The scheduling would have to be quite finicky to make all of those "bypass Chicago" connections work, but with multiple trains each way on each of the radial corridors, *most* of the connections could be made to work. (Some of the longer-distance ones might fail.)
I hear you, and in theory this is a good idea. But this is
somewhat the equivalent of a suburb-to-suburb commuter rail/transit line. And while these are frequently proposed, there are very few actual cases of these around the country. Even in a major city like Chicago, a suburb-to-suburb commuter rail line has been talked about for years but has never advanced beyond talk. In the Quad Cities-Danville example, it's basically a suburb-to-suburb rail line excepts the suburbs are more far flung. Again, it's not as though the service wouldn't be used. It's just hard to design a service that would serve a critical mass of people to make it pencil out.
This is very different from a suburb-to-suburb commuter rail line because this isn't serving commuter traffic. Commuters tend to be rather intolerant of transfers, and to have very tight schedule tolerances which make it hard to design acceptable transfers unless you have a "turn up and go" (trains every <15 minutes) service frequency. Intercity rail traffic has a different structure. People on non-commuting, intercity trips will change trains if conditions are decent.
Now, would this route be a national priority? Certainly not, I can think of a dozen better routes. But think of it from Illinois's point of view. Illinois isn't building a nationwide rail network, they're building a statewide rail network.
After the Rockford/Dubuque and Moline services (already funded) are in place, what's left for radial services?
There's Peoria, but Peoria can only be reasonably served by a connection to Bloomington/Normal. The possible Peoria to Chicago "radial" routes are slower than making a connection at Normal.
There's Danville, but setting up a Danville-Chicago direct route on CSX and UP seems to have no plausible intermediate stops and would be very questionable as an operation
There's Decatur, but again, the only reasonable way to get to Decatur is on an "orbital" line.
I suppose you could start working on additional radial routes out of St. Louis. But are any of them worth doing as independent lines?
The alternative next step is the orbital route, which *effectively* creates a bunch of radial routes out of St. Louis, but while only having to actually upgrade and operate one route.
So rather than upgrading separate Chicago-Peoria and St. Louis-Peoria routes, you only upgrade one route. Yes, each route is slower than it would be if you built two separate routes, but it's probably fast enough, and it's a more efficient use of resources.
It is going to be tricky to design. In order to get a critical mass of passengers, you have to get *all* the connecting traffic with the *minimum* number of trains per day, since this is never going to be as high-volume as any of the radial lines (and in fact, almost all the traffic will be connecting to the radial lines).
You want to arrive Galesburg before 4 PM (connections to the West)
You want to depart Galesburg after roughly 2 PM (to distribute riders from the West)
You want to arrive Normal before 4PM (connections to Texas)... and before 11:30AM (connections to Jefferson City)
You want to depart Normal after roughly 1 PM (connections from Texas)... and after 6 PM (connections from Jefferson City)
For the sake of Peoria to Chicago traffic, you want to arrive Normal southbound before 8:30 PM
and you want to depart Normal northbound after 9:30 AM
You want to arrive Champaign before 10:30 PM (connections to New Orleans)
You want to depart Champaign after 8 AM (connections from New Orleans)
Is this doable with one-each-way? Well, not quite; the Jefferson City connections don't work at all. Some tweaking of schedules should make everything else work, just about. (Quincy connections would be poor, but that involves so much backtracking it's unlikely to be popular.) All times are intended to be approximate.
Southbound:
Moline 1 PM
Galesburg 2 PM
Peoria 2:45 PM
Normal 3:45 PM
Champaign 4:45 PM
Danville 5:45 PM
Northbound:
Danville 12 Noon
Champaign 1 PM
Normal 2 PM
Peoria 3 PM
Galesburg 3:45 PM
Moline 4:45 PM
That's two trainsets, swapping places each day, and it makes every connection in every direction except for the Missouri River Runner. With time to spare and a pretty relaxed schedule (so it should be doable). More track upgrades would make tighter schedules possible. If baggage service is provided, this could also allow for a relaxation of the connections between the western so-called long-distance trains; it becomes OK for the CZ to arrive Chicago after the TE departs Chicago if the scheduling allows for a connection via the orbital route.
This doesn't allow for a day trip from Peoria to Chicago. So let's consider a different hypothetical schedule: two each way.
For this hypothetical schedule, the first consideration is for passengers from Peoria to catch the first Lincoln Service to Chicago and the last one back. The second consideration is to make the Jefferson City connections. This schedule fails to connect the CZ/SWC to the Texas Eagle, but it gets everything else, and better connections from Danville to Chicago as well. (The Missouri River Runner could be used to replace the misconnect from the SWC to the TE, with some schedule tweaking.) And for the hell of it I extended it to Lafayette; it even makes the Indianapolis connection, theoretically (if the Hoosier State/Cardinal can run on time).
Southbound:
4:45 AM 3:45 PM Moline
5:45 AM 4:45 PM Galesburg
6:45 AM 5:45 PM Peoria
7:00 AM 6:30 PM Normal
8:00 AM 7:30 PM Champaign
9:00 AM 8:30 PM Danville
10:00 AM 9:30 PM Lafayette
(12:00 PM 11:30 PM Indianapolis)
Northbound:
(6:15 AM 4:30 PM Indianapolis)
8:15 AM 6:30 PM Lafayette
9:15 AM 7:30 PM Danville
10:15 AM 8:30 PM Champaign
11:15 AM 9:30 PM Normal
12:15 PM 10:30 PM Peoria
1:00 PM 11:15 PM Galesburg
2:00 PM 12:15 AM Moline
This still requires two trainsets; you end up servicing one in the night at Moline, and one in the day at Danville or Lafayette. (Or you could extend it all the way to Indianapolis and service it at Beech Grove.)
There are probably endless variations of this which can be designed, and faster tracks would allow for better schedules, but my point is that with two trainsets you can make a hell of a lot of connections work. (You can also potentially loosen the scheduling constraints on the one-a-day trains which connect in Chicago, as they don't *all* have to connect *in* Chicago any more.)
Some of these city pairs may seem uncompetitive on time with driving on my suggested (rather slack) schedules, but with all the colleges involved, and with a particularly high rate of carless households in St. Louis, I think the route would still be fairly successful.
It's unfortunate that all planning is going on at the state level, because I can see better unbuilt routes radiating out from Chicago... but they're going to places like Madison, Iowa City, Kenosha, Racine, and Terre Haute, which aren't *in* Illinois. The first two were actually planned and funded and then killed by action of the Wisconsin and Iowa governments; the second two were also killed by hostile state government; the third is not happening mostly due to a hostile state government.
So I understand why Illinois has decided to look out for its own and forget about its anti-rail neighbors. :-( And within the Illinois-only contest, the obvious next route after Moline and Rockford/Davenport is the Champaign-Quad Cities line.
(The route after that would probably be Champaign-Decatur-Springfield. After that, maybe Metra to DeKalb. At that point you've really covered all the actual cities in Illinois, and any remaining money should go to urban routes, or to improve existing lines.)
