In this post and in an upcoming series, I will be exploring the idea of a high-speed rail network primarily from the prospective of a vacation or weekend rider. For those familiar with the US, you will know that this rail system does not currently exist but I will be making sure to make a note of it in each post to avoid confusing people. This exploration is somewhat limited to a particular section of the US as well as specific cities. There are likely routes or cities that could be more logical to connect to but I just decided to go with the following cities.
In Ohio: Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo
In Indiana: Indianapolis and South Bend
In Illinois: Chicago
In Missouri: St. Louis
In Kentucky: Louisville and Lexington
In Tennessee: Nashville and Memphis
In North Carolina: Charlotte and Durham*
In Michigan: Ann Arbor
*Quick note about Durham is that I am using it as a somewhat general catch-all for the Research Triangle and Durham-Chapel Hill general area. I am also aware that Ann Arbor could be connected to a line in Detroit instead but I just focused on Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor and Durham are both included in the list due to their college sports teams and the popularity of college sports in the US and the frequency of games. I felt that they could be interesting to include primarily due to the possibility of fans and the teams themselves using a high speed rail. Similarly speaking, South Bend is stand-in for Notre Dame and their team. To get a better idea of the routes or some possible routes, here are some images using Google Maps and the current car routes. I apologize for the mismatched scales. You can only add so many locations to Google Maps.
Chicago to Cleveland going through South Bend and Toledo and connecting to Ann Arbor
Cleveland to Cincinnati through Columbus
This is what I will call the IKIO (Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio) Kite: Chicago to Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati through Indy. Out of all of these routes, this is the most likely as there have been grants already issued to investigate whether or not a route from Indy to Chicago could be made as well as a corridor from Indy to Louisville. I am unaware of any other federal/Amtrak grants for other corridors described on this list.
This is a continuation of part of the IKIO Kite down to Nashville. It is basically continuing the most likely route from above down to Nashville, which is a booming city. The lack of any passenger rail to Nashville, let alone high-speed, baffles me. In addition, there was a possible study mentioned by the city last year that there were 3 tiers of rail that they were investigating. Tier 3, the lowest in importance of the three, included a route from Nashville to Louisville.
This is the East-West corridor through Nashville from Memphis to Durham. Atlanta is likely better for a continuation from Nashville, especially connecting to a possible Southeast corridor, but I wanted to include one of the places that I knew had a strong college sports presence.
Here are a final pair of possible routes. I haven’t quite decided which way to connect the St. Louis to Indy route beyond Indy. Let me know which you would prefer.
So now you have a better idea of the different cities and possible routes that I will be using to create this exploration of what living with high-speed rail could look like. Again, I likely will not be looking at commuters or business trips for the most part. Instead, I will look at what some possible vacation or quick trips could exist that could be rather inconvenient by driving. To be specific, I will look at the Culture, Arts, Sports, Entertainment, and Music aspects of the cities as well as possibly Media and Technology, shortened to CASEM. Alternate names include T-CASEMM and C-STEAM. I’m just not sold yet on the name. Over the coming posts, I will explore this imaginary rail network and I hope that you will join in.
unknownclimate 