Our Vision

President Obama has created an exciting vision for high-speed rail in America, proposing that 80% of Americans be served by high-speed trains by the year 2036. Perhaps no region in the U.S. is better positioned to capitalize on this vision than the Upper Midwest. Leveraging a diverse manufacturing, agricultural, and business services economy anchored by nine major metropolitan areas, high-speed rail could have a transformative impact that would unify the Midwest into one the world's most powerful economic regions.

That would mean:

• Building four 220-mph bullet train routes to put 43 million people within 3 hours of Chicago, with the first demonstration route completed by 2020.
• Modernizing existing Amtrak service by 2020 to deliver convenient and comfortable service at speeds of at least 90 miles per hour.
• Creating strong connections to local transit at modernized railroad stations.

Together, these projects will revolutionize how we travel, and create more than 1.1 million jobs across the region.