Michigan Services

Michigan Services are three Amtrak passenger rail routes connecting Chicago, Illinois with the Michigan cities of Grand Rapids, Port Huron, and Detroit, and stations en route. The group is a component of the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative.

The Michigan Services routes are:

The routes carried 804,697 passengers during fiscal year 2013.

Up until fiscal year 2014, the State of Michigan only subsidized the operations of the Pere Marquette and Blue Water at a cost of $8 million in fiscal year 2014. Starting fiscal year 2014, the state took on the costs of operations for the Wolverine pushing the state subsidy to $25 million.

The Detroit-Chicago corridor has been designated by the Federal Railroad Administration as a high-speed rail corridor. A 97-mile (156 km) stretch along the route of Blue Water and Wolverine from Porter, Indiana to Kalamazoo, Michigan is the longest segment of track owned by Amtrak outside of the Northeast Corridor. Amtrak began speed increases along this stretch in January 2002 to 95 mph (153 km/h) between Niles and Kalamazoo. Increases to 110 mph (180 km/h) were approved in February 2011 between Porter and Kalamazoo. Further expansion of speeds to 110 mph (180 km/h) to Dearborn, Michigan are underway.

The Michigan Department of Transportation has petitioned Amtrak to add a daily train between Chicago and Kalamazoo, departing Chicago in late evening and returning from Kalamazoo in the morning. Amtrak operated an extra frequency during the Labor Day weekend in 2010. The trains, 356–357, left Kalamazoo at 5:50 am and returned from Chicago at 10:00 pm. In 2013 Amtrak ran special holiday trains, numbers 356 & 359 out of Chicago to Ann Arbor. These trains arrived in Ann Arbor at 3pm and departed west an hour later at 4pm. There are proposals to establish passenger service between Detroit and Grand Rapids via Lansing.

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