Hiawatha line may add a Lake Forest (IL) stop within a couple years

[reppin_the_847]

http://lakeforest.patch.com/articles/railway-approval-needed-for-amtrak-stop

This article is from July, but I only saw it now & I think it is quite exciting for folks that are frequently in the Chicago or Milwaukee areas. Looks like the Canadian Pacific railroad needs to agree on this & LF needs to start building a pedestrian underpass at some point in mid-2013.

I've always thought this stop was long overdue. There is sufficient demand in Lake County (IL) at this point for this stop to exist for a couple reasons. First of all, this provides travelers in this market to easily commute to Milwaukee's General Mitchell Airport. Milwaukee officials admit that this airport is being increasingly marketed to folks in Chicago's northern suburbs. Now that Southwest Airlines is a major tenant in Milwaukee, this can be a win-win for all sorts of bargain hunters & folks trying to avoid the very congested O'Hare & Midway airports in Chicago. 2nd, I believe that there are folks around Lake Forest and its surrounding towns that would gladly pay a few extra bucks for a comfortable one-stop (Glenview) ride to Chicago's Union Station aboard a comfortable Amtrak train instead of a longer Metra ride. 3rd, folks in Lake County will gladly take this train up to Milwaukee in the summertime for big attractions such as Summerfest or Milwaukee Brewers baseball games (especially when the Cubs are up there).

End result....already strong ridership & demand will grow significantly and Amtrak will be forced to consider adding more cars & more departure times (probably some late trains) as a result & the Hiawatha will start looking more like the commuter-like Amtrak routes in the East Coast. Everyone knows that the Milwaukee - Chicago corridor is one of Amtrak's busiest in the country as it is.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Amtrak can sure add a station, but they cannot add more cars or trains as they don't have the equipment or the money to buy more equipment. Anybody know if the new cars bought by Illinois will be put on this route to help Amtrak?

 

[PPorro]

Amtrak can sure add a station, but they cannot add more cars or trains as they don't have the equipment or the money to buy more equipment. Anybody know if the new cars bought by Illinois will be put on this route to help Amtrak?

Except for the after work train going North from Chicago, does Amtrak need help? From what I've seen the Hiawatha trains are nearly empty most of the time. Seven trains a day, 6AM morning until 8PM (roughly) which covers a passing about every two hours.

This is a nice addition to the service for many reasons, if they can accomplish it.

 

[MikefromCrete]

Amtrak can sure add a station, but they cannot add more cars or trains as they don't have the equipment or the money to buy more equipment. Anybody know if the new cars bought by Illinois will be put on this route to help Amtrak?

Wisconsin is not part of the purchase of the new bilevel cars, (the original plan was to use the two Talgo sets now sitting at a Milwaukee factory) so those probably wouldn't be used, but once the new cars come on line, the Horizons and Amfleets now used in other midwest services could be bumped on to this line. I doubt if that many more cars would be needed. Two sets of equipment cover the service, so adding two cars to each train would only require four cars. Except for the rush hours trains, there is plenty of room on the Hiawathas.