Lauren O’Neill reports on an Amtrak service extension proposal:
Amtrak P42DC locomotive #29 with a Blue Water or Wolverine train waits on a siding for a train in the opposite direction to pass in Comstock, Michigan.
The largest passenger railroad service in U.S. is considering a proposal that, if approved, would see trains running directly from Chicago to Toronto and back.
As discussed at the Michigan Rail Conference in East Lansing last week, Amtrak wants to extend its Wolverine line — which currently sees trains moving back and forth between Pontiac, MI, and Chicago, IL, three times per day — all the way up to Canada’s largest city.
A presentation slide shared by an official Michigan Department of Transportation Twitter account on Thursday shows that Amtrak wants to extend “at least one” Wolverine train into Ontario, “where it could continue as a VIA Rail Canada corridor service from Windsor/Walkerville to Toronto.”
It won’t happen overnight, and there’s plenty of work to be done in order for the train service to work, including the construction of a new border processing facility.
