Passenger rail in central Ohio may be rolling up the track sooner than many expect.
The expansion of Amtrak trains in central Ohio has been talked about and hoped for since Columbus eliminated its passenger rail in the late 70s. Now, two lines — the 3C&D, representative of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, and the Midwest Connect, linking Chicago, Fort Wayne, Columbus and Pittsburgh — may see trains running by the early 2030s, or within the next several years. Northeast Ohio also has a proposed line connecting Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit.
John Esterly, executive director for All Aboard Ohio, an organization with a primary role of education and advocacy for developing passenger rail corridors, said All Aboard works closely with route sponsors, whose main focus is grant funding and planning. The sponsor of the 3C&D line is the Ohio Rail Development Commission, while Midwest Connect is led by the City of Fort Wayne, with major support by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC).
A big help for these sponsors and for All Aboard Ohio has been the Corridor Identification and Development program established under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which awards selected corridors with $500,000 for the initiation of corridor development plans, including scope, schedule and cost estimate, according to the Federal Railway Administration's website.
The Corridor ID program involves three steps, Esterly said: scoping work, a service development plan and environmental and engineering reports. So far, 3C&D and Midwest Connect have completed step one and plan to move to step two. However, with the change in federal administration, a new half-step has been introduced to prove the viability of the routes in terms of evident flow of movement.
Despite this additional step potentially slowing down the planning process, Esterly said everyone involved is still on an optimistic timeline.
“But it does create a little bit of extra work, and we're still kind of waiting on more concrete guidance from the Federal Railroad Administration as to what they want to see in this step, so that step can get done,” Esterly said.
Parag Agrawal, chief mobility and development officer at MORPC, which is a co-sponsor for Midwest Connect, said the step two service delivery plan is a document that identifies how many stations are necessary, the positions of the stations and capital and operational costs. Agrawal said he projects that step two for Midwest Connect will begin this summer and will be a 12-18 month process.
“After the planning process is complete, we will be able to answer the questions like where the stations will be [and] how many train stations?” Agrawal said. “What's the frequency of the trains? How much would it cost me? How soon can I go to Chicago? How soon can I go to Pittsburgh?”
MORPC and the City of Fort Wayne received $500,000 through the federal Corridor ID program for step one of the process, Agrawal said. Step two will be funded through a 90%/10% match. Fort Wayne and the communities of central Ohio have committed to MORPC that they will bring forward the local 10% match once a contract is signed with the federal government.
With the existing Amtrak network, Ohioans won’t just be limited to the rails that will run through the state, Esterly said. A passenger could hop on a train and go west through Fort Wayne and into Chicago, and then take advantage of the rest of the network.
“What it'll do for us here in central Ohio is it'll really provide connectivity to a lot of the other major rail hubs in the country, and allow us to travel not just between Columbus and Cleveland and Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Chicago, but really beyond that to the rest of the country,” Esterly said.
The expansion of passenger rail is not only about moving people, although that is where significant excitement lies. A big argument for adding more passenger rail lines is the opportunity for economic development, Agrawal said.
“It is a tool for job creation,” Agrawal said. “It's a tool for job retention. It will help to revitalize smaller communities of [the] Midwest like Lima, Newark, City of Fort Wayne. We have seen again and again that employers want to locate to locations which offer multimodal transportation options. And I will say this Midwest Connect passenger rail, coming to Columbus, coming to the Midwest region, will be a game changer and will help to revitalize our Midwestern cities.”
In terms of the pressing question on Midwesterners' minds, Esterly said the 3C&D line will likely come a bit before the Midwest Connect due to less upgrading needs and some of the planned line already being used by Amtrak, with a predicted completion date between 2030 and 2032. The Midwest Connect may be completed somewhere between 2032 and 2033.
“Certainly within the next five to 10 years for both of those routes, if we continue forward at this current pace,” Esterly said.
Train speeds will start at the typical Amtrak speed of 79 mph, but Esterly said that as frequency and consistency is established, speed will follow.
“Our neighbors to the north in Michigan, they developed a route called the Wolverine, which runs from Detroit to Chicago,” Esterly said. “They started it, again, [at] traditional lane track speeds of 79 miles an hour, but they ran a relentlessly consistent route, and because it was so consistent, the ridership grew. They were able to raise the speed first to 90 miles an hour, and now it runs at about 115.”
Despite all the optimism around more passenger rail routes finally coming to Ohio, Esterly said who decides if the rail lines actually come to fruition or not depends on multiple players.
The Ohio Rail Development Commission is the sponsor of the 3C&D line, so ultimately, when it comes to funding, the state legislature will make that decision. The City of Fort Wayne has been doing a lot of the development work for Midwest Connect, while MORPC has worked to build a coalition of underlying municipalities along that route. However, despite a potential funding coalition being put together, Fort Wayne will be in the driver's seat on whether the project moves forward, Esterly said.
Despite some uncertainties, Esterly is still hopeful that expanded passenger rail will soon leave the station.
“One thing that I've kind of coined saying over the past two or three years is that here in central Ohio in particular, we are closer to having passenger rail than we've been since we had passenger rail in the late 70s,” Esterly said. “We're doing everything we can to continue moving everything forward. And again, I think we're in great shape to continue with getting these routes planned out and then hopefully shovels in the ground by the end of the decade.”