Union Stations: The Best, the Worst, and the Mildly Regrettable

Union stations why are there so many why are they called that and what are the best ones I've got all that and all kinds of honorable dishonorable and other kinds of mentions and it's all coming up this is City nerd weekly content on cities and transportation viewers suggested topics are cool but I can't blame anyone else for this one because this really is something I've thought about off and on because I'm a weirdo and it finally got so bad I just had to make a video about it you see it may be that the only thing I love more than trains is train stations the sights and sounds the vibe of all the people coming and going it's all good stuff also I make no apology for liking cool historic buildings for their own sake so one question you might have right off the bat is isn't just talking about a particular subset of train station that it just happens to be called the Union Station just sort of arbitrary and more importantly isn't this Penn Station Erasure well the answer to both of those questions is yes and I make no apology for it to be fair union stations do exist in every region of the US and unlike Penn Station they aren't usually associated with a specific railroad a train station with Union in the name can be associated with the Union Pacific Railroad but more often the word Union just indicates that it's a place where several different railroad Services come together so the criteria to qualify for this list is simple it just has to be a train station that has the word Union in its name and it doesn't even have to be in the United States how I scored them okay I know I said earlier I just like the architecture and the historic aspect of train stations but none of that really matters if it isn't a useful all functional train station and trust me I will come back to non-functional train stations but for this list the criteria is really which Union stations have the greatest combination and frequency of inter-city regional and local trains and that last one can be heavy or a light rail fair warning the sheer size of the list of mentions I want to do is just enormous so there are going to be a few tangents along the way okay you've been cautioned so let's get into it number 10 Kansas City Union Station it feels kind of good to put Casey in a top 10 list although the fact that one Amtrak Southwest Chief and two Missouri River Runners a day is all you need to get on this list plus a connection to the Kansas City streetcar is a bit of a sad commentary on the state of Passenger rail in the US number nine is Portland Union Station currently four Cascades a day and one Coast Starlight for your north south travel needs one Empire Builder a day going out to Chicago and a MAX Station a black South serving the green and yellow lines the Cascades is finally using the Point Defiance bypass alignment several years after the 2017 derailment of the very first run on that new alignment I kind of want to do a video on that just let me know if you're interested number eight is Alexandria Union Station in Virginia Alexandria is a stop on the northeast corridor's Virginia service and it does get all the different Amtrak Services coming up from the south it is a stop on both the Fredericksburg and the Manassas lines on the VRE regional service and it connects to both the blue and the yellow lines on the DC Metro now for this one I did apply a penalty because I didn't want to give Alexandria full credit for Services where the demand is really associated with a different Union Station a few miles to the north so Alexandria Union is a small station but it's pretty functional as opposed to all of the following cities which have Union stations but the actual passenger service in the city goes to entirely different locations Tacoma Union Station very cool building but it's a courthouse now the actual Amtrak station in Tacoma is a Seattle Union Station also not a train station but it is the headquarters of Sound Transit and the station that actually does serve passenger rail is nearby and it's pretty good Salt Lake City Union Pacific Depot but slc's actual Amtrak station is the Intermodal Transportation Center like a mile walk to the Southwest Ogden Utah also not really a functioning train station and it's got a car museum in it just stop it Houston Union Station only exists as part of the home ballpark for a baseball team I'm not even going to dignify by naming the city's actual Amtrak station is just very Houston it's a shed under a freeway overpass speaking of sheds under overpasses here's St Louis's current Amtrak station and here's Union Station honestly maybe the coolest historic train station in the country and they've tried to do everything with it but use it for a train station so you can't get to Kansas City or Chicago from here but you can play mini golf subject yourself to a mirror Miz do a ropes course and well there is a train at the train station but it's an interactive selfie Museum there's actually a longer list of these non-train station Union stations but let's just finish with Ottawa Canada which is actually currently home to the Senators not the Ottawa hockey team I mean actual Senators like it's literally where the Canadian Senate convenes and they use the station's main Concourse as the Senate chamber let's get back to the list number seven is Eddie Bernice shots on Union Station in Dallas just one Intercity train a day Amtrak's Texas Eagle so that's poor but decent regional service on the Trinity Railway Express and local service on the dart blue and red lines and a Dallas streetcar stop this is as good a time as I need to bring a another notable Union Station that's in Texas sort of it's in Texarkana and it is a station that looks like it should be defunct but it actually is a stop on the Texas Eagle route as well I wouldn't bother talking about this one at all but the station itself is literally split by the Texas Arkansas State Line I don't know I guess I'd have a hard time choosing between Texas and Arkansas too number six New Haven Union Station this was a tough one to place it's on the Northeast Corridor so there's lots of inner city service including up to Vermont and all the trains do stop at New Haven it's also a Terminus for CT rails Shoreline East and Hartford lines and of course mta's New Haven line on the Metro North Regional system but it's New Haven so there's no local rail New England was honestly just tough to judge in general I'm gonna give honorable mentions to Springfield and Worcester for decent Intercity and some commuter service also Hartford and New London for Intercity service and Waterbury just for looking cool number five is Los Angeles Union Station it kind of feels like it should be higher on this list but lower at the same time it does have everything a good variety of Amtrak Services most of which unfortunately operate like once a day it is the Hub of LA's regional rail network the Metrolink but the metrolink's frequencies are pretty atrocious and it does get service on the LA Metro's aab and d-lines but again the frequencies are pretty disappointing I do love the station itself but no bonus points for that number four is Denver Union Station also a lovely building beautifully renovated the Intercity service is lacking just the one California Zephyr a day but lots of regional service and a decent amount of Light Rail service on the RTD system enough to put it above La in my Reckoning but can we please get Front Range passenger rail all the way down to El Paso asking for a friend okay I have the top three coming up which you might be able to guess what they are but maybe not the order I have them in and several more honorable and dishonorable mentions as well but first brief reminder to like And subscribe if you two are an enjoyer of trains connect on the apps yes there is no a threads account and I'm just going to start pruning apps off this pop-up if you want to support the channel directly and leave your comments somewhere where I actually read them patreon is probably the way to go honorable mentions it's actually tough to find any honor here because all of these stations should have more service but Pittsburgh Union Station is a gem and it does serve the capital limited and the Pennsylvanian no local or Regional Rail but it is served by the Martin Luther King your bus away which is probably better than some Urban rail services in the U.S Raleigh North Carolina also with Intercity service only but I give it credit for being kind of sleek and modern it's kind of optimistic to spend a lot of money on an inner city rail station these days and I love that they called it Union Station note that everything else on this list dates to a time in the U.S when the word Union largely had positive connotations thanks Reagan and then finally Winnipeg Manitoba just one train a day on via's cross-country Canadian route and it has a stop on Winnipeg's brt system so not much service but yeah look at it dishonorables honestly just about everything in this video is a dishonorable mention but let's go to Cincinnati gorgeous but three trains a week and pretty atrocious Transit service and Phoenix Amtrak used to go through Phoenix and you know it just kind of skirts around the city man I'm just dying to make a contrarian video about how Phoenix is actually a cool Bastion of urbanism if you squint the right way but this is not that video dishonorables for having pretty buildings but no passenger service anywhere in the city not even in sheds under freeways Louisville Kentucky which is a nice looking Transit Agency headquarters these days Nashville Tennessee just a nice looking hotel now Pueblo Colorado it's a nice looking Railway Museum with some office space all these buildings are just waiting for the return of some mythical age of Great American passenger rail Front Range bullet train let's make it happen and finally I'm not really talking about long demolished Union stations today but there's no shortage of them I'll just briefly mention Columbus Ohio gorgeous arcaded building on High Street built in 1899 and demolished in 1977 so they could build a Convention Center the arcading is still echoed in the High Street freeway overpass roughly in the same location pretty gruesome I think it's true that Columbus is the largest U.S metro area without any form of Intercity Regional or Urban rail although I I guess that depends whether you're willing to concede that the Las Vegas Monorail is urban rail questionable anyway the whole Columbus situation is just pretty sad and I already know what the libertarian response to this is which is well if people really wanted to ride trains all these stations would still be in operation as if we didn't completely disinvest in passenger rail in the middle of the 20th century and literally spend the 2023 equivalent of trillions of dollars building the interstate highway system okay I'm gonna fight the urge to go on a longer rant about that and just keep it moving to number three which is Washington DC Union Station you know going into this I thought DC would probably top this list it does have the best Intercity service of any Union Station with lots of vasela and northeast regional service and a bunch of other Amtrak Services it's got three Mark Regional Rail services and two VRE Services it's got to stop on the Metro red deadline and a stop on the DC streetcar line but the two stations ahead of it on this list are quite a bit stronger on regional and local service number two is Chicago Union Station it is the hub for more different Amtrak Services than any other station on this list and they're mostly pretty low frequency but you can get to a lot of different cities in a few hours for regional service Union Station is the hub for several Metro lines but a lot of Chicago's Regional Rail terminates at other downtown hubs like Ogilvy and Millennium so Chicago does get penalized on this list for having multiple rail hubs for local service there isn't a dedicated Union Station rail stop but the loop and the blue line will get you within a couple blocks gotta be honest though even if all the metro and CTA Services converged on Union Station I still don't know if it could have dislodged in my number one which as an extremely patriotic U.S citizen it gives me no pleasure to report to you is Toronto Union Station this is a result I wasn't really expecting until I took a clear idea to look at the data Intercity service not the best on this list you do have VIA Rail service to the East and all the way across the country to Vancouver and down to Windsor and the maple leaf down to New York but it's the other services that put Toronto over the top it's the Hub of the entire GO train Network which isn't Amazing by International standards but it's a pretty good Network for North American Regional Rail with very good frequencies on some lines and for local service it has a station on line one which does run at two to three minute headways at busy times and a couple of the Tram routes also stop at Union Station so that's it Canada wins let me know where you think I got are wrong down in the comments but that is all I got thanks for joining today and thanks to the patrons for continuing to help me make this a better Channel I'm going to be visiting more cities this year and shooting videos on location and I should have one of those coming next week until then keep the great topic suggestions coming and I'll see you next Wednesday

Channel: CityNerd

Views: 124,291

Keywords: urbanism, urbanist, urban, urban talk, urbanism sociology, urban exploration, urbanism as a way of life, urbanism architecture, urbanist exploring cities, urbanist session, urban planning problems, urban planning, city planning, urban design, cities, cities skylines, public transport, go transit

Id: SaK1tohYeVI

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2023