are actually going to be longdistance
Service improvements a very rare thing on this list um and these two routes are the Cardinal which runs between Chicago and New York City and the sunset limited which runs between Los Angeles and New Orleans these two routes only run three times a week per Direction this idea is
To improve the service to daily service once again absolutely necessary um because if you the thing with at very minimum any service must run at least once a day that is the bare minimum you must do to have a good service uh from what I’ve seen because
If you have a service that you only run on certain days of the week people are just not going to bother they are not going to bother taking the train uh if the if the schedule is inconsistent and three times a week is inconsistent um there’s actually an
Australian YouTuber called Tate set that I highly recommend the dude makes fantastic content he discusses a similar problem with uh longdistance routs in Australia namely uh he has a video about the Overland service which runs between Melbourne and Adelaide which is even worse uh frequency wise than any Amtrak
Service I know that’s hard to believe but it’s absolutely true um it only runs twice a week which is insane and definitely check out his video because it really shows not only the massive potential that longdistance trains have for the future not just in Australia but also in the
US uh but just how badly things can be run uh moving swiftly along though to definitely a more frequent Service uh is improvements of the Empire Corridor which is between New York City uh Albany skony and buffalo I imagine this one is going to be uh again improving service
Frequencies um I haven’t seen too terribly much about this whole idea uh definitely run more trains though the Empire service is a very vital Corridor for New York state but yeah I haven’t seen too terribly much about the improvements of the Empire Service uh I definitely hope
It’s going to be something that improves Rel life ability and hopefully something that uh uh improves the service overall uh it’d be great to um uh I imagine I’m not sure what it would be frankly it’s already an okay service maybe run more trains along that line and hopefully set
The groundwork for uh uh future electrification Beyond pypy and have it not be uh third rail uh I’d love for it to be overhead wire all the way from Penn Station up through uh up through pipy croen Harmon uh to Albany ideally maybe all the way to skony ideally to
Buffalo that’s definitely the end goal for that Corridor electrification all the way to Buffalo and into Canada with the maple leaf service so um not sure what it would be if any uh New Yorkers who uh are more in touch with this project if they know
What’s going on here feel free to let me know I would love to hear it but this next one here I definitely know a bit more about it’s improvements to the Hartford line I it to this line a few times already with the vermonter but the Hartford line uh runs between New Haven
Connecticut and Springfield massachusett it’s already served by a few Northeast Regional trains that switch to Diesel power at New Haven and then go the way all the way up to Springfield it’s also served by um a an AmTrak shuttle service between New Haven uh Hartford and
Springfield and also by CT rail uh which is run by uh the Connecticut Department of Transportation and they coordinate with Amtrak to run the same tickets on the uh Amtrak services and the CT rail services so uh for all intensive purposes CT Rail and amtr are the same
Thing on that route this one I definitely know a bit more about uh they’ve they’ve improved the speeds on the line to 110 mph uh but it’s single tracked in some places especially north of Hartford uh this intends to this project intends to get rid of single
Tracking uh they want to double track it all the way up to Springfield um and especially in a bid to improve uh surface reliability and frequency that would be fantastic especially as like an auxiliary to the NEC going up to Massachusetts uh because what you could
Do uh you could run to Springfield and then uh run certain services along to Worcester Framingham and then into Boston South Station following the mbta’s um uh Framingham Worcester line uh definitely an interesting idea and especially uh this is one of those routes that I think
Would be incredibly easy to put up the wires that would make service incredibly better in pretty much every conceivable way it’d be cheaper to run the trains be faster you could run multiple units on that route especially with the CT rail stuff you can get more Kawasaki m8s for
The route rather than uh relying on diesels and it would um it would eliminate the need for a locomotive change at New Haven which already is a bit of a time consumer so on the whole um great stuff I do know the electrification stuff is being considered not just for the Hartford
Line but also the Danbury branch and possibly even the Waterbury Branch as well on uh Metro North which all in all would be fantastic Connecticut if you can do that you may uh restore my faith in you yet again to uh get rail Services improved in the Constitution State
Definitely do that uh getting towards the end of the improvements uh next one is improvements between Chicago and Indianapolis I imagine that this is mostly going to be geared towards improving service on the Cardinal uh but this could lead to something very interesting so for those
Who don’t know uh there used to be an Amtrak service between Chicago and Indianapolis called the hoer state it has a very interesting history it takes me a little bit a little bit a while to go into but uh the Hooser state was canned because the Indianapolis cuz the
Indiana do didn’t want to fund trains um yeah Indiana is definitely one of the weirdest States out there when it comes to Transportation uh in not very good ways I will say but if Indiana’s dot is looking to do this this could well allude to a return of the hooer
State service between Chicago and Indianapolis that would be amazing especially if you run multiple round trips a day between those two cities you could actually get a fair amount of ridership I would imagine between Chicago and Indie uh it would be that would be amazing and maybe even
Extending it down to Louisville which I’ll actually get into later but uh Indiana definitely needs more trains it can’t be just the Southshore line up north which I imagine that they run only begrudgingly because it’s a vital service and the and people up there would be pissed off if we got
Rid of it so yeah definitely interesting they want to improve that uh shows there could be hope for us ol if one of the most anti- rail States out there is interested in trains now I’m looking at New Hampshire to uh to follow suit wink wink uh improvements of the Keystone
Corridor is the next one this is the route uh following the old Pennsylvania railro Mainline between Philly and Harrisburg this is the electrified segment of it where the Keystone service runs uh they run Services between Philly Harrisburg and New York City using Push Pull sets um so this one not sure what
They want to do specifically but I imagine uh track improvements would be a big thing especially going Beyond uh Lancaster and uh go and going past like places like peoli it’s going to be imagine it’s going to be an improvement especially since SEPTA wants to extend service on the Paley Thorndale line
Which this route is on out to Coatsville uh I can imagine uh service improvements to be made here hopefully frequency it’s already a fairly popular Service uh frequency and reliability definitely would be great improvements here I’m not sure exactly what they want to do I’m yet to dive into the documents
On it but improvements of the Keystone Corridor great now just Electrify the whole of the old Pennsylvania rain Mainline to Pittsburgh I will be insanely happy definitely not happening for a little while but that is the end goal for me and that will wrap up the improvements to the current Services
Next up we have the corridor ID D program and its roots and oh boy are some of these going to be interesting ideas and uh frankly I don’t think there’s a better way to start off this list than one that I’m actually kind of excited about quite substantially and
That is the proposed service extensions in North Carolina and by extensions I do mean plural because uh yeah it’s pretty much all of them so yeah uh where did all this come from well uh North Carolina actually uh has a very popular Amtrak service called the pedmont uh this service runs between
Raleigh and charlot serving a lot of major cities such as Durham Greensboro Lexington Salsbury and Canapolis so there’s a lot that’s already covered by this one route and it covers uh the two most prominent cities in North Carolina but there are a lot more out
There and NC DOT really wants to get the ball rolling especially with the sine uh getting all this funding here I think that bodess well for North Carolina’s chances to get this going so right now four routs are considered uh quarter ID routes uh there’s a branch off of the
Peont route at Salsbury going to Asheville in the west uh a line between fville and Raleigh a line between Raleigh and Wilmington on the coast and a line between Raleigh and Winston Salem which I’m kind of surprised isn’t served by the peont already uh this definitely
Will be quite a booster to a lot to the pedon service and to pretty much rail travel in the Southeast in general if you have this very strong Corridor like uh North Carolina has and these spurs going off it I think that’s going to be a massive ridership market and I think
It could be one of the central pillars in a future Southeast Corridor um one that could run between uh at the very least between Washington DC and Atlanta going through uh Richmond uh Raleigh Charlotte uh all the way down through uh Greenville South Carolina and Atlanta maybe even down to Florida you can
Extend it down to Jacksonville and maybe have a second rudal on the coast uh to places like uh Charleston South Carolina or Savannah Georgia you have a lot of options on the table uh frankly the latter one kind of already exists in the form of the petto uh but if you were to
Have a boost like this you have a major Corridor to build off of I think the southeast could easily become the next massive railroad Market to uh expand passenger Services into and bright line is already taking an interest apparently so uh it’s good for Amtrak to get the
Ball rolling on this one especially with NC DOT looking to uh really get things rolling here themselves so uh North Carolina fantastic on you I want all these routs going I want this to happen I want the southeast to have more trains again let’s
Go uh next up uh we got some more of the individual Roots but we’re sticking in the Southeast for these uh first few and this one is one that should have existed a long time ago it should have never gone away it’s Atlanta to Savannah Georgia yeah there’s no direct rail
Service between Atlanta and Savannah between the biggest city in Georgia one of the key cities of the Sun Belt of the southeast and in my opinion one of the most beautiful cities in the United States Savannah there is a lot of love about um a rail Corridor like this and
It would go through places uh like Athens Georgia um a major college town um you have a whole lot of opportunity here in the Southeast and it’s just been like it’s just incredible untapped potential Atlanta to Savannah I think is one of the key indicators of this along
With the next route that I’ll be talking about but uh yeah have this happen run at least 10 trains in each direction that could work today that would be amazing the southeast um a Southeast Corridor like this could this could be a major uh Gap filler and a major Service uh service
Booster to a lot of routs uh sticking in the Southeast once more this time going north from Atlanta uh a line into Tennessee between Atlanta Chattanooga Nashville and Memphis yes absolutely yes we got to have the Chattanooga chuch Chu be real it it should not be just a folk
Song uh confined to memory plus Chattanooga I remember going to Chattanooga as a kid it’s an underrated City I think I personally really like that place and uh especially the big thing for me is a rail service between Atlanta and Nashville uh again Atlanta is under
Served by rail in general I think it’s just the Crescent that goes through Atlanta uh that’s like the only Am track service I think unless I’m missing one and then uh uh and Nashville and right now Nashville at least you have the Music City Star or weo star or whatever you
Want to call it but other than that you’ve got bugger all there you have absolutely nothing not just in inter city rail or even a commuter rail you just have that one line which is something at least but you’ve got nothing in terms of public transit and granted that there’s a long Twisted
Story about that and it has to do with uh certain political players flexing their money around with oil interests in particular but um especially like oh my God Nashville needs Nashville needs trains it needs more commuter rail it needs Inter City rail this line between Chattanooga Atlanta and then to Memphis
Memphis definitely needs this uh at the very least Memphis is served by the City of New Orleans Service uh that’s something you have an overnight train to Chicago and New Orleans going through your backyard but oh my God you need something for Tennessee the volunteer state definitely needs a lot more trades
And if you connect this up not just to a future U State rail system for Atlanta but also the one for North Carolina oh my God the southeast could be amazing for a rail this could be like the Cornerstone of the South rising in terms of rail transport pun possibly intended
So yeah definitely do this I’m really hoping that Tennessee’s dot is as serious as they’re making it out to be apparently the biggest mover here is the city of Chattanooga itself which surprises absolutely nobody uh that City uh aside from its Civil War history it is a city whose Legend is built around
Trains through um through a longl lasting folk song um but yeah you need uh you need rail service in the Southeast this would be if not close to perfect is one of the perfect routes to pick definitely do this uh staying in the Southeast moving
A bit further to the West this time we have New Orleans to Baton Rouge now this area the country on the Gulf Coast is an interesting one they are actually getting an Amtrak service um and just an an inner city service too it’s not just a long-distance one uh right now New
Orleans is served by of course the City of New Orleans going from Chicago uh from going out of New Orleans to Chicago it’s served by the crescent which runs up to New York City through Atlanta and Washington DC and it has the sunset limited out to Los Angeles so in
Terms of um the big long distance rail uh New Orleans is definitely rather well served in that regard by comparison but it has absolutely nothing when it comes to uh what most uh countries will call Inter City rail which is a rail service to cities that are uh less than a day
Trip away way and that is thankfully what they are getting right now with a new service called the Marty gr which will run uh from New Orleans up to Mobile Alabama through uh Southern Mississippi through baloy so that is a major step forward for the for the Gulf
Coast in general because they haven’t really had anything since uh the sunset limited was cut back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so you have a lot of potential here in the Southeast and building off of a route uh to uh booy and mobile uh aligned to Baton Rouge would be great
Obviously uh there’s a lot more opportunities for uh Louisiana you could um uh including one that I’ll be mentioning a bit later up in the north of the state but uh this is definitely good you link the biggest and most famous city of Louisiana to its state
Capital I’m definitely on board for that I’m definitely hoping that uh Louisiana’s dot is serious about this especially since uh uh New Orleans is one of those cities that has a rail Legacy especially since it is home to literally the oldest street car line in the entire
World oh my God you definitely need to build off of that there’s a lot that can be had in the Gulf Coast with New Orleans as its hub that could be an amazing uh rail system of years decades down the line uh the next one we have is
Boston to Albany now technically this one already exists uh it’s the RO it’s the route of the Boston leg of the Lakeshore limited now for those who don’t know the Lakeshore limited is a overnight Amtrak service from New York City and Boston to Chicago now I said
Two starting points there how does that work well one half of the train starts in Boston the other half starts in New York City the two halves of the train couple together at Albany and then they continue onwards to Chicago and coming back uh same idea applies Just In Reverse the full train
Leaves Chicago at Albany it splits up uh you have to be in your right car or else you’re uh kind of hosed uh but you go to Boston or you go to uh New York City but uh this uh but this idea here seems to be creating a a service that is just
Specifically for all we need the Bost so the idea here uh Massachusetts has really been pushing for more rail Service as well uh their current uh their current government is very supportive um they may not have the best execution but at least they have the
Motivation to do it um so the idea is uh sort of one of the main crosses in what they call the compass system uh and the Hub of it all would be Springfield Massachusetts uh it would be where the Hartford line that goes down to Hartford and New Haven Connecticut that would be
Where that terminates um but and if you go to the east you follow the uh what becomes the mbta’s Framingham Worcester line through obviously Worcester and Framingham uh going uh through Back Bay and into Boston South Station then in the west of the state you would be
Heading all the way out across the state line into Albany so this is definitely a very good inner city Corridor there’s a lot of good places to serve here with inner city service there’s a good commuter rail service from Worcester into Boston to augment it um and it
Could be a really good um really good um backbone for Massachusetts rail operations because one train a day between uh Albany and Boston come on that should be that should be at least six in my opinion anyway so there is definitely a lot of potential to be had here with Boston to
Albany if you present yourself a viable option and hopefully the MBTA begins its electrification project and not try to go the El Cheo route by um having uh battery trains with in motion charging just wire up the whole song and dance I mean come on the whole idea is just I
Mean it technically could work but but like being but being real it’s just it’s just a half measure you need to wire that stuff up especially if the Hartford line gets electrification down the line that that CT dot wants to do uh like Boston like Massachusetts you
Really have to follow suit on that that is going to be a major major Corridor going forward and it’s going to be a major booster to the Northeast Corridor as well uh moving now to the into the Midwest to a lot of routs going out of
Chicago three of them in a row that I have here the first one we have here is Chicago to the Quad Cities now if you don’t know what the quad cities are they are four cities very close to each other on both sides of the Mississippi River
You have Rock Island and Molen and uh also East Molen in Illinois and you have Davenport and bondorf in Iowa um obviously the big one now the notable thing for me uh would be running the service most likely would run into Rock Island Rock Island has a long
History of rail in fact there was a railroad named the The Rock Island line so that is definitely a major uh opportunity I would think there uh it’s about half a million people in the four cities uh Rock Island itself is about 37,000 it’s one of the smaller ones but
I would wager it’s one that still has um a possible connection into uh a possible connection by rail building it out to Iowa maybe to like Davenport uh that could be something that you could do uh if you um if there is a bridge over the over the Mississippi River that can
Handle it I’m not 100% sure I’ll probably add it in as an annotation but uh it’s it’s one that should happen I just wonder if it’s high up on the totem pole because I’ve seen some uh uh back and forth of whether it’s going to appear on the conectas or
Not between the first one and the second one uh with this Corridor ID funding it’s definitely seriously being considered I’m just hoping that it stays there for the people that live there so the next one out of Chicago would be another fairly short one uh as far as
Amtr Services go it would be Chicago to Peoria Illinois uh this is a a this is one that has existed before in a lot of guyses Peoria is uh one of the more substantial cities in Illinois that’s not Chicago basically cuz Chicago pretty much dominates everything in terms of uh
Illinois’s population but Peoria definitely uh one to consider especially with Illinois looking to expand Services more generally plus you could possibly connect it to uh um connected to a place like Springfield uh and have it connect with the Lincoln surface if that surface were to improve there so um it wouldn’t
Be just a Chicago feeder it could be uh an Illinois circulator in a lot of ways there’s a lot of potential for cross connectivity in Illinois I think uh with like the Lincoln service the Al and the Illinois Zephyr you could have like a radial route perhaps uh that’s one idea
That I may touch on in future videos generally about like ring roots in general and why we need more of them for uh not just Inner City rail but also for uh local Transit whether it be bus trolley train what have you we we need more ring rots so having that as a
Possible connection that could be fantastic uh but Peoria definitely one could be that definitely is one that could be really really good uh but the last one of this three that I have listed here out of Chicago is the one that excites me the most this one is
Chicago to Pittsburgh through Fort Wayne Indiana and Columbus Ohio now if you are a historical railroad foer at least if you’re from my Nick of the woods those cities may sound familiar to you especially since Beyond Pittsburgh uh there’s a certain line that already exists that goes to my home
City uh this if if this were to come through uh Chicago and Northern Chicago to Northern Indiana would have rail service but so would Columbus Ohio and Pittsburgh and essentially you would reconnect the long lost second half of a railroading legend in America the Broadway limited now I’m not uh discouraging any like
Possible good service between Chicago and Pittsburgh as an inner city service this could be fantastic especially if you have good line speed which uh which really is possible because the old uh X Pennsylvania Railroad line from Chicago to Pittsburgh especially to like Columbus that is that was basically
Their racetrack they ran uh even steam locomotives like the T1 and the S1 they ran them insanely fast along that line it was even reported that uh through Fort Wayne the S1 uh which was a special steam locomotive uh built as a oneoff by the Pennsylvania Railroad it was
Reported to a past Fort Wayne Indiana uh signal box at 156 mph 30 mph faster than the official steam locomotive world record the malard in Britain now now that remains unverified but uh it definitely shows that that section of track uh it definitely has a lot of speed potential if you were to
Upgrade that line to at least uh to at least class seven standards uh that’s a very fast standard there you could get 125 mph from Chicago to Pittsburgh I’m that would be amazing I would absolutely love that and you could run a lot of services a day and uh it would be a
Great sort of um it would be a great feeder into a future uh serious rail Market that’s coming to the four in Ohio which I will actually get to in a second but uh obviously I would love this Chicago to Pittsburgh would be is a massively underserved Corridor they need
This service and then connect the two together run the Broadway Li lied so I can have a direct uh overnight sleeper from Philadelphia to Chicago just do it just absolutely do it it needs to be done I I will definitely vouch for this I this is the hill I will die on uh
Sticking with Ohio as I mentioned before they’re also getting serious about inner city rail which is um which if you were to hear that statement about a decade ago you’d be rolling your eyes a little bit because they have a bit of a sorted history with uh High-Speed Rail projects
In the early 2000s and they just were not really the most Keen but now the Ohio dot has two routes up for consideration uh and if there’s endorsing the Chicago to Pittsburgh line that would be three at the very least uh the first one is uh a route connecting
The big three the three C’s Columbus Cleveland and Cincinnati uh also serving Dayton as well which is really really good the the major cities of Ohio are Disconnected by rail it’s incredible you have major cities in the rust belel which will which will likely become a booming area once again as places like
Uh Ohio are really going to be coming back to the four again having this rail service especially if you run it again this is one of those routes that at least could run six maybe seven trains a day in each Direction especially between Cleveland and Cincinnati it would be fantastic
And you could even have special trains for the Ohio State University and it pains me to say it that way as a pen Stater but uh but yeah if you were to if the Buckeye state were to have this Corridor this would make it a serious serious Contender for one of the best
Rail systems in the in the US just by adding this route you serve a lot of major cities and if you were to upgrade the line to like go above the stupid um to go about the stupid 79 mph Norm that the freight railroads run them at
Because they’re a bunch of wusses it’s just oh oh my God this would be fantastic and the second one is also fantastic too it’s Cleveland to Detroit Via Toledo and one thing I love about all these Midwestern routs is that if all of them were to come together at the same
Time it would actually create a a web of a network like as you see in so many other countries especially in Europe uh I kind of like whenever I think of like a possible future Midwestern uh rail network I have a vision kind of like
Germany in a lot of ways Germany is not a country that concentrates a lot of its cities in one place it’s not like France where a lot of their uh inter city and highspeed routes are uh are radiating out of Paris or Britain where a lot of
Things radiate out of London uh Germany is a lot more uh Diversified and where its population centers are and the Midwest of the US definitely Falls in that category you have this web of you have this web of Rail lines that interconnect with each other and if you
Connect it well to local transit in major cities oh my God you could get anywhere in Middle America without a car that would be amazing it would be like it would be an actual option and it’s just going to be so so interesting to see what Ohio can do I do hope that
Ohio’s dot stays uh stays true to its convictions here I hope that they really get a lot of lot of boost here because these are major cities that have not had rail service in quite a while or at least a substantial one and if you can
Run it to have multiple round trips a day like I could definitely see down the line 16 round trips a day between Cleveland and Cincinnati I could definitely see that down the line if this were to take off and the same could be true for Cleveland to Detroit uh this
Is another major Corridor that I think could be a major feeder to other roots and a lot of it could open a lot of gateways to like uh other towns and cities in um Northern Ohio Southeastern Michigan there’s a lot of potential here there is absolutely a lot of potential
In Ohio I love that it’s finally being realized this could be amazing like just these two and just these three Roots could fundamentally change Middle America for the better and I if the Buckeye state can be a major rail Hub as it once was that could be a very good omen for its
Future so uh next up is a very surprising one this is actually one that is local to me uh one that I kind of had lurking around the back of my mind for for a long time even as a kid and I did not even know that this state
Was pushing for it but in one way it kind of makes sense but in another way it’s genuinely surprising and that state is Delaware yeah Delaware right now uh Delaware is only served by the Northeast Corridor now listen to me say that only served by the Northeast Corridor uh no
Joke here uh there are only four active passenger train stations in the state of Delaware and only two of them are served by Amtrak and that’s Wilmington which is the largest city in the state and Newark which is home to uh the University of Delaware and for those of you who are
Reading that and you’re thinking Newark no it’s Newark and anyone from Newark they will immediately correct you can confirm from experience from someone else saying it but um but this idea that uh the Del do and the U and Delaware’s um State Transit Agency Dart uh not to
Be confused with the one in Dallas um they call this the Diamond State Line uh Delaware has two nicknames one is the first state because it was the first state to sign the Constitution and the other was the Diamond State uh so the diamond state line is a proposed route
Running uh partially on the Northeast Corridor between Wilmington and Newark uh but then going down south past Newark uh to Middletown and Dover uh Dover being the state capital all the way down through um all the way down through Delaware and all the way down to
Um the little bit of Maryland on what is called the Del Marva Peninsula the proposed Terminus of the line is Salsbury Mary Maryland now this one is genuinely quite surprising to me uh and it leads me to uh question of um about Amtrak actually running the service I
Mean I wouldn’t be shocked if they did it’s an obvious uh operator to go with uh but Dart could uh also look to other agencies like they already have a partnership with SEPTA for seped to run uh the Wilmington Newark line trains in Delaware uh down to Newark during Russia
TOS especially uh in fact there are a few silverliner 5 cars in septus Fleet that are actually owned by the state of Delaware but they run on the whole system so I do wonder if um Amtrak would run this and if they do I do wonder what
Kind of equipment they would run it with because uh because I’m sure a lot of you may guess Delaware is not a very big state um and running like an actual uh Amtrak Arrow sets on the service um some would argue that’s a bit of an Overkill situation though it would work
From a dual mode perspective because you have the overhead wires on the corridor and you can switch to diesel uh going past Newark and down to like Middletown in Dover so there is flexibility on that front but it could also be that that they may um get their own bespoke Fleet
To run the service like maybe some Stadler flirts or seens to zeros uh there’s definitely there is potential here as a commuter service like I can imagine between do Middletown and Wilmington would be a major Corridor uh because uh route one uh not that route one I’m talking about State Route One
Which is uh the main uh North South Road uh in Delaware that that road is overcrowded as hell and I can confirm that from every time I’ve gone down to the Delaware beaches as a kid uh fun fact I was actually born and raised in Delaware in northern Delaware so I have
Experienced that firsthand um and speaking of the Delaware beaches that is actually a possible um that struck me immediately as a as a good Target to extend because the Delaware beaches uh places like raob beach Lewis uh Dewey Beach Bethany Beach and maybe running all the way down to
Ocean City Maryland that could be a major tourist Market especially because the Delaware beaches are to me they’re underrated but they definitely get pretty popular in the summer months so I was wondering if that could be the case but it I’m I’m not going to say it’s impossible because you could obviously
Build new right away but the only uh Rail lines that went down that route are torn up unfortunately uh so you would have to rebuild the line to do it or at the very least you could have a bus service run running from like do or Harrington Way
Down in the South and run them as a as a shuttle to the beaches it’s definitely not ideal but um but like it could be a good uh feeder for a service down the line if Del do is really ambitious about it and if uh especially if dart’s really
Ambitious so personally I think they’re really ambitious to run this line in the first place I think could be a good commuter route and it could be a good uh feeder to the Northeast Corridor and to SEPTA Services um I’m definitely curious to see how this one goes I’m definitely
Going to keep closer tabs on it because I honestly did not know that this was even on the table until um until literally when this um when this list came out next up is a big jump again so we’re going back down to the South East
Uh we’re going to Texas and we’re going from Texas to Louisiana to Mississippi this is the I20 Corridor this is running between Dallas and Meridian Mississippi uh basically um I think the idea is that they um like they call the I20 Corridor because it basically parallels Interstate 20 but it’s using a
Um a line uh called the shreport racetrack uh because a it goes through shreport Louisiana which is another town that’s needed Inner City rail for a long long while and um and this would run all the way across from Dallas into Mississippi and it would join up uh with
Uh the Crescent service and hopefully a a more burgeoning rail Market in the Southeast this one I’m a little bit questioning of I mean shreport would be great to get a rail service I do Wonder though if uh if Mississippi is more keen on the matter uh I don’t know too
Terribly much about this project I have haven’t really had much time to research it but uh it could be a good feeder between uh I guess you could call it a corridor feeder on both sides of the pond so you could have a a rail Corridor in the future between
Um between New Orleans and Atlanta going through uh Mississippi and Alabama and again that would follow I20 for a good part of the line and this could be a good feeder between it and a future rail network in Texas which uh which could be uh bolstered by Texas Central hopefully especially if Amtrak
Can dig it out from a from what from what it was thought to be dead uh a few months ago train daddy we believe in you uh if you know you know uh so uh speaking of which uh the next one is uh the Texas triangle they
Call it uh that is Dallas Fort Worth and Houston now why they don’t consider San Antonio and Austin there I really am not sure but but um I do know that that a Houston to San Antonio Corridor is also in the corridor ID uh project that one I
Think would be great you could definitely run good service between Houston and San Antonio uh I think mostly using lines that are already served by the sunset limited so there’s a lot of potential in um there’s a lot of potential in Texas uh there’s a lot of potential in the Southeast in general
Uh Tex do has been historically like at at best ambivalent at worst outright hostile uh and of course you have Texas nimes and if you thought California nimes were insufferable Texas nimes I don’t think they’re that bad yet but they are getting there Texas nimes uh between Dallas and Houston they have
Been the major thorn in the side of the uh Texas Central project but on the whole uh three corridors again that could very well connect with each other and form a a more cohesive service for uh the Gul coast and the south for the Gulf Coast and the
Southeast going forward I would love to see these comes to fruition I’m I’m just wondering about the commitment from the state dos on this one especially the uh the I20 Corridor I do wonder if that one is going to uh stand the test of time
And the test of the uh of the car brain dot next up we’re going back to the Midwest the Upper Midwest this time uh I mentioned earlier about the um about the hawaa going U the the possible extension to Green Bay Wisconsin uh this one is not so much
That it’s more a uh an augmentation of a future amtr Service uh what they nickname the Mini Builder now the Mini Builder is an Amtrak um is a future Amtrak service to supplement the um to supplement the Empire Builder which is their uh service from Chicago out to
Seattle and there’s actually more to that that I will be going into what’s interesting here is that there are um is that uh the the Mini Builder line has been in is in the corridor ID project so that is Chicago to Milwaukee Madison oakair Wisconsin and to the Twin Cities
Uh oakair Wisconsin though uh to the Twin Cities also had its own separate Corridor ID thing apparently from what I saw on the list uh I’d imagine that they would um they would coordinate that once they uh realize that hey we’re we’re on the same side here but the Upper Midwest
Would be U amazing for train service a lot of hype I’ve been seeing is for the uh the Northern Lights Express which is uh another um Upper Midwest service that is actually confirmed to be happening down the line that is from the Twin Cities all the way up to duth which is
Right up on the Great Lakes um easily a corridor that a lot of people are excited about Minneapolis is a great City it needs more trains to connect it to the outside world and they are going to get it and Minnesota in general uh is seeming to get more trains I am
Definitely happy and um and plus I think it’ be really cool with a lot of Rolling Stock uh being in blazing with that new state flag that Minnesota just had I know that some people are fired up about it but uh I really like it it actually
Is a really nice looking flag as a bit of a closet vexillologist I like it it’s actually a good flag come at me bro and now uh moving to a corridor that I have been excited for ever since it was suggested this would be absolutely a winner right from the
Word go it’s the Front Range Corridor this is a route uh in Colorado at the Front Range of the Rockies with Denver as its hub and from the S and to the South it would connect Colorado Springs and peblo and then up north it would go to Fort Collins originally the idea was
For it to go all the way up to Cheyenne Wyoming which is a amazing historic Railroad and of course the state capital of Wyoming um I think the reason why it didn’t show up on the corridor ID listing here is because a the Colorado do is the sole backer so far for the
Project and and and and I think the reason for that of course is that Wyoming uh one of the one of only two states in the contiguous us with no passenger rail service at all all the other one uh actually if you can guess what the other one is I’ll pin your
Comment but yeah um the the original idea was Pueblo to Denver to Cheyenne but funnily enough after uh the corridor ID um Roots were released the city of Cheyenne itself jumped on to say hey we want in on this too like where was this before I’m I’m pretty sure it was has to
Do with some some shenanigan re with uh with um with Wyoming’s do because I’m sure that they don’t want to pay for it uh but if cheyen were to Champion the cause here especially since it’s a very famous railroad town it’s the Hub of uh
It’s a hub of Union Pacific it’s the uh Center for Union Pacific’s steam Heritage program uh it’s where Big Boy 4014 is based uh if that were to extend it to Wyoming then you could knock and knock down the list to one state in the contiguous us that does not have Amtrak
Service again if you can guess what it is you get a pin and and even then I hope that that state gets rail service too because it’s actually in a good position for it uh down the line another Corridor ID route uh is quite an interesting one because I can
Definitely see a battle for which operator would run this one it’s in Florida so this Corridor ID route is uh is actually one that’s been alluded to from Bright line cuz right now bright line runs a service of course between Miami and Orlando they want to extend to
Tampa next which makes complete sense but a future extension that they have in mind way down the line is an extension uh up from uh Coco to Jacksonville and this and the corridor from Jacksonville to Orlando to Miami is the one that’s been uh listed on the
Corridor ID um listing here here there’s also one um also the Miami to Orlando to Tampa Corridor has been listed too um I’m guessing that money uh will go to F dot but the service itself will likely go to uh bright line because I imagine
Bright line is going to be uh working at it right now because they they’ve already been hard at work on the Tampa extension and they want to like make their case crystal clear that uh F dot should um should support their cause even if they have been labeled as the
Train of death in Florida so extending rail in Florida um it does have uh an advantage right now for it being bright line than Amtrak right now especially since uh uh I definitely agree with the assertion that bright line is pretty much the only way in the current state
Of affairs in Florida that you could have a passenger rail service right now by having a private company do it rather than Amtrak uh so I can imagine this being a a bright line service if Amtrak does indeed uh become an operator that competes directly with bright line that
Would be incredibly interesting to see how that Dynamic would play out but uh Florida getting more rail connections looked at definitely good I again I’d have to wait and see which operator becomes the front runner I think it’s going to be bright line personally but uh yeah definitely good
To have that extension and I I want that Tampa extension to be built uh pretty well there because that’s a big ridership market and um I may have questions about bright line uh down the line but I genuinely want uh a service like that to succeed anyway moving
On and now moving on to our next one we head to California um and this one I did not see coming at all but the more I think about it cuz I first thought that this this was a bit of a weird one and could only
Be useful for one thing but the more I think about it the more it could be a golden opportunity it’s the it’s what they call the Coachella Valley Corridor and yes it’s that Coachella Valley this is a proposed 144 mile service uh running between Los Angeles and Coachella California
Itself and uh this one kind of struck me as an interesting one because um it’s 144 mile route um which is a decent distance but it really struck me as interesting to choose Coachella as the final destination of this line here and especially since uh obviously Coachella
Is well known for its uh for its Festival but that’s just one event per year and how do you expect a rail system to survive off of that well I have a theory uh right now Southern California has a horrendous housing crisis and uh of course uh La is
Incredibly built up it’s built up in a bad way because a lot of it single family houses uh if you were to have a good frequent and fast rail service in a run between uh uh Coachella Palm Spring and Colton places like that uh then you were to run through uh places like
Ontario there’s a that’s a lot of people you could pick up that could be an amazing commuter route and I think it could even be run as a a partnership between Amtrak and Metrolink or maybe metr link runs it as their own thing I wouldn’t I don’t know uh I’d imagine
Amtrak would be involved to some extent but if you run this as a good frequent uh all day service maybe you have a couple of extra training center around the rush hour period for and you could make it into a good super commuting route and if you improve track speeds on
The line that would just make it all the more enticing and of course uh that needs to coincide If This Were to work it needs to coincide with good uh at least medium density housing good uh Transit oriented development around the station and uh because right now uh
Coachella itself is a population of 41,000 uh Palm Spring isn’t uh that much bigger but the thing is this whole region in Riverside county is booming it’s actually one of the fastest growing parts of Southern California and if you were to have a good uh rail service out
To this area that takes a lot of cars off of the highways it takes um it makes good uh Transit oriented development around stations it basically sets the groundwork for uh future suburbs of LA but hopefully good suburbs because they are built with this rail network in mind
And especially if you build good public transit services for the Palm Springs area down to Indio Coachella lint places like that that could be a major uh that could be a majorly good spot going forward in Southern California it could stand as the the outlier in the uh hell
Sprawl that is the LA Basin so at first I was confused but the more I looked into it the more it made sense to me good idea speaking of good idea uh Louisville to Indianapolis is another uh rail Corridor yes uh I do know that this line
Has had a that the line between Louisville and Indianapolis which I think is the former monan right of away uh that one has not had a good reputation uh for like bad track quality uh it’s why Amtrak uh dropped service on the route uh with routs like the
Floridian back in the day uh but if uh again if the Indiana dot is serious about this uh there’s a lot of potential to be had between Indianapolis and Louisville and then onwards to Chicago um you could have like an Indianapolis uh radial route for radio
Network for a lot of uh towns and cities in Indiana there’s a again the Midwest in general has a lot of potential it’s just being squandered by people who um who haven’t had the ambition they haven’t had the drive and they haven’t had the guts to stand up to uh the car
Brain mentality of the day in a lot of cases if uh the Indiana do is uh seriously considering this good on them this is a step in the right direction definitely do it uh next up the Commonwealth Corridor which is uh basically uh the Virginia services but not directly serving
Washington DC so uh Virginia right now is a booming Amtrak Market month after month it’s been setting ridership records uh for its own Services a lot of them though are Northeast Regional services so the northeast regional is Amtrak’s most popular service by a country mile uh it um serves the
Majority of the routs uh serve the North Corridor between DC Baltimore Philly uh New York City uh New Haven and Boston and all and all the places in between but some of the roots go down south into Virginia there’s uh roots that go to Richmond there’s roots that go to
Newport News that go to Norfolk and Rowan o I already talked about the Rowan o one a little bit earlier in fact with the planned extension to Bristol but this creation of uh what they call the Commonwealth Corridor I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t call it
The old Dominion Corridor but uh to each their own it’s a good pick uh this is Newport News to Richmond Charlottesville and the New River Valley so it’s basically an East West link uh an East West service specifically for Virginia Which amazing idea great idea definitely
Go for it because right now we’ve seen that Virginia is a booming ridership Market uh for like Services between uh East and West going north and a lot of people would love to go east and west just to go east and west like going from Rowan Oak to Newport News or Rowan Oak
To Norfolk something like that that would be fantastic you give people an easy option to go to the places they want to go definitely a good idea I hope it gets traction I really do hope it really should though uh because Virginia they are reaping the benefits of good
Rail service they’re realizing hey people actually like this stuff and uh let’s give them even better options definitely stick with this one Virginia please do this one’s actually insanely good and now uh we come to the only proposed um long distance overnight train proposal and this would be a
Revival of one of the classic trains of America’s rail Golden Age It’s the Return of the North Coast hawaa which at first glance may seem a bit redundant now why do I say that uh the North Coast hawaa was the Milwaukee roads Flagship train between Chicago the Twin Cities and
Seattle uh does that sound familiar that is also the same Services as the Empire Builder that goes between Chicago the Twin Cities in Seattle they also go to Portland which the North Coast haata also had cars that went to Portland so why would they run this redundant route especially through like sparsely populated
Areas well the big Pusher for this project has been uh a group in Montana called the Big Sky passenger rail Authority uh Big Sky wants to have this service because right now the um the the Empire Builder runs on the former Great Northern Railroad right away which was U
Which is being NF trackage um and that um and when that route goes through Montana it goes through Glacier National Park which is beautiful but it doesn’t go anywhere in Montana where people live uh places like Billings and Helena they are completely missing out on good rail
Service if you have a route like the North Coast hawaa you would actually serve these populated parts of Southern Montana and also uh you would also get service through uh bismar North Dakota which is North Dakota state capital so you have a lot of um maybe not the most
Densely populated parts of the US in general but uh but you would get valuable surface out to these um out to these more out of the way places uh but places that still have decent populations to support rail service especially when you have a sandwich between uh Seattle uh Spokane Fargo
North Dakota and the Twin Cities that could be a major um augmentation of the Empire Builder along a southernly right of way I really like this idea I would love to see it come back I I would obviously love to see it on the old uh Milwaukee Road Pacific extension when
They still had the electric wires that’s definitely something I will rant about in the future but uh good idea I hope that big sky has the has the will and the drive to really see it through to fruition uh because um even these uh more sparsely populated states they need trains too um
Especially for the future that would be fantastic North Coast hawaa I support another uh Corridor which now if you were to look at the two cities I’m about to name from a population perspective and if they were anywhere other than the US you would be you would think that a good frequent passenger
Rail service between them is a foregone conclusion like you could just like say hey there’s going to be a service between here but no it doesn’t exist the two cities I’m the two cities that I’m mentioning are Phoenix and Tucson Arizona that it it frankly genuinely
Amazes me that these two cities do not have a proper Inter City rail service Phoenix and Tucson are two massive cities they’re massively sprawling cities but they are still massive cities and Phoenix in particular is actually trying with uh improving uh the city from its like from its horrific sprawl problem because it
Has a horrific sprawl problem um Phoenix is definitely trying they are attempting to try and if uh the Arizona DOT is serious about this this could be a major boost for them Phoenix and Tucson need a good reliable service and here’s something incredibly stupid um right now Phoenix is technically I
Use that term loosely technically served by an antrak service is by the sunset Limited in Texas Eagle uh the combined service on that but the problem there is the station is not actually in Phoenix it’s in Maricopa which is nowhere near the center of the city
Why like here’s the the thing you would have to do with Fenix and Tucson Tucson is served by the sunset limited properly but Phoenix really needs to have a centrally located station especially one connected to its Light Rail services that would be great um but you really need to improve
The corridor there to make that happen it needs to happen though Phoenix and Tucson could be a great little Corridor there and if you have an inner city service out to Los Angeles that runs to a decent frequency as well that’s another big boost there it could be um
Major joining points in a Southwestern Inner City rail network once again definitely definitely push this there’s going to be a lot of hurdles but Phoenix and Tucson need a proper rail service not just a long distance train that happens to go near them speaking of the
Southwest uh we’re not quite I guess you could say not quite Southwest but the next Corridor ID one is What’s called the Central Coast Corridor this is on the California coastline between San Jose and San Louisa biso uh so so that is the northernmost uh Terminus of the Pacific
Surf liner at San Louisa biso and the uh end Terminus of the capital Corridor at San Jose which also is uh one of the main connections for um for Cal train and and in maybe in the decade to be California highspeed rail uh that’s going to be a major connection point
There this could definitely be a major service to like a lot of coastal communities cuz they do not have a proper rail Service uh the coast Starlight does exist but again that’s an overnight train and um overnight trains uh outside of major cities can be questionable because you would still
Need daytime service to augment them in a lot of cases for truly proper service if uh San Louis abiso to San Jose can get that good service and you have a uh uh I guess you could say more of a conventional rail connection between um
The Bay Area and La that could be really good it could be a supplement to California highs speed rail it could be a connection point for it there’s a lot of potential here this one is definitely one that I definitely uh would approve of and and I don’t think it would siphon
From California high speeded rail cahsr would still be the main Corridor between uh the Bay Area and LA in the future but this would be a good uh service not just in the interim but also when that route comes online because you can also serve um a lot of communities that are missing
Out on High-Speed Rail and it could be a main feeder to a lot of places that on on the coast that are missing rail service definitely a good pick especially if you can run Cal Train down the northernmost point of this line down to um Selenas Monteray places like that
That would be really really good and we finally get to the end by coming back home uh two more to go here don’t you fret uh the first one is one that is serving my home City and that is New York City to Philadelphia to Reading Pennsylvania this is one that I
Definitely have a few opinions of this one but I genuinely love that we are getting proper rail service between Philly and reading back uh the agency behind this one is the srpr the skookul river passenger rail Authority and it’s made up of members from uh local cities such as obviously reading
Phoenixville um uh Bridgeport and um I and Philadelphia has definitely got to be interested in as well this this Corridor definitely has an interesting history history uh back in the 2000s there was a plan for not an Amtrak service but a Septa service to run up this line uh called The skookul Valley
Metro concept it would have involved electrifying and running uh nine round nine daily round trips between uh Philly and reading on an electrified service it was cut back because uh this all happened in 2006 funding for major Transit projects was sparse and SEPTA didn’t really uh have the the funding on
Hand to do it they still don’t now which is why they really haven’t been considered for this uh this is going to be an Amtrak service running uh out of 30th Street Station when it gets to Philly and then running up uh Northfolk Southern trackage uh to reading uh
Following the old uh reading railroad going up the skookul river The Annoying Thing here is that uh from what I’ve seen it’s going to be three daily round trips I mean that’s not bad to start with it’s better than one round trip but I definitely think that it could be a
Lot better I imagine that once they realize that hey this service could actually be really really useful and can take a lot of cars off of the off of the hellscape that is Interstate 76 um this could be a major uh this could get a major boost down the line
And it could be a an impetus to start a more comprehensive uh Inter City rail service in Pennsylvania once again because Pennsylvania has an insane amount of potential uh you could get incredible amounts of service both on Septa and Amtrak’s part uh if you talk to Allan fiser on the matter he will
Info dump on this and so will I frankly and it’s actually a topic that I will definitely cover I’ve alluded to it in my first video that uh SEPTA used to run sort of Quasi inner city trains up to like reading Harrisburg uh Quaker Town allent Town Bethlehem uh there’s a lot
Of potential in eastern PA there’s potential in Western PA there’s potential all across the Keystone State uh I could probably draw I’ll definitely be drawing like my own vision for a Pennsylvania um rail service of the future uh down the line just to show you what can be
Possible and speaking of which the last one we’ll talk about is one that rail fans across the country are utterly gushing over and that is New York City to Scranton Pennsylvania now first glance it may seem a bit confusing why rail fans absolutely love this line uh Scranton Pennsylvania is a
Major city in northeastern PA it this line would serve the Pocono Mountains which are a popular uh Resort spot and fun fact my family had a weekend house in the Poconos for a long time uh they sold it a few years ago but I have a lot
Of fond memories of that part of the country it’s underrated it’s beautiful Scranton has a lot of potential it’s home to Steamtown National Historic Site it’s home to the Electric City Trolley Museum um and it’s definitely a town that is that could get a major boost to
Its image through a good rail service but what is it that people love so much about this line it’s because the route itself will run over a long lost Legend of Northeastern railroads it’s a route called the lacana cut off but and the reason why this one is so famous is
Because um it was idiotically abandoned in but and if it were still today though it would actually be a major backbone for passenger rail going forward the lacana cut off was built in the early uh late 1900s early 1910s and it was sort of a high-speed rail line before High-Speed Rail was
Even a thing it was built with all the same principles as a conventional as a typical high-speed rail line to Daywood you have a lot of fast straights you have massive viaducts you have tunneling you have fills to uh go over valleys it has a couple of very famous bridges that
Are still there uh the pollen skill Viaduct I can name off the top of my head and this would be incredibly fast if you were to restore this you would be blazing through the mountains at 110 mph like it was nothing and uh what makes this even more enticing is the fact that
New Jersey Transit uh New Jersey State uh uh public transport operator they are actually going to be running service on this line too in fact they’re actually in the middle of restoring parts of the lacana cuto off line uh including uh one of the tunnels on the roofe the
Roseville tunnel to extend service on the uh Morrison Essex line uh out to Andover New Jersey uh it would follow a good amount of the laana cut off Route um not all of it but uh um but like the main part of the line would be restored
To do it from like and then from Andover to uh slate for junction and stoutsburg Pennsylvania that is going to be um that’s going to be used by Amtrak down the line maybe even an njt service or two if uh if it were to take off uh I
Definitely think it will this is going to be uh it’s not only uh taking you to a very popular place among people in the region uh to a lot of places that deserve good service again but it’s also being championed pretty heavily and in fact
The guy in charge of it Chuck Walsh he’s kind of become a little mini celebrity amongst uh rail circles in fact he runs a YouTube channel dedicated to the history and progress on restoring the lacana cut off uh that you really should check out it has all the esoteria that
You would love for um for a topic like this so having a high-speed rail line just sitting abandoned in your backyard in northern New Jersey and Northeastern PA it’s sad that it’s the case but it’s amazing that it’s still there and it’s going and it’s likely going to be
Restored uh again all these projects are in varying states of um of Readiness to move forward and like like varying amounts of sincerity by the Dos this one is definitely one of the most serious ones it’s being heavily championed New Jersey is on board uh pendot is
Definitely on board in fact they own the part of the line that’s in Pennsylvania itself so they are going to be heavily pushing this and again uh if the Philly the reading line comes online as well it could be the starting it could definitely be the starting gun to
Restore rail service in um throughout Pennsylvania once more and uh more throughout New Jersey so definitely definitely have High Hopes on this one keep an eye out for it this will I I’m going to place a bet that this is going to be guaranteed to be one
Of the lines that is going to see a restoration um that is going to see a restoration down the line so uh we’re already going to get njt service to Andover in 2027 uh hopefully around the same time we’ll be seeing Amtrak uh follow along with them too so yep uh definitely an
Exciting one to end the story off of all right then after that long screed has come to pass let me give you my thoughts overall here now if I were to mention my thoughts here the simple version is that I like what I see for the longest time Amtrak expansion and
Passenger rail expansion in general and maintaining of good train service for much of the country which is something desperately needed for numerous reasons has been hobbled by cost cut orders Freight railroads being cheap skates and jerks lack of investment an incredibly car-centric world view that is slowly but surely falling apart and an
Inadequate strategy to achieve these goals the last time a strategy of this level was even remotely considered was in the 1990s when Amtrak was making big changes including the introduction of the short-lived mail and express freight services several new services that would find success including the peont and the
Down Easter and the big headliner in that expansion phase would be highspeed rail investment in the Northeast ultimately leading to the asella and the electrification of the Northeast Corridor from New Haven to Boston and the upgrades to that part of the line will allow the future asella trains to
Hit 150 mph in some stretches to me it seems like Amtrak has found the root of the problem and that is a lack of viable in City corridors to bring in Revenue it’s possible for me to argue though that if there was one positive that Amtrak took out of the profit focus 10
Of Richard Anderson as CEO in the late 2010s is that Amtrak learned definitively where money was being made outside of the obvious suspect of the NEC there are a lot of corridor routes in California the Midwest and the southeast that are very useful to the Region’s towns and cities and the People
By extension to the point that they actually make working profits doubling down on those kinds of routes connecting cities and towns on high demand regions like what we’re seeing particularly with the likes of California Ohio North Carolina and the Upper Midwest as well as providing connections to other
Services to connect even more towns and cities that can truly be the foundation of a fantastic Nationwide Network for the future naturally though there are a lot of things to be worked out both on a Case by casee basis for the roots and the overall National scope of the
Project but it’s incredibly gratifying to see that a lot of states that either have been longtime passenger rail supporters recent joiners of the club and even some states that were outright hostile style to passenger rail in the past are starting to warm up to the idea that these sorts of services could not
Only serve a public good but not cost the state or agency an arm and a leg to operate and maybe even make them money I know that the general consensus in the transit and urban planning communities is that public transport does not need to be profitable and it should be
Operated as a common good first and foremost this is certainly true but with scrutiny on the government the officials who back projects and the project themselves by exension people want to be sure that their money goes to places that are either worth it because of their Community benefits or because it’s
Worth it monetarily there’s no reason in principle that it cannot be both especially since good passenger services around the world can run to notable profits too just look at the shin conin in Japan the corridor ID project in particular seems to give Amtrak one of its best shots to find these rots that
Can do both since it seems to allow for one pathway for both Amtrak the state DOT and the projects backers to get these sorts of projects studied approved and built which is something we haven’t really had since Amtrak’s Inception in the 70s now when it comes to the roots
That have been discussed for these expansions but not included in these recent Corridor ID confirmations I will note that all is not lost and there are more chances and some of those that did miss out like New York City to Allentown Pennsylvania for example are doubling
Down to try again but I will say one of the big reasons I saw for a few of them is not so much a lack of Interest or a viable Market but a lack of Will from state legislators to contribute funding for the do to either pursue the
Expansion or to back the future of service if it comes to fruition one of those that falls into that category is in Idaho regarding a possible Return of the former Amtrak Pioneer service between Salt Lake City Boise Portland and Seattle where Idaho’s do gave pretty much no commitment it’s obviously not
Too late but the whole idea of a federal state partnership is that both the federal and state authorities have to strike a bargain for funding and they each have to hold up their end of it if you want something more in depth on that matter Alex Davis has a fantastic video
Describing the struggles for creating new Amtrak services that I’ll link here on the whole though this is really serving as a Beacon of Hope regarding the future of passenger trains in the US and America’s desperately needed change in its Transportation priorities that is starting to take shape it’s no longer
Just Bluster from politicians at the state local or federal level it’s an actual concrete method to get these Services underway and serving people who need them and hopefully it holds water going forward and I’m not even factoring in the prospective high-speed projects like Cascadia Ultra highspeed and Texas
Central which have also received funding for studies to the first hurdles are passed for these projects now it’s time to run the rest of the course and that’s something that can be helped by Advocates like you or me writing to your elected representatives and even having a conversation with them about the
Numerous benefits that expansions of these Services could bring and who knows one day down the line as I ride on a fast in city train connecting places that are not my native Northeast and seeing the passengers around me enjoying the journey maybe this whole project can
Be a big step in radically improving how we get around
20 Comments
South Dakota
i knew it was SD but you gave it away with the maps later in the video lol
I know there are some people in Maine fighting for a return of passenger service to Bangor. It's weird to me that they're talking about an extension to Rockland, a small town of a little over 7000 people, and not to Bangor, which has more than 4 times the population, the third largest city in the state. It's only another 60 miles, has a good sized airport, and is a good launching point for going to tourist destinations like Bar Harbor or Baxter State Park. I'm sure there's some reason. No doubt, a lot of NYMBYism. Lord knows, Mainers are at about San Francisco levels of NYMBYism. There are just far fewer of them, so their voices don't carry as far.
The Lackawanna cut off in North West New Jersey is being rebuilt. The first part which is being rebuilt by New Jersey Transit is going from Port Morris to Andover New Jersey. And the missing 21 miles will come into play when Amtrak gets involved. It made it into the top 15 for the corridor ID program.
Oh come on guys! The only "funding" is for payoffs to organized labor in the lead-up to the elections, funneled through "consultants". Nothing is going to happen except perhaps for Brightline West, and that's because construction there is a payoff to the union labor set up for the build. Amtrak hasn't been able to buy anything that works for a decade, brand new junk rests hidden away, hoping no one will remember the crap Acela 2 trains or all the brand new diners laying rusting away somewhere in Florida that don't work any better.
I live 1/2 mile from San Ysidro and that extension makes zero sense to me. I have no idea where they expect to put a ROW as the Blue Line already uses the SDAE tracks, and it takes you right to Santa Fe Depot anyway. That'd be a lot of money to spend just to get a 1 seat trip.
Tons of people live in Tijuana/Tecate and cross over the border into California for work every day, so that could be part of the idea behind extending to San Ysidro
Why was Alstom sarcastic The TGV and AGV are great trains
I believe South Dakota has no passenger rail service.
Glad to see people are putting the map i made for High Speed Rail Alliance to good use!
Allentown?>>?>??>????
Scranton Service needs to happen!!
The only route that will be completely publicly owned.
Also wonderful video. As a Amtrak Engineer. We want this! We want more trains, to more places. We want everyone to travel with us (maybe not everyone 😅). In the most civilized way to travel.
Unironically, it'd be easier to do communist revolution than to get rid of car dependency
I'm looking forward to Virginia's Commonwealth Corridor. Charlottesville and Richmond are only a 1:30 journey by car on I64 and yet there hasn't even been reliable bus service between the two cities in decades. I took Greyhound between the two once and it was 12 hours late and now there isn't even a bus station in Charlottesville. It's such an obvious gap in service since the cuts in 1979 and yet it's been looked over time and time again. My only criticism is that they are planning on using the slow and rather indirect route between the two that exists today that needs significant rehabilitation rather than following I64. Obviously that would be much more expensive but it would drastically reduce the travel time. Regardless restoring cross state travel for the first time in 5 decades will be great even if it's a little slow.
You’re a great commentator uncle Steve! Very educational.
Timestamps would be nice
I'm with you on the San Ysidro extension. San Ysidro (which is a neighborhood not a city btw) is already served well by the Blue Line Trolley which runs every 7.5 minutes up to San Diego where you can transfer to the Surfliner. Extending the Surfliner would require either retrofitting the Trolley tracks or adding expensive new tracks along a corridor which already is doing just fine. I'd rather put that money toward the tunnels in San Clemente, Del Mar, and Rose Canyon.
The Virginia extension to Bristol could be a really great service if Tennessee can get its act together and connect it to Knoxville and then on to Chattanooga
If the United States is serious about wanting to build a high-speed rail network? My take will be simple less federalized and more regionalize, localize for small communities, towns and cities if there is demand for one. Same can be said for projects focused on pedestrianization, mobility etc. Make sure that its done by the federal goverment but have much more local, regional and domestic support as well.
OMFG!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!! i can't STAND the idea of the San Joaquin being discontinued because of CAHSR!!! I take that train whenever i can to Fresno to see my Grandma and thought about how the line connects smaller areas that hsr wont and how much of a shame that would be if they cut it.
It really should stay with hsr being Express like you said