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Originally Posted by Randomguy34
Thanks for sharing, the potential concourse designs look really nice. I'm also glad that they managed to convince the Old Post Office owners to allow for a passenger hold room. It'll be unfortunate if the only way to reach the new platforms is by going through the concourse and crossing active tracks. The OPO owners are pretty strict about any public access to their river plaza.
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Like I said, it will be like temporary gates at an airport, at least initially. It'll feel like a hike from the existing concourse.
Long-term, Amtrak needs to think about where the intended access points should be at street level. The red brick "Sugar House" building sits on top of that passenger hold room, and that building was always envisioned to be torn down. Possibly it could become a new tower/dropoff plaza with an Amtrak entrance lobby off Harrison. This would be similar to NYP where Amtrak goes out of "Moynihan" while NJT goes out of "Penn", really just two concourses of the same station but each translates to a different place in the street grid.
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Do you know why Amtrak has recently been requesting $3 billion for CHIP? I know all the projects in the presentation were the original requests, which still comes out to ~$800 million. I've been trying to figure out the past year what other stuff could possibly be adding to the new figure, maybe A-2 and the new Fulton Market station?
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I'm not really sure. I think there's a "full vision" which includes dramatic changes to Union Station, entirely new yard facilities, new track corridors and connections, etc - then there's the "fiscally constrained" version which is a series of discrete projects addressing the most urgent needs and the ones that are most feasible right now.
I'm not aware of any CHIP projects on the north side of CUS, although Amtrak has studied a 4th main track before and there is room to add one. A-2 is a Metra project and (I think) the current plan is to position it as one piece of a bigger O'Hare Express project on the NCS corridor.