CLEVELAND — Work on Amtrak's East River Tunnel in New York will allow Cleveland rail enthusiasts to ride to Florida starting in November without changing trains.
As a result of the work, Amtrak is temporarily combining the Capitol Limited and Silver Star trains to create the Floridian, which will run between Chicago and Miami via Washington, D.C., beginning Nov. 10.
"Our members have had a long-standing dream of restoring a one-seat ride from the Midwest to Florida, and we're thrilled that a new generation of American passengers will be able to experience this service for themselves," said Jim Mathews, president & CEO of the Rail Passengers Association. "This move will free up badly needed equipment while taking pressure off Northeast Corridor infrastructure during the renovation of the ERT Project. We believe riders will flock to this new service."
Because it is, in a sense, an extension of the current Capitol Limited line through Cleveland, passengers here will still be catching it in the middle of the night. Still, Ohio rail enthusiasts say it's a welcome addition.
"It's actually a pretty good thing. I mean, I'm already seeing a lot of excitement, at least among people that I know who ride Amtrak a lot," said Stu Nicholson, a board member of the Rail Passengers Association. "To be able to do a one train trip, if you will, from Chicago through Ohio and on to Washington D.C. and then down to Florida."
The most significant boost to actual rail expansion, though, came last December when the Federal Railroad Administration awarded Ohio half-million dollar grants each to study routes, including the long-talked-about 3C+D re-establishing passenger rail service between Cleveland and Cincinnati with stops in Columbus and Dayton and another the Midwest Ohio Regional Planning Commission is partnering on studying a Chicago - Ft Wayne - Columbus and Pittsburgh route.
"Where we are with those projects is they're both gearing up for the next step, which is a Service Development Plan, and that's going to answer all of those questions that your viewers may have, how fast - where will the stations be, what type of service, how it affects freight," said Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission Executive Director William Murdock.
These are questions that Governor Mike DeWine has long told News 5 he wants to be answered before the state fully commits. Speed is one of the biggest to potential riders.
"They're not going to use it, they're not going to do that if they can't get from Cleveland to Cincinnati at least in as good a time as it would take them to get in their car and drive," DeWine said in 2022. "If we can find a way to financially make this work we would like to do it."
"Certainly, the governor's right about that," said Murdock. "And that's what our business community cares about; that's what our mayors and our residents are asking about, too. We need to know if this is a good deal if this is the right deal, and we believe it is, but this study will help answer those really important questions about when and where we can move forward."
So, how long might we be talking if the answers are favorable?
"I think it's fair to say within the next decade," said Murdock. "Depending on what the study tells us, maybe it could be 5 to 10 years, maybe a little bit longer, but if you compare that to a highway interchange or a road widening or a bridge, these things can take time."
Nicholson said that for Columbus, which hasn't had passenger rail since 1979, its re-establishment would be huge.
"We've got a chance, at least here in Columbus, of having two major corridors cross through Columbus and go from zero trains a day, which we have now as well as the rest of Central Ohio, to six, seven, maybe eight trains a day. And that's not even counting the long distance routes that the Federal Rail Administration is now looking at. There's at least two of those that will go through Ohio, one of which will go through Cleveland as well," Nicholson said.
But Nicholson believes trains could run sooner at more reasonable hours along those existing routes through Cleveland.
"We're pretty optimistic that if all of this stuff starts to happen, you're going to see trains that actually come through in the daylight," he said. "What a concept."
