CHICAGO | 357 N Green | 640 FT

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by gandalf612

Realistically though, what destinations are even worth reaching by high-speed rail from this alignment? Optimal distance is 100-500 miles so the corridor would at best look like Rockford (350k), Madison (700k), La Crosse (150k), Rochester (225k), Minneapolis (4M) 5.5M total and past Minneapolis there is nothing of note within 500 miles in any direction except Des Moines, which at 740k is hardly worth the expense

For the same distance we could get Mich City (32k), South Bend (325k), Kalamazoo (260k), Lansing (100k), Ann Arbor (370k), Detroit (4.4M), London (540k), branch at Hamilton (785k) to Toronto (6M) and Buffalo (1.2M) for a total of 12.8 M for Toronto and 8 M for Buffalo

And it would be cheaper because we already have an existing electrified alignment as far as South Bend, making upgrading it to HSR so much easier. And you could pull on two federal governments for funding

from Toronto we could extend to Ottawa (1.5M), Montreal (4M), Quebec (840k)
from Buffalo we could extend to Rochester (1.1M), Syracuse (660k), Albany (635k), NYC (20M) and the entire North East corridor.

Like sure having Chicago to Minneapolis would be wonderful in a fantasy land, but realistically we'd only be able to get one 500 mile route in the next 50 years and the choice for that is rather blatantly obvious.

It would presumably be Chicago -> O'Hare - > Milwaukee -> Madison -> Lacrosse -> Rochester -> Minneapolis.

though not clear to me that you need to be very high speed between Chicago and O'Hare.