I'm biased against America 2050 because they overreach a bit to put St. Louis in the Great Lakes Megaregion and classify it in the 1-3 million group which makes it look equal to Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville despite being two to three times bigger. Not a big deal, but hovering at 2.8 or so, we could almost have an Atlanta/Toronto/Boston sized circle, which would change the map.
The fact is that St. Louis doesn't fit well into any particular megaregion. It has a strong connection with Chicago, but it isn't as close as Indianapolis or Milwaukee. There's a vast zone of ruralness around St. Louis. It's isolated.
That giant yellow blob on the map above represents corn and soy bean fields, the stl zone of influence, and Cardinal Nation. St. Louis and Kansas City are sort of out by themselves. Stl-Style did a blog post on the St. Louis identity and concluded that it is neither northern or southern. That's ok though. The Stl - KC - Denver section of I-70 is the spine of the US. It doesn't need to be either. It doesn't have to be part of the Great Lakes. It can be the GLUE that connects different megaregions.
Check out this map from the US High Speed Rail Association
Those are major cities. If HSR was built along that arc, and regular or high speed rail was built from each of those cities to St. Louis, then St. Louis really would be The Gateway to the West. The East connects to those cities which connect to St. Louis and the head west in a straight shot to Denver and Salt Lake which branches off to LA/San Diego, the Bay Area, and Portland/Seattle
St. Louis and Chicago had a big struggle in history for control of the middle of the country. Chicago clearly won. That was largely a battle for rail alignments. In this new era of passenger rail, things ought to be played out smarter on both sides. There's no reason to fight. We can meet objectives for both sides.
I've read several things about the Stl - Chi alignment so it isn't clear if it is going through Champaign-Urbana or not. The map above shows both. It also indicates a St. Louis-Memphis line and the Chi - Memphis arc of cities from that should be in Chicago's rail future. The lines that benefit both St. Louis and Chicago are highlighted.
The Carbondale Mistake
The white line above is Chicago's brilliant idea for a college express line between Chicago and Memphis. It is an existing Amtrak corridor, but it isn't one that should be designated for high speed rail. To quote the Urbanophile, "Parochial interests of little real significance – such as a high speed rail line from Chicago to the small southern Illinois city of Carbondale – are included [in the Chicago Hub plans] as part of a throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks strategy."
This is pork spending for the state of Illinois and little more. Carbondale often pulls in Illinois money that ought to be spent in the Metro-East. In this case though, it is upstaging all of St. Louis. Why build a train line across an entire state for one college town? Build a St. Louis to Memphis train and put Carbondale on that route. As the St. Louis - Chicago route will be one of the fastest in the country, students at the University of Southern Illinois will still be able to get to Chicago easily.
Chicago should be able to connect to Memphis through St. Louis or through the arc shown above. Both routes would be good for Chicago. It's absurd to build a straight line when there are few people between.
There's an existing Amtrak route between St. Louis and Little Rock, but should it be upgraded to a high speed corridor? No, that would be St. Louis upstaging Memphis for the benefit of a few rural towns.
A HSR corridor should connect Chicago to New Orleans through St. Louis. That's a reasonable long range goal for the country.
The Spokes of the St. Louis Wheel
The three green lines on the map above between St. Louis and Nashville, Louisville, and Indianapolis would all be great, but they wouldn't matter much for Chicago. A line between Carbondale and Nashville would make Illinois and Missouri both happy (6 happy US senators). A line from St. Louis to Evansville, IN to Louisville would need to go through Illinois too. It'd be a short distance but connect four states (8 happy US senators). The line to Inianapolis would be justifiable, but might also be a slight challenge to the authority of Chicago as king of the midwest. It would be great to have these, but the arc from Chicago is more important.
Rail of the Saints
Chicago's route to Omaha is much more logical. Des Moines and the Quad Cities are much bigger than Champaign-Urbana and Carbondale. Both are also part of the St. Louis Wheel mentioned above. Would Missouri be justified trying to connect St. Louis to the Quad Cities or to perhaps trying something similar to the Avenue of the Saints? It would be in the interest of St. Louis, but not Chicago. If there was a route from St. Louis to the Twin Cities, it would be like the reverse of the Carbondale folly. There's no need for St. Louis and Chicago to upstage each other.
If we look back at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association's map, we see a Chicago to Kansas City connection, bypassing St. Louis again. In this case as well, it is smarter to let the connection be Chi-Stl-KC and Chi-Omaha-KC. These are existing Amtrak routes and in this case a lame attempt by the state of Missouri to connect a college town in the wilderness, Kirksville (Truman State), to a major city despite the vast distance involved. Kirksville should just have a bus station. HSR between Galesburg and Quincy? Why is that good investment? Maybe St. Louis connects to Hannibal and Quincy and establishes a second route to Chicago... Is that going to be a priority for the federal government? Seriously, this can be done with buses.
Missouri HSR Policy
The St. Louis to Kansas City corridor is the most important investment Missouri can make, obviously.
The Kansas City to Kirksville Connection is an unreasonable investment. Kirksville should have buses to Quincy/Hannibal and to Columbia, and be happy with the Amtrak they have in La Plata. The state government should not be putting that much effort into it.
Likewise the connection between St. Louis and Poplar Bluff should not be a high priority. Connecting St. Louis to Memphis through Cape Girardeau would be much more valuable. Encouraging the movement of people between Carbondale and Cape would be helpful to both.
If Oklahoma could justify it, St. Louis could certainly use a connection to Rolla - Springfield - Joplin - Tulsa - OK City - Texas Triangle. Most likely Tulsa would connect to Kansas City though, which is fine.
St. Louis is the western most eastern city. Kansas City is the eastern most western city. Missouri's strategy is simple. Let St. Louis handle the East. Let Kansas City handle the West. Let the corridor between be the spine of America.
I like your idea very much
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