Just going by amount of jobs needed, it could be argued that the Midwest needs new high-speed rail corridors more than any other region. The massive amount of job vacancies in the Rust Belt cities such as Detroit, Cleveland and Indianapolis could be cut dramatically if there was a way to get fast rail between them—and to job-rich Chicago—and dead stations could benefit by the added rail use.

However, even the two major arteries given priority by President Barack Obama's high-speed rail vision, California and the Northeast, have had enormous trouble getting off the ground due to cost issues and other concerns, according to the infrastructure report by ULI/Ernst & Young. After three years, in early July 2012, Amtrak released a visioning plan for the Northeast and California legislators agreed to start building the state's first dedicated high-speed rail line (See Northeast report, page 37, and West report, page 42.)

The Midwest will take much longer, Ray Lang, chief of state government relations for Amtrak, tells Real Estate Forum. He says higher-speed rail is in the works for the Midwest lines, but confirmed that the desire is for "gradual implementation." And while light rail is still expanding in Chicago and some cities like Minneapolis, other cities are still passenger-rail poor, such as Detroit, which recently lost federal government confidence in a light rail project along Woodward Avenue.