Amtrak has increased the speed limit on about 45 miles of its Detroit-Chicago route to 110 mph following a recent project to upgrade track and signals, but for now the higher speed will only help trains that are running late.
The higher speed limit between the stations in Kalamazoo and Albion, Mich., marks the first time Amtrak trains operating over state-owned tracks will go that fast. Until now, trains have been limited to 79 mph on that track, and before the state of Michigan bought most of the line between Kalamazoo and Dearborn from Norfolk Southern, they often went much slower than that.
But for now, Amtrak spokesman said, the timetables on the Wolverine Service route won’t be changed to reflect what should be shorter running times between stations. Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman in Chicago, said that’s because there’s a station at Battle Creek in the middle of the higher-speed zone and a few miles of track there belong to another company, the railroad wants to observe how trains actually perform before changing the timetables.
Also up in the air is when service might be fully restored to the three daily roundtrips between Pontiac, Mich., and Chicago that Amtrak operated before the coronavirus pandemic reduced service to just one train each way more than a year ago. A second daily roundtrip is slated to resume operation in mid-July.
“As travel demands increase and COVID-19 vaccination rates rise in Michigan, Amtrak and MDOT will examine restoring the third Wolverine round trip,” a state announcement said.
The Wolverine Service includes a station near downtown Ann Arbor that is potentially useful for travelers from the Toledo area, particularly those who want a daytime alternative to the overnight-hours schedules for the two Amtrak services that stop in Toledo.
Although the Ann Arbor station is nine miles farther from Chicago Union Station than Toledo’s is, the current scheduled running times for trains on both routes are comparable: about four to 4-1/2 hours. As the speed limit rises on the Michigan route, it should gain a speed advantage along with a reliability advantage from its trains originating in the Detroit area instead of on the East Coast and being less vulnerable to delays from freight trains.
The Amtrak route once was the mainline of the Michigan Central Railroad, but in recent decades the freight traffic that once used it has been diverted to other corridors. Amtrak has long owned the track between Kalamazoo and Porter, Ind., and upgraded that section to 110-mph operation in early 2012.
The pieces between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek and between Battle Creek and Detroit that still belonged to Norfolk Southern, Michigan Central’s corporate successor, fell into disrepair, prompting the Michigan Department of Transportation to buy those rails west of Dearborn and lease them to Amtrak, after which the state received a $150 million federal grant to improve the tracks.
Track and signal improvements similar to those undertaken west of Albion are underway from there to Dearborn, but no date has been announced for increasing train speeds, where possible, to 110 mph on that piece of the railroad.
First Published May 25, 2021, 9:17 p.m.
