Toledo is well-situated for a leadership role in developing new regional networks of passenger trains, but those will require cooperation and funding from multiple states and possibly Canada, a top federal transportation official told a local rail advocacy group’s annual luncheon Monday.
Karen Hedlund, now a member of the Surface Transportation Board that oversees rail-related policy matters, told the Northwest Ohio Passenger Rail Association during the online program that while a regional-rail concept recently floated by Amtrak included a Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit route, “their vision is constrained” and planners should be looking at connecting major cities all around Lake Erie to each other and to Toronto, “the fastest-growing city in North America.”
“We can’t let this vision stop at the Canadian border,” Ms. Hedlund said. “...Let’s think about more. Let’s think about getting all of these cities together.”
Service linking Toledo, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto could constitute one “mega-region,” she said, while Toledo also could be at the northern bounds of another including Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Fort Wayne. The notion of such “mega-regions” was a thematic key to her presentation.
Besides Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit, the concept Amtrak unveiled last year included a passenger-train corridor between Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. The Amtrak plan proposed three daily roundtrips for each corridor.
A $10 billion Obama Administration plan for developing rail corridors awarded Ohio $400 million in 2010 toward that “three-C” corridor’s construction. But among his first policy announcements after being elected that November, Gov.-elect John Kasich canceled the project on the grounds that it included no operating subsidy and the trains would be too slow to be worthwhile.
Ms. Hedlund, who became a Federal Railroad Administration deputy administrator a year later after being that agency’s chief counsel, said the Ohio allocation was diverted to California and the Northeastern states, “and they all send you their fond regards.”
About 35 people logged in to the online program, although Tim Porter, chairman of Northwest Ohio Passenger Rail Association’s board, said another half-dozen missed out because of a website glitch. He said he hoped the luncheon can return to being a live event next year.
Ms. Hedlund told the local group a current project to develop high-speed rail between Portland, Ore., Seattle, and Vancouver could be “a good model for your region” because of the intergovernmental relationships involved.
That project is slated for construction using a new railroad right-of-way designed for speeds of up to 220 mph, cutting the current three-hour travel time between Seattle and Portland to 57 minutes and the two-hour trip north to Vancouver to 47 minutes.
“Yes, it would be expensive, but expanding the Interstate [parallel I-5] would be more expensive,” Ms. Hedlund said.
Toledo’s passenger-train service currently comprises two pairs of overnight Amtrak trains that run between Chicago and the East Coast: one route to Washington and the other to New York and Boston. All four trains are scheduled to stop in Toledo between 11:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
Those long-distance services are federally subsidized. Current law requires states to cover the operating losses for corridors of less than 750 miles, although Ms. Hedlund said the new federal infrastructure law’s $12 billion for rail development outside the Northeast Corridor does allow some of that money to be used for operations, not just capital expenses.
Besides funding, another obvious obstacle to expanding passenger trains across northern Ohio is the heavy freight traffic using the primary tracks between Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, which belong to Norfolk Southern Corp.
NS and its main competitor, CSX Transportation, are currently engaged in a battle with Amtrak over the proposed restoration of train service between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., that has been “suspended” since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Ms. Hedlund’s board is scheduled to hold an evidentiary hearing about that matter March 9. Because of its pendency, Ms. Hedlund said she couldn’t discuss the particulars, but she characterized its contentiousness as “not unlike what we’re seeing in another part of the world ... it’s a ferociously fought case.”
Nonetheless, she said, it is worthwhile to at least try to engage the freight railroads in planning for future passenger service. Doing so with those potentially affected by a proposed train corridor in central Colorado established “a good spirit of collaboration,” although in other places it has been hard to engage the freight railroads “until they sense there is money behind the project.”
The potential exists in the Toledo area, Ms. Hedlund said, for passenger service to be busy enough to justify building separate tracks just for those trains, but getting there would have to start with a detailed market analysis.
Rival proposals for superfast Hyperloop transportation, which theoretically employs sealed tubes and vacuum-driven propulsion, have been developed for several regional corridors, but Ms. Hedlund downplayed that nascent technology as a current alternative to conventional trains.
“It’s an interesting technology,” she said. “It may have more use in moving freight, [especially] package freight. It’s not ready for prime time yet.”
First Published February 28, 2022, 11:08 p.m.