The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest

A Meeting of the Minds in Chicago

Can major research universities use the immense resources at their command – the storehouses of data, the research techniques, the expertise in analyzing problems, mostly their sheer brainpower – to help solve the problems of the great cities where many of them reside? It seems obvious that the answer is yes, but for many universities, this leap from theory to practice remains a step too far.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs held a three-day conference this week to explore what can be done about this. In many ways, the conference – called “Global Urban Challenges: The Role of Research Universities” – was unique. It certainly was useful. Whether it changes the world and the universities’ place in it remains to be seen.

First Steps Toward a Real Chicago Region

Three states – Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana – came together in Chicago’s Loop recently to talk about their common future. They didn’t decide anything and the conversation itself revealed how far they have to go. But this meeting simply wouldn’t have happened two years ago, and that’s progress in itself.

The meeting attracted the often-warring governors of the three states. Not that they were all there at the same time, or even shook hands. But their presence at least endorsed the idea that the three-state Chicago region might gain more from cooperation than cut-throat competition – and that wouldn’t have happened two years ago, either.

Chicago Regional Unity? Milwaukee Takes The Lead

We've written here before about the report earlier this year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which urged closer cooperation between the balkanized towns and cities in the Chicago economic area, around the south end of Lake Michigan.

Now, one of those cities, Milwaukee, has taken the lead. But Chicago also is paying attention. Good things might be about to happen.

Some Summer Stories

Vacation's over and it's time to catch up on the news. There's a lot of it, from the weather, to ethanol, to vacant airports: whatever happened to the dog days of summer? Herewith some thoughts on stories that popped out of newspapers awaiting me on my return.

Every Midwesterner knows we're in a hot dry summer. But it's farmers, suffering through a drought after that hot-and-cold spring, who are truly singing the blues. Talk to vendors in farmers' markets and you hear nothing but woe. Peaches are all but wiped out. The apple crop is down. U-Pick-Em blueberry farms are turning away tourists: the crop this year is too small.

The corn crop is the big story. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says about 40 percent of the crop in Iowa is in "good or excellent" shape, compared to 82 percent last year. Other states report the same. If we don't get big rains soon -- not just showers, but true soakers -- it's going to get worse.

Milwaukee and Chicago: One City or Two?

Earlier this spring, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued what it called a "territorial review" on the Chicago economic region, stretching from Milwaukee through northwest Indiana. Basically, the OECD said this region was much less than the sum of its parts, and needed some real cooperation, across state lines, to achieve a vibrant economy in the age of globalization.

At the time, I wrote about this report and expressed the hope that somebody in the region would jump on these ideas and try to turn them into reality. It looks now like this may be happening.

Chicago: What's Changed? What Hasn't?

A few years ago, The Chicago Council published a book called Global Chicago, with two goals in mind. The first was a wake-up call to Chicagoans that their old industrial City of the Big Shoulders was gone, replaced by a global city with new strengths and challenges. The second was an attempt -- probably the first anywhere -- to study globalization's impact on cities by looking hard at one of those cities.

I was talking recently with the editor of the book, Charles Madigan, then a writer and editor at the Chicago Tribune (as was I), now Presidential Writer in Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago. We were exploring what's changed in Chicago since the book came out, and what is unchanged -- or still undone.

The Global Economy Flies Away

We live in an interconnected world, dependent on links -- roads, telephones, fiber optic, airlines -- to keep us in touch with the global economy. If one of those links breaks, we are that much less connected to the world, that much further distant from the economy that determines our daily reality.

This is what may happen to 19 small cities in the Midwest, where Delta Airlines says it plans to change or shrink its service or end it altogether. In some of these cities, Delta is the only airline that flies in or out. If it leaves and if no other airline takes it place, these cities will become remote islands in the global sea, as cut off from the mainland as if someone dug up their highways or severed their phone lines.

All Aboard

Since we're talking about Germany (see previous post), it's a good time to look at the German high speed rail system and see whether, in this area too, that country has something to teach the Midwest.

Germany and the Midwest are roughly the same size. Both are mostly flat. Germany has more people but both areas -- especially the Midwest east of the Mississippi -- are densely populated.

But in rail, they couldn't be more different. Germany has its Intercity-Express (ICE) network of high-speed trains, many of them running up to 200 miles per hour on tracks so smooth that the wine in your glass barely jiggles as you race through the countryside. The Midwest, like the rest of the United States, has Amtrak. If you haven't ridden Amtrak, be assured that all the awful stories you hear about it are true.

For the Midwest, there's got to be a better way and copying the German ICE system might be it. Many Midwesterners want to see this happen -- the Midwest High Speed Rail Association is the best source. All this was discussed at a meeting in Omaha this summer. One result was a paper from the German company, Siemens, called "High-Speed Trains Running on Freight Line Tracks: The Experience of Germany."

Thanks For Nothing

President Obama, it seems, has just stiffed Illinois and the Midwest on high-speed rail. A lot of people hereabouts will be crying over this let-down. The rest of us -- people who really care about the long-term future of the region -- should send the president a big thank-you card.

Obama, coming off his State of the Union message, went to Tampa, Florida, to announce $8 billion in grants to develop the first American high-speed, intercity rail service -- basically 13 separate "rail corridors" between major cities. The president said this would be a big job-creator. At least 30 rail manufacturers are bidding for contracts, he said.

Of this money, Illinois is to get about $1.23 billion, to start building a line between Chicago and St. Louis -- actually, mostly tracks and other infrastructure between Alton, outside St. Louis, and Dwight, south of Chicago. Wisconsin is to get another $823 million for a Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison project.

This sounds like a lot of money. It also sounds like a victory for both Illinois and Wisconsin, two hard-hit states who need all the federal funds they can get. Actually, it's both a defeat and a victory.

It's a defeat for Illinois officials, including Gov. Pat Quinn, who had hoped to get about twice as much -- $2 billion to $2.5 billion -- to start work on passenger service between Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and other cities. The state's application had asked for $4.5 billion.The actual money is much less.

But it's a victory for more far-sighted people who know that the plans Quinn and others had in mind that would lock Illinois and the Midwest into a Toonerville Trolley system, a 110-miles-per-hour version of the true high-speed rail that much of the rest of the world, from China to France, already has in place. 

De-railing the Midwest

Everybody, it seems, agrees that the Midwest needs high speed rail. The problem is that no one agrees what high speed rail really is.

The inside track right now seems to belong to proposals for "high-speed rail" with inter-city trains reaching top speeds of 110 miles per hour, and average speeds (counting station stops) of about 78 miles per hour. These trains presumably would be run by Amtrak and, in fact, amount to not much more than a slightly speedier version of the present Amtrak. 

Advocates of "real high speed rail" (as they call it) want a system with trains reaching top speeds of 220 miles per hour, with average speeds of about 150 miles per hour. This is what most of the world considers high speed rail to be: it's about average for many European countries and, indeed, is a bit slower than trains in China and France.

For baffling reasons, much of the Midwest seems ready to walk when it can run, to go for snail rail when it could get the real thing. Clearly, moving at 110-mph in a 220-mph world means that the Midwest, already lagging in the global sweepstakes, will get left in the dust. But, if current plans prevail, this is what will happen.

These two attitudes were on display Jan. 15 at a Chicago meeting, sponsored by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and called "Beyond Transportation: The Economic Impact of Rail in Illinois." The meeting dealt with both passenger and freight traffic, the latter also a crucial issue in Midwestern economic planning. But much of the conversation centered on high speed rail, defined vaguely.