Ed Perkins on Travel: Amtrak's surprise

Ed Perkins, Tribune Content Agency Last week, Amtrak announced the addition of a new long-haul train,"The Borealis," between Chicago and the Twin Cities. Daily round-trips will start on May 21, taking the same route as the ongoing Chicago-Seattle Empire Builder and making the same stops plus Milwaukee Airport, Sturtevant, and Racine. The train will include Coach and Business class plus a café car, but no compartments.

Amtrak is promoting the train to"travelers seeking a more comfortable, sustainable and productive choice than driving," not as an alternative to flying. Clearly, the appeal is to people who have time and prefer to take trains rather than people who have to get somewhere. It's not the kind of frequent high-speed corridor rail service advocates have been fostering.

Over the years, I've found that covering rail developments in the U.S. is a lot like reporting on how the grass is growing. Everything important has a long lead time – up to decades – and all the news we see about infrastructure spending starts out with economic and engineering studies. For Borealis, all four factors fell into place. He states of Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin stepped up to provide funding, the route is already maintained to passenger standards for the Empire Builder, Borealis will operate as an extension of one daily Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha Service trains using the same equipment, and host railroad Canadian Pacific is playing nice.

Source: Holiday News (holidaynews.net)

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