High Speed Rail Alliance

Columbus, Indiana, is located 50 miles south of Indianapolis and has only 50,000 residents. Yet seven of its buildings are designated as National Historic Landmarks. That puts it in the same league as cities like Chicago and San Francisco for the quality and significance of its architecture, unlikely as that may seem. Columbus also produced Chuck Taylor, a basketball player from the early 1900s whose name is inextricably linked to the Converse gym shoe.

Columbus currently has no train service. But it should. And it could. The city sits right in the middle of the Louisville-Indianapolis rail corridor, one of 69 passenger-rail routes accepted into the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor ID and Development Program. (Separately, the Indianapolis-Chicago corridor was also accepted, with the Indiana Department of Transportation as the sponsor. See the Alliance’s recent post on why the Indy-Chicago corridor desperately needs train service.)

In 2023, the sponsoring agency for the Louisville-Indianapolis corridor—the Kentuckiana Regional Planning & Development Agency—released its Corridor ID application. That document summarizes the whole 300+ mile Louisville-Chicago route, noting that it is home to more than 13 million people and 15 higher-education institutions, with a combined student population of more than 130,000. Indianapolis alone is home to three Fortune 500 companies, five university campuses, and several popular museums—including America’s largest children’s museum.

Notably, 105 of the 107 total miles in the Louisville-Indianapolis corridor are located in Indiana. So the state has a compelling interest and a direct stake in whether the cities are connected by trains. Columbus, in particular, would reap immense benefits from having better access to Louisville, Indianapolis, and Chicago—for the reasons described below.

Making it happen depends mostly on the will and energy of civic leaders, the business community, and grassroots train advocates. They should push the Indiana Department of Transportation to collaborate with officials and agencies in Kentucky and “Kentuckiana” to keep both projects—Louisville to Indianapolis, and Indianapolis to Chicago—moving towards Regional Rail, with a train every two hours or better.

 

“For generations to come

 

 In 2017, the coming-of-age movie Columbus brought the city to the attention of a global movie audience. In 2023, The Architect’s Newspaper noted that “the sheer quantity of monuments [in Columbus] designed by some of the greatest 20th-century architects is astonishing.”

 

 

Cummins—a Columbus-based engine maker that was founded in 1919 and now employs about 60,000 people worldwide—is the main force behind this architectural excellence. Its chairman from the early 1950s through the late 1970s, J. Irwin Miller, had a clear vision for the city’s future. He also had the resources to push it forward. “We would like to see this community come to be not the cheapest community in America, but the very best community of its size in the country,” Irwin said. “We would like to see it become the city in which the smartest, the ablest, the best young families anywhere would like to live.”

World-class architecture was key to Miller’s vision, and that vision endures in what locals call the Columbus Way—i.e., the practice of “always looking forward, creating not only for today, but for generations to come.”

Half a century after Miller helped transform Columbus into an architectural mecca, opportunity knocks yet again—in the form of trains. Fast, frequent, and affordable train service will bring “the Columbus Way” into the 21st century in three key ways.

 

New tourism streams

 

First, it would be a big boost to tourism.

Imagine the possibilities for weekend rail “getaway” packages that offer quick, affordable trips between two of America’s architectural meccas—Chicago and Columbus.

More ambitiously, a Chicago to Atlanta line—running through Columbus—is among the most promising corridors for high-speed rail in the U.S. The trip from Nashville or Chicago to Columbus is about 3.5 hours by car. It would be about 3 hours with high-quality conventional train service—or under 2 hours with high-speed trains.

And those are just the biggest cities on the Chicago-Atlanta line. Cincinnati is less than 100 miles to the east, and St. Louis is less than 300 miles to the west. A regional train network—of high-speed trains, conventional trains, or some combination—would make Columbus an easy day trip for tens of millions of people in these major cities, as well as the dozens of mid-sized communities in between.

Taking the train would be faster and safer than driving. It would also be faster, cheaper, and more convenient than flying, which involves the time and expense of renting a car at the Indianapolis airport. Trains, by contrast, could bring people right into the heart of Columbus.

 

A great place to put down roots

 

 Second, high-quality train service would be a boon for workers and students. If the commute from Columbus to Indianapolis and Lafayette (or vice versa) were a comfortable train trip, they could read or relax on the way to and from work—instead of fighting clogged and dangerous highways. That would make Columbus a more attractive place for people to work, put down roots, and raise a family.

 

A brief aside about the film Columbus is relevant here.

 

 The protagonist, Casey, is a young woman who loves the city’s architecture. She’s 19 and has recently graduated from high school but hasn’t yet enrolled in college—in part because she loves Columbus and in part because she helps care for her mother, who struggles with addiction. In the movie’s final scene (spoiler alert) Casey leaves Columbus to pursue her dreams on the East Coast, based on a loose connection to an architect at Yale.

 

That move makes sense in a movie. In real life, though, the “leaving-to-find-yourself” journey would more likely be from Columbus to Chicago—i.e., from a small Midwestern community to the region’s de facto capital.

Leaving a place to go to college isn’t the final word, though. Remember that the vision behind turning Columbus into an architectural showcase was to make it a place where “the smartest, ablest, the best young families anywhere would like to live.”

Columbus lives up to that vision in many ways. But to be a place that can keep attracting young families—and young people generally—once they’ve spent some time in a bigger city, it needs trains.

Imagine if—in addition to its affordable housing, strong economy, comfortable pace, and great schools—Columbus offered an affordable and low-stress way to get to school and/or work in Indianapolis and Louisville.

Imagine if you could live in Columbus and everything that Chicago offers were just a low-stress train trip away. Imagine if you could live in Columbus and easily, affordably reach O’Hare—one of the world’s great airports, with vastly more international flight options than the Louisville and Indianapolis airports.

Great trains will make that possible. They’ll change the calculus of living in a small city like Columbus for young people and, especially, for young families.

 

Building a strong manufacturing base

 

 Third, an all-in commitment to trains would help Columbus and the Midwest revitalize and expand their manufacturing bases.

 

Cummins is an innovator in the technology that powers trains across the world. For example, in 2022 it announced that a fleet of 14 zero-emissions passenger trains in Lower Saxony, Germany, were equipped with its fuel cell systems. Cummins noted that “we are innovating fuel cell and hydrogen technology that can essentially convert existing infrastructure built for diesel trains into zero-emissions railways without expansive and expensive rail electrification.”

Cummins’s partner was the train maker Alstom, which also builds the high-speed trains that Amtrak is rolling out in the Northeast Corridor. The new Acela trains are manufactured in Hornell, New York, where the company had about 200 employees in 2016. It now has roughly 1,000.

Hornell’s former mayor said of Alstom that “it is a transformative development project that is basically unheard of in rural America and if it can happen here, it can happen throughout the United States.” Alstom’s U.S. supply chain includes about 170 companies across 27 states.

 

Bringing it all back home

 

The fact that Cummins is headquartered in a city that isn’t (yet) served by passenger trains—and a region that has only bare-bones service—is deeply ironic.

But that irony is also a huge opportunity. For Columbus, a city that takes pride in “always looking forward,” trains could be the next step in its evolution as a world-class innovator. They’re the future economically, environmentally, and in terms of overall community well-being. Every day, Cummins helps make that truth a reality in cities and regions across the globe.

Now, Columbus and the Midwest could lead the transformation of America’s transportation system with a regional network of world-class train service. Which is what the Columbus Way is all about: “Why we set bold goals. Why we inspire each other. Why we impact the world with unprecedented achievements.”

Embracing big challenges put Columbus on the map in the twentieth century. Today, trains and the Columbus Way are a perfect match. Both are about finding better paths forward—and creating “not only for today, but for generations to come.”