Musk, 3 other teams vie for O’Hare express
Now that visionary billionaire Elon Musk and three other teams have joined the competition, is the elusive dream of a high- speed rail line between downtown and O’Hare Airport any closer to reality?
Not necessarily, with all the strings Mayor Rahm Emanuel attached.
Emanuel has ruled out even a penny of taxpayer support. He wants a system running every 20 minutes, 20 hours a day, bankrolled exclusively by project revenues — fares, advertising and transitoriented development — while also demanding that fares stay below the cost of a cab or Uber.
Joseph Schofer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, believes that’s too many conditions to impose before bidding starts.
“When you put all of that together, how big is the operating window? The more requirements you put on a project like this, the less flexibility you give to the designers, the less creativity they may be able to deliver, and the harder it may be for them to put this together and make it happen,” Schofer said.
“It seems like they’re asking for a lot and the city is not taking any risk at all. It would be interesting for the city to listen to alternative ideas and see what comes up, as opposed to defining a very narrow path.”
A top mayoral aide, who asked to remain anonymous, stressed that the four teams that responded are heavyweights.
They are: Musk’s The Boring Company; Oaktree Capital Manage- ment; O’Hare Express Train Partners, a partnership between Amtrak, OHL Infrastructure and Kiewit; and O’Hare Xpress LLC, whose participants include Meridiam, Antarctica Capital, JLD Infrastructure, Mott MacDonald and First Transit.
“These are significant teams of experienced industry people who have built enormous infrastructure projects all over the world. They don’t do this lightly,” the Emanuel adviser said.
The Emanuel adviser said the idea to use no public money “was just a baseline. If we had said there was public money, you would have been all over us in a second saying, ‘ Where are you gonna get that money?’”
Musk’s Jetsons- like plan is to build a high- speed loop using elec- tric pods in underground tunnels.
That has a ‘ wow’ factor to justify premium fares, particularly on the heels of this week’s rocket launch by Musk- owned SpaceX.
But Schofer has his doubts about Musk’s ability to deliver.
“My colleagues in geo- tech engineering . . . have said his claim that he can tunnel at a much lower cost may be exaggerated,” Schofer said.
“How happy will people be to be in an enclosed tube for that 20- minute trip as opposed to seeing the city?” he added.
Every day, 20,000 downtown passengers race to get to O’Hare. That’s expected to grow to at least 35,000 by 2045.
Schofer is not at all certain that’s enough to sustain a privately built express train — above or below ground.
Toronto’s high- speed rail line, opened before the 2015 Pan Am Games, struggled to reach ridership goals, and the $ 27.50 fare was cut in half.
“I don’t think it’s a market that will support this as a profit- making operation. If there’s 20,000 people now, they’re not gonna get 20,000 people to do that. It’s gonna be a fraction of that. And what’s the long- term trend?” Schofer said.
Schofer said the best thing the O’Hare express project has going for it is the empty Block 37 superstation. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley spent $ 200 million on it, but it sits empty; his plan to attract Chinese investors fell flat.
If passengers can check and screen luggage at the Block 37 station, that could help justify a premium fare.