Link to 3C Final Report - The Ohio State University

The Ohio & Lake Erie Regional Rail - Ohio Hub Study
Technical Memorandum & Business Plan
Exhibit 2-5: Cleveland-Pittsburgh via Youngstown Route Segments
Segment 1: Cleveland-Ravenna
The Cleveland-Ravenna route segment is owned by Norfolk Southern. The heavily used route,
part of the NS Cleveland Line is 35.1-miles long, is located in Cuyahoga and Portage Counties,
and runs through or near the Cities of Cleveland, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, Bedford,
Walton Hills, Oakwood, Northfield, Macedonia, Hudson, Streetsboro and Ravenna. The route
has five highway/railroad grade crossings. Amtrak’s Capitol Limited operates over the line.
The existing mainline is double-track, welded rail and is in good condition. The maximum
freight speeds are 50-mph over the FRA Class 4 tracks.
The proposed improvements for the Cleveland-Ravenna route create additional mainline capacity
while upgrading the existing tracks. The Study assumes that freight and passenger trains would
co-mingle on the same tracks over this segment. Due to the heavy volume of freight rail traffic,
the complexity of operating through multiple connections, along with the constrained right-ofway,
improving this line segment to FRA Class 6 for 110-mph was not feasible. The proposed
improvements will allow a maximum passenger train speed of 79-mph.
This Study initially assumed that the alignment of the NS Cleveland Line would be used for the
entire passenger route segment from Cleveland to Ravenna. However, the inspection of the
corridor, southeast of Cleveland, identified the NS Maple Heights Intermodal Yard as a potential
operational bottleneck. It was concluded that the adjacent Erie Lackawanna Railroad and
Wheeling & Lake Erie (W&LE) Railroad rights-of-way offer an opportunity to bypass the NS
Section 2. Engineering Assessment and Capital Cost Estimates 2-15