Planning Studio II: High Speed Rail Study, Spring 2013

For this assignment, I was asked to pick a High Speed Rail project any where in the world as long as it was either in place or fairly far along in it's development/implementation. I decided to study Amtrak's Blue Route, which runs from Chicago, Illinois to Port Huron, Michigan. It was an interesting study because it is a line that runs near my hometown, and it is the only  US route outside of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor(New York to DC) that has reached speeds of at least 110 MPH. The idea for this high speed rail corridor is to make travel between Chicago and Detroit faster, cheaper, and more convenient.