professor varon: right, and wrote a very expensive memoir, which retroactively disputed that slavery had been a cause for the war. what an excellent segue. we have only one minute left. a closing >> he said in his memoir he did not cheer but did not celebrate. did not regret. >> there is a significant and interesting little bit of trivia. the prosecutor of the conspirators was the secretary of war when lincoln is brought in. for him to carry back memories into prosecuting the assassination, it shaped his view of his job. >> that is a great observation.

i would like to remind you all we are going to resume here at 10:00. i encourage you to submit questions. the q&a after this. thank you very much. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. >> each week american history tv sits in on a lecture to watch every saturday evening at 8 p.m. and midnight. next, joseph schwieterman talks

about the evolution of railroad stations. he talks about how many have been closed or redeveloped and the factors that contribute to how the land is reused. he describes what it means for small towns to lose railroad business. this class is about an hour. >> tonight we have a special lecture. nice to have him on campus. we worked on our assignments. we will look at redevelopment. they are trying make the transformation from a railroad city with lots of railroad employment and connections to a first-class center with expansion of o'hare.

it involves redevelopment. a city that 10 or so years ago was labeled one of the 10 most dying cities in the united states. feels real excitement. it will be a fun project for you guys. we will talk for a little bit about why looking at redevelopment at the decline of the railroad industries a great way of how cities reinvent themselves. we are in downtown chicago. first thing you probably see is our city probably more than any other in the u.s. has benefited

from the enormity of the open man that has been made available. the so-called chicago miracle was largely due to a confluence of some of the needs of our city, but also a freeing up of land and corridor's and development by railroads. other cities were not so lucky. detroit stands out. if you want open land, detroit has it. but bad news. it is not where people want it. you are from lansing, near flint. similar problems. our city was at the right place at the right time. the saga is different in every city. we will talk through this a bit. it is a profound story. dearborn station is gone.

if you go there tonight to buy a ticket to california, you would be disappointed. [laughter] the santa fe streamliner last left in 1971. this is a relevant place to start. as early as the 1930's, the city wanted to eliminate the station to free up what it felt was an obstacle of redeveloping the south loop. it turned out to be an ironic story. the oldest and most decrepit of our six stations kept hanging on. the santa fe trains were immensely popular. where did they go? it followed the santa fe trail to los angeles. the process began. it had a profound effect. we are seeing immense growth.

him partly because of the redevelopment that is occurring. you live in downtown? >> yes. two blocks away. there is a great big building for student housing. several years ago? >> racine. a great area. very easy to walk toward any area of the city. accessible to mobile transportation. >> you are downtown as well? >> yeah. jackson and michigan. >> good real estate. let's start in 1870. this is kind of when people say

the golden age of railroads began. the driving of the golden spike 1869. what state that occurred in? utah. the beginning of an era. you see how skeletal the system was. it was just a couple of decades. we moved to 1905. you see it is a dramatically different picture for the u.s. we are in the heart and. you might as well take the black blotch and put it in the middle . the density was so thick. when you look at this, there were is a lot yet to come. florida, the to of the peninsula, there is nothing there yet. the development was yet to occur. las vegas did not even exist at

the time. we will see in 1905, all cities could almost be defined by their position of the railroad system. some cities thrived because they were by the railroads. some died because they were by the railroads. we ended up with 5-6 transcat and all -- transcontinental lines. the enormity of this and the land devoted to railroads when they start to retrench especially in the heartland, is astounding. we in chicago were almost extreme case of that. let's march through time and get a sense for what the inevitable decline has meant for cities around the country. here we are in cincinnati. i was born in cincinnati. that is not why it is on the slide today.

this is the very end of the expectation the railroad would last indefinitely. this is a great showpiece. what architecture would you call that? art deco style. 1933. a bit like the empire state building. the chrysler building in new york. the reason i show this picture is often times when people think of railroads, they think of core doors, stations. they do not think of quadrants of cities. you had underground parking under large parts of the facility, as well as the norm is -- enormous industrial facilities.

1930 3 was a bad time to open a big station. cincinnati learned the hard way that the handwriting was on the wall. the enormity of the railroad system. within a few years, the industry was terrified at the changes it was seeing. this facility would see it within 20 years. it went heavily underutilized because things changed. if you wonder how this process began and why it was profound for smaller cities, as early as the 1930's, it was clear that railroads were doomed. you could imagine why. this is new mexico. i put this in because they have the distinction of being one of the few cities that had a

railroad with the standard gauge, which meant it could go anywhere in the u.s. they felt the future was in narrow gauge railroading and they shrunk the track gauge. by the 1940's and 1950's, it was evident that if you were to ship a rail car, it would have to be transloaded somewhere. bring it to grand junction or nearby. they avoid that sort of thing. put it on a truck. the trucking industry siphons off business. but remarkably, this line hung on until the 1960's. i think we have 747s flying and

in development. they are still running a steam locomotive to farmington, new mexico. times are changing. these cities had to brace themselves for enormous changes. at the same time, we saw electric railroads around the country were seeing the sun was setting. it was a debate around the country. what is the future? the automobile? or inner-city electric railways? people bet on one system or the other. in chicago, we had half a dozen of these routes. we had some great investors in chicago to put their money on electric railways. any names come to mind? >> samuel. >> that's right. he was convinced that these systems were going to really

redefine inner-city transportation. by the 30's and 40's, they started to close -- by the 1950's, almost all of them are gone. we have one remaining. it is a block from here. >> the metro? >> sure. from downtown chicago to south bend. as i looked at the demise of the railroads had on cities, it was evident that world war ii provided false signals to investors that the railroad era was going to last indefinitely. this shows the crowds of world war ii. dearborn station, shortly after the war. union station, the trains were

packed, the railroad was indispensable during the war. traffic at all time. it was clear if you look at the trend that the system was ready to crumble, particularly liked ghtly use of lines. cities and investors were misled. you have union station. we lost the beautiful concourse, which is shown in the picture on the right. torn down in the 1960's. it is one of our great lastost landmarks. dearborn station is no longer used, but was used in the war. after world war ii, people knew change was in the air. railroad companies had to place bets. do we modernize? bring on modern streamlined passenger trains its mark compete with automobiles? -- passenger trains?

compete with automobiles? do we accept the inevitability of change? for the first few years, railroads were convinced that the growth of air travel would be confined to certain segments of the market that were not apt to take trains anyway. chicago northwestern was a good example, investing in streamlined double deck bilevel cars, increasing the speed of their service. trying to run trains that were redefining the inner-city experience. for many americans, this brought back a sense that with proper investment, american railroads really could be a continuing force in travel between 100-500 miles in the u.s. what would it take for trains to reassert themselves in that market? we saw there was real potential grid this next slide says it all.

if we go to 1944 and2 and look at the size of the number of trains of downtown terminals around the midwest. compare this with the help of grad students in our program. this shows how many daily departures that the busiest railroad stations had at the peak of the world war ii era. the first thing you will see is as smug as we are about having the biggest and the best, we are in that top 10. we had one station represented. that was chicago union station. st. louis and kansas city union beat us by a considerable margin. why did they have a bigger station then we do? >> perhaps they do not have a

huge transportation hub such as o'hare. you have to rely on high-speed rails in general to travel. >> this is 1942 so trains are getting asked her. that is not the answer looking -- i am looking for. today, they are very excited about that aspect of it going to chicago with high-speed three. >> there were four other chicago terminals? >> four. five on the list. that's right. these cities succeeded in creating a centralized hub. st. louis and kansas city in cincinnati had the distinction of every train coming into the town connected at the central hub. the synergy was tremendous. people with a single connection would walk across the concourse and you could reach vast destinations across the region. chicago was too big to achieve that.

we were too formidable for the railroad industry to try to consolidate our stations into one. we will see chicago is a city of stations that while large, they were not at the same level and volume as other stations. we will see this created a paradox. getting to the point where this has created all kinds of challenges. as we march through time, the pressure for chicago to become the dominant hub and grew. around the world, we see there are great cities in europe in creating a central hub. all trains in one station. their passenger numbers are well

over 1000. you look at the u.s. in 1942 enormous. we also see the growth in europe has led to stations many times our size in terms of volume. we did this analysis. we want to see why some stations died before others. there's a fascinating story along with that. so, move into the 1950's. we see some of these great stations are struggling to hang on. i am of a generation that i remember this. going into this large pictures and seeing the pigeons fly around cigarette butts on the , floor and the sense of decline that created a real doom for the railroad industry in the public mind. there was a view that the railroad industry was on its way down. there is no way to fix it. kansas city union station hung on into the 1970's. amtrak is back. the station was too large to

serve its needs. here in chicago, we were condemned you might say with six stations. it let to fabulous architecture. a city much like london. we were surrounded by by railroad stations each with a personality and architecture. but for the traveler, we were a royal headache. you could imagine travelers were 100 years coming into chicago from 1870 through the early 1970's arriving in one station and having to schlep their bags to the next. in many cases, the trains were a mile apart. the stations were not connected.

if you look at the chart, could see the elevated system that connects many parts of downtown. the system was not aligned to serve the terminals. the terminals were not directly located inside the subway or the rapid transit system. after the subway was developed. as a result, chicago became kind of a connecting nightmare for travelers. that we will see war heavily on the railroads to try to develop a coherent system of connections around the city. in chicago if you look at the map, the enormity of the footprint. you have tracks all the way to from hosted to the lake. as railroads declined, you could to the pressure to take his big -- these six stations and

consolidate them into one. it became tremendous. as you look at the trends that occurred over time, how quickly did these stations fall in transportation significance? we measured from 1942-1956, how many trains vanished? you see the pain of the decline of railroads was truly profound. if you go to columbus union station and indianapolis union station, over 40% of their trains were eliminated. cincinnati, somewhat less. what do you notice about chicago? we stand out a little bit.

>> i think there is a little bit of resemblance of that kind of chicago in that 25% of below kind of category. we have chicago northwestern station, union station. and then central. it shows obviously all the stations are on the downfall. maybe we have to think about having only one or two. >> the pressure to consolidate is enormous. we are on the right side of the chart. as the system was eliminated , the lesser routes were the first to go. look at cities in the left hand of the chart. they tend to be smaller than those on the right. we will see detroit is interesting. they are at the far end. detroit is expanding dramatically in the 1950's.

obviously because industry was on iron. you are not eating. -- nodding. dramatic increase. the other cities had a tough go of it during this period. chicago weathered the period better than others. the pressure to consolidate was a norm us during this time. we will see the railroads are eager to eliminate there passenger trains. this is in ohio. a funny looking training. down to one car. in the late 60's and early 70's, they were eager to eliminate the entire system of trains.

the interstate commerce commission insisted they remain running. the service became very defunct , very poor. as a result, we have a painful time when the passenger trains spiral down until there was virtually nothing left. until the creation of amtrak. as the railroad declined and the routes were eliminated during this difficult time, cities started to ask, what do i do when the railroad leaves town? we are going to walk through three case studies that show all towns have a different experience with this. it led to remarkable redevelopment opportunities that simply by the enormity of the real estate in the first set of examples, made possible entirely

new uses for the railroad. we go to central station in chicago. five blocks from us. we are looking north. can see the building in the distance. this is one of the great streamliners. this station was unfortunately torn down just before the historical preservation movement gathered momentum. if you look at this picture and we flash forward to 1974. you can see it had no future. they call it one of the great lost landmarks. chicago began to see some of the development patterns described earlier. if we go to central station today and look at it from above, we could see in a way downtown is spread to engulf the old central station property, which

is pictured here with the shaded area toward the middle. we have a new development that in effect rejuvenated the area in ways that would have been hard to imagine in the 70's. when there was a debate about whether to save the station. development is called central station, right? the marketers have an easy job with that one. it got a lot of good attention. mayor daley moved down there for a couple of years. we have the museum campus next door. splendid views of millennium park. grant park. chicago will he come it has been redefined as a city because of 100 acres made available by the closing of central station.

as we look at it today, the buildout of the vacant parcel, it is almost complete. the community of central station is comprised heavily of empty-nesters. they are attracted by the lakefront living. it would be more exciting had we landed the olympic games in 2016 it would have put us in the middle of some exciting cultural developments. it is an example of post-1980 development that has been the right place at the right time. let's go to another station. look at grand central. go to that last picture. go to the upper right.

you see a nice grassy area. you see some corridors in there. those are the old tracks to central station. this is one of our great architectural landmarks. in 1888 structure. it was called the norman style. while it was never the busiest station, but some say it was the most beautiful. grand central is on borrowed time for many years. a little but like dearborn station. the trains serving were the fastest to baltimore and ohio. it kept the station functional through the early 1970's. here is a case where we are a mile or two west of central station.

a development pattern that was completely different. market for real estate, a mile or so west of the property. how does that compare to the demand for lakefront living? anyone care to comment on that? alex? >> everything in chicago is pretty much based on the lake. >> that's right. it is a fraction of the central station. railroad for the station down, part a to redevelop the parcel. look at what is there today. a lot of years have passed. a lot of opportunities have come to the loop. here is the capital limited, one

of the great trains leaving the train shed at grand central. it had a magnificent arch shed trains came out of. fast-forward 1979 to about 2015. have a look at what is there today. here's a case where the closing of a railroad has not matched at all with the market demand for property. 40 years later on that parcel, we are waiting for redevelopment to occur. it has been elusive. one proposal after another comes and goes. we have several forces that conspired to doom this. people don't want to live in that part of the loop. the property is a brownfield. it is along the chicago river which creates all kinds of

standards for development. the market has never been able to make this property work. look at how close the two are together. their circumstances have been enormously different. >> who currently owns the parcel? professor schwieterman: it has changed hands several times. for a while it was owned by the railroad. they tried to find a user. there was speculation that this would be the next casino. it is walkable to the great venues. i'm relieved that proposal didn't happen. a number of movies have been filmed on this site. there would often be trucks on there. some chicago classics have been filmed here. but his not found a use. here is a circumstance where the

parcel has not been a minimal -- amenable. we look north. we go to northwestern station. essentially we have lost four of them with dearborn and union still standing. the other four are largely demolished. the western terminal wwas on prime residential land. look at the station at about 1912. it had the classic gothic entrance to it. and a waiting room that was magnificent by anybody's standards with a vaulted ceiling. on this parcel, we see that the railroad terminal was doomed by the fact that the large number of commuters arriving on this property made it prime for office tower development. in effect, the station was a victim of its own self.

tens of thousands of commuters arriving every day. the demand for that parcel would serve office space for these commuters encouraged the railroad to eliminate the terminal. if you go to northwestern station today, it has a new name. that is right. in effect, the old concourse was torn down and replaced by a pretty impressive office power tower development. all three of these stations, a different story to tell. in the case of northwestern, kind of a happy ending. we lost the landmark, but the value of being next to the railroad led to a transformation we benefit from today. as we walk through, as i surveyed the communities, we found there is incredible passion behind what it has meant

for the community. the second implication i would like to talk about is a small towns. when they lose service. what it means for the development outlook they face and the emotion that goes with the transition from being a railroad town to a non-railroad town. here is a city in idaho. if you can get get out there, i will give you extra credit. [laughter] professor schwieterman: of the cities in all 50 states, this is probably the hardest one to get to. there is a great rainbow trout in the river there. avery was an amazing story. it was on one of the most remarkable railroads in the country, that actually was electrified to get over the

continental divide. several hundred miles of road was put under wires. the route had difficult mountain grades. electricity was needed to pull the freight and passengers up the steep slope. avery had a problem. we read about the milwaukee road earlier this quarter. unhappy ending for this carrier. affected our city as part of our efforts to provide transit service. what story do we tell about it? anyone care to remember that? >> [inaudible] professor schwieterman: that's right. it went bankrupt. >> there have been different rail lines that were created.

but that was a very big one that we lost. professor schwieterman: we did. we bought the right of way to keep the trains running. avery idaho, couldn't do that. it became think rep. -- bankrupt. avery has no other major business. it does not even have a paved highway. it was built entirely to serve the railroad. it was the point where crews change. avery was optimistic. when the railroad leaves, guess what we get? a paved road. we have never had a paved road in that town. with that will come resort is this, -- business, small business. residential development. we should get sports fishing in our town. the railroads died in 1980.

let's go there and see what happened. hasn't really worked out. it is a great little town. the road is there. they have not seen the 20 story hotels people might have liked to see. the postmaster there is quite nostalgic. they lost the battle in many ways. when reporters asked for a town that has been affected negatively, i say, go to avery. it is a good case where a city lost its reason. charming place. great people. the development with a paved road proved to be a bit of an over optimistic hope to read. reed city, michigan. a small town.

north of grand rapids. reed city has an interesting distinction. they claimed they had the finest union station of any town of its size in the state of michigan. how is that for something for the sign on front of town? you can see two lines crossed. the predecessor came right through reed city. the city was literally built around the railroad. in reed city's case, the development pattern began to change when the logging declined a bit. travel shifted to roads. the passenger travel going to mackinaw city diminished. reed city found itself looking for a kind of new economic engine to keep the town going.

unfortunately, this is the early 20th century. we goes to the 1970's. the station is gone. train's still coming through. the road has been reduced to the margins of the community's economy. like most midwestern cities they had a tough recession. it lost lots of industrial but output throughout our region. the city new it was that it was at a crossroads. the railroad was leaving. it probably couldn't save the railroad. the town decided we had to commemorate the fact that we are only in existence at this location because of the railroad junction. we feel like our identity is the

linked to the railroads. we went to not only commemorate our identity, but use it to start a new one. the two lines crossed. they called it the diamond crossing. they used that to ceremonial ize where the railroads crossed red there are often ceremonies out here when people retire. recreation trails are created off of the lines. lots of activity through town. snowmobilers in the wintertime. it created an interesting transformation that led to a real sense that reed city had effectively weathered the change and reinvented themselves as a northern michigan playground.

when i was writing the book, we had a interesting controversy that somebody wanted to bring it act. they had to wonder if they wanted another route to be built. it created a difficult problem for the city. once you make the transition it can be difficult. it led to a discovery. it was somewhat sobering. once the tracks are pulled up any city, it can be difficult to bring them back, even if the market is there. with the closing of railroads it unfortunately becomes a bit of a one-way process. the third example, lake geneva. the city is notable.

it has commuter service all the way up in the 1970's in chicago. lake geneva took great pride. in their connections to chicago. top executives lived up there. it was a destination of great importance to chicagoans. the service continued to decline. i think we read about it this quarter. when the railroad left in the 1925, debate to bring them back has been nonstop. the planning efforts to do that have been extremely challenged by the factors that is outside t is outside of our state boundary. slightly too long of a distance or a commute. we go to the next slide. you can see the ni,mby forces

reared their ugly heads, you might say. they were opposing lake geneva's efforts to embark on planning initiatives to bring its railroad back to strengthen its connection to chicago. rumor has it government agency a made government agency b take it down really quick. it doesn't look good when they aren't cooperating. in this example, had the tracks remain, the options would have been so much greater for a city like lake geneva to re-strengthen its transportation links to chicago. you went to lake geneva. what is your sense of right-of-way today? >> >> probably five or 10 minutes outside of town, you could pull that off. putting the tracks back in

to where it goes through town would be impossible today. professor schwieterman: what is an example of the type of obstruction you would see? >> new streets. new housing. new businesses. professor schwieterman: it would be a tough go. zinnia, ohio. they had railroads in five directions. this is a train coming down detroit street. if you go back today, you could see remnants of the track are still there. the police car looking at the with some not so flattering looks when i was photographing. i was not photographing him as i thought. you could see the tracks in the foreground. when i studied the economic impacts of abandonment, the city probably more than any other had

leveraged the benefits of recreational trails in a way that has given it an image that is in effect transformative for the city. bike rentals in town. a lot of summer traffic. two trails crossed there. can see the old right of way. the ironic placement of a truck cahasis, filled with coincidence you might say. the recreation trail below. the last thing i want to talk about as we look into the three models of the rail service, and this relates to your project. when we look at in some cases the elimination of the rail route. it wasn't as important as the town on that route. between cities, many miles apart. as i looked at the abandonments around the country, the real battle is not in that town, but

in the giant cities that want to be linked by rail and no longer have the opportunity to do that. we use something called the gravity model. we look at cities as configured in space represented by population. population of city one being large. the relation of two and three being somewhat smaller. we connect the cities. if we view this as the model of gravitational force, which is in our statistical framework, we have to define how this model is going to work to predict how much traffic will go between these two cities. looking at this model, we could see right away more traffic is likely to move between p1 and p2 than p1 and p3 because it is farther.

using the gravitational model which again you mentioned, based on the newtonian law of gravitational force, the difference is going to depend on what kind of assumptions we make. can anybody walk us through why that difference will have different effects depending on how we calibrate the model? >> there are geographical barriers. they can prohibit populations from interacting. professor schwieterman: that's right. we can make a forecast using the gravity model. these other factors are going to come into play. the difference between p1 traffic and p3 traffic depends on what we assigned to the value

of k. somebody talk me through that. let's revisit that. it has been a week or so. what k represents and how we can think about in this context. >> k is the rate of decay. if we assume p3 is more willing to travel long distances, than it is possible that they could have a high demand, especially people in p2 are unwilling to travel long distances. professor schwieterman: the rate of k shows how traffic diminishes or decays as things become farther apart. if we have a high rate of decay. the propensity to travel. as we calibrate our models, we look around the midwest.

let me share with you an example. as i evaluated this from a nationwide perspective why the closing of 120,000 miles of routes has a lot of implications of how we develop intercity networks between cities. i show this because we see the black line represents the available railroad lines between cities. if we have a good look, you have ve to be patient traveler to get from new york to scranton. it is a tough go. the white line in the middle is an abandoned portion. that line is gone. you can also see interstate 80 superimposed. in this example, for a traveler from new york to scranton, we have an active rail line and an

abandoned portion and an active rail line. to effectively offer a direct service, you would somehow have to rebuild this section. that would seem like an easy thing to do. in new jersey, they learned the hard way. that was one of the most remarkable rail lines the u.s. had seen built. if you look at these pictures, it was filled with beautiful viaducts. a direct route through hilly terrain. it was designed to have no highway crossings. it was a perfect railroad route to offer service. today that line is gone and new jersey is eager to bring it back into its control. landowners have been created to get top dollar.

in one instance, they divided the land of to several dozen small parcels because the government would have to condemn every parcel individually to achieve the maximum amount of money from the government to bring it back. no other city hair in the country has in effect let something slip away as significant as they did between new york and scranton. 15 years later. somebody said, you can condemn the land to bring it acting to service but then you have to build the railroad. i cannot take your land as a government agency and not use it. i have to rebuild the railroad with that is the purpose of the condemnation. 9/11 occurred. we have a recession. new jersey and pennsylvania are struggling to make this project work. new york and scranton are likely to go without rail service for

white sometime -- four quite some time. let's talk about the midwest for a minute and some of your findings. we look at the midwestern rail corridor's and think about how these routes are privately run railroads with enormous potential for public use. this map shows the relative size of cities around the midwest. chicago, detroit. links to large cities. chicago to omaha links not so large cities with large cities. some have attractive stops. the twin cities route. others serve largely for two end points. chicago st. louis. we evaluate these quarters using the gravity model .

it has been fun seeing all the different result. there is no easy right answer for which quarter has been the most attractive. what do the studies show? >> cincinnati was the most attractive because it goes through indianapolis and adds more demand from the other potential route. it is also more economically healthy. i looked at the unemployment rate of the cities. that adds more demand. professor schwieterman: at first glance it doesn't look very attractive. you add the intermediate stop indianapolis and model that. there is a lot of traffic.

unemployment cincinnati has fared relatively well. cincinnati, in a study i did, it came to the m same conclusion. others found different rings. -- things. sure. >> twin cities, chicago twin cities. i found that the two endpoints draw together. there are stops in between that are fairly sizable and friendly to public transit. that is what struck me about minneapolis and st. paul as well. they are moving towards light rail. they have installed four lines. there a lot of branches to go to and it would be easy for travelers without cars to get around. >> good synopsis.

the environmental characteristics are favorable. the distance is problematic. endpoints are much more, it is a transit aggressive city as his medicine. you have synergy there. >> i tracked travel time versus train time. they were pretty close. you are not going through city after city after city. you are not hitting the slowdown point as often. in reality, it takes you however long to drive. professor schwieterman: there is a time difference. it is quite competitive. >> with the twin cities, i looked a lot at universities and how many students there are. because the university of minnesota is so large, it has

such a big population, it is important that i added wisconsin on the route as well given all of the travel, especially for college students going for interviews or being able to travel between cities is important. a lot of college students don't have cars. >> that is a factor we talked about last week. madison, that is why it is outsized in interest. there is a rail friendly demographic. that has me the demise of the high-speed rail controversial. great comments. let's look at why this creates a difficult public process. we take these routes and show which cases agencies have an

effect prevented a route from being lost or abandoned as railroads cut back. we take the map and look at routes. many of them have had segments where significant links were at risk of being pulled up or torn up. the private railroad industry had relatively little use. it was lightly used and held for the possibility of high-speed. in michigan, there is a segment that was at risk of being lost. governments have a responsibility to be stewards over these corridors. as the industry retrench is. a couple of final thoughts. to give you a sense of that, if you go to the cleveland corridor, one segment is one of the most famous routes in the u.s. the route of the broadway limited from chicago to new

york. the future of the cleveland corridor through for duane -- fort wayne, the route of the broadway limited. that has been restored. it keeps the promise of rail service on the chicago-fort wayne route very much alive. which would he critical to rebuild service to cleveland. if we go to michigan when amtrak , was created, it created a difficult proposition that could it had to take ownership of some of the route. it was going to be pulled up. the most direct route from chicago to destroy was on the threshold of being lost area. it was a quired by amtrak. we heard from our speaker, dave phillips.

in addition to this segment, the state of michigan has acquired large segments of the detroit route which make it almost entirely in public control which is an exciting prospect. the last thing i will close on is around the country we are seeing a lot of aggressive action. look at these old corridors. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]