One of the proposed advantages to train travel has been quick and easy access to downtowns where trains can get to but airplanes can’t. Many cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, etc. have always had their main depots downtown.
My question arises from a situation abrewing in my homestate of Minnesota. Years ago, Union Depot in Saint Paul, MN was the train station in the downtown area, but it is no longer a depot; instead we have a Midway Terminal between the two cities. There is a proposal on the table to revamp the Union Depot in Saint Paul as a train terminal. The question I have is then: are there any precendents for moving a major train depot into a downtown area when it hadn’t been there before? I am especially interested in the last 20 years, as I am interested in making a comparison between cities. If anyone had an inkling of an answer to this question, I knew it’d be the good folks on the SDMB.
I’ve always thought that the trend in the early part of the century was to get all the passenger lines to come to one central station in the downtown area of a city, so you could coordinate service better. That’s why there are a lot of “Union Stations” in the U.S.
But since you can pretty much only travel on Amtrak, I suppose you catch the train at whatever place Amtrak feels is worth its while.
In Los Angeles, there used to be several stations scattered throughout the city, but then Union Station opened in the 1930s I believe.
In London there are so many stations that you really have to know which stations have trains that go to certain places. And Tokyo is sort of the same way.
Just how much rail travel is there in Minnesota? I doubt that Amtrak does a lot of business there.
There is one each way each day through-Amtrak train: Chicago-Spokane. They are talking of adding 5 or six trains though (talking being the key word). There is also talk of Regional Rail (again with the talking not so much the doing). The move to Union Depot is more than talking at this point, though.
I think Boston is served by both North Station and South Station, which aren’t connected. Most traffic seems to go to South Station, though. I guess you can also use Back Bay Station (which has a concrete slab denoting that it was the NY NH & HRR station), but that’s just down the line from South Station.