The Impact
Union Station is important to Chicago and the entire Midwest. Its impact could be significantly greater if it were to become the hub of a regional 220-mph high-speed rail system.
According to the Midwest High Speed Rail Association’s 2011 study, “The Economic Impacts of High Speed Rail: Transforming the Midwest,” a four-spoke, 220-mph bullet train network linking Chicago to Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, and St. Louis would serve 43 million annual riders and generate over $2 billion in ticket revenue alone.
The system would offer 25 daily departures on each of the four corridors, with a capacity of up to 10 trains per hour on each line during peak travel times, each train potentially carrying up to 1,100 passengers. This ridership could grow Union Station's intercity boardings to over 9 million per year – a surge of nearly 700%.
The economic impact of the 220-mph network on Chicago would be staggering. New jobs and business opportunities will support and enhance the Chicago metropolitan area’s global competitiveness and help Chicagoland maintain its preeminence as a global center by linking the financial, educational, technology and medical research resources of the entire region to produce: $13.8 billion per year increase in business sales for the Chicago Metro area alone, 104,000 new jobs and an additional $5.5 billion in wages each year in the Chicago Metro area resulting from increased economic activity, $314 million in new annual visitor spending in downtown Chicago.
New jobs in the Chicago metropolitan area alone represent $118 billion in wages over 30 years, and the new business sales generated by economic activity associated with the HSR system are estimated to be almost $300 billion over 30 years.