Proposed Amtrak improvements - Pontiac/Detroit to Chicago

[Junjie]

A draft environmental impact statement was released today discussing plans to greatly improve Amtrak service between the Detroit area and Chicago [[and to all stops in between).

Full report here

Some quick details of the proposed service based on the top-level improvement scenario:

• Trip time Detroit [[New Center) to Chicago reduced from 5:36 to 3:46, with 110mph service for the full route.
• Increase service from 3 trips/day to 10 trips/day Detroit-Chicago, with 7 of those continuing to Pontiac.
• New station buildings, platforms, parking, and/or other facilities at nearly every station along the route.
  
  • At New Center, they propose a new building, two new platforms with overhead access, new parking structure, and new layover tracks [[presumably for the 7 "short trip" trains per day).
  
  
• 493,474 passengers rode this route in 2000, with 739,398 riding in 2012. Estimate for 2035 of 2,800,000 riders assuming 10 trains/day at 110mph.
• Route stays the same except for a few routing options between Chicago and Indiana.
• Also considering scenarios for continued 3 trains per day service [[but with the speed improvements) or 6 trains per day with the speed improvements.
• Capital costs 2.37 to 2.98 billion dollars.

Apologies if this has already been discussed at some earlier stage of development. EDIT: And apparently there was a public meeting last night in Dearborn, so maybe I'm way behind on this. Was anyone there?

Seems like it's still early in the process but hoping for the best. My grandmother used this service for over a decade after she stopped driving Ann Arbor-Kalamazoo [[much to our relief), and I used it frequently as a kid to visit her on my own and to travel when I was a student at UM. At the proposed service level, I'm sure you'd also see a significant increase in business riders.