The tunnel obviated this. That much was in its favor. It also obviated the Michigan Central's long-established passenger-station at the river-front in downtown Detroit and--in order to avoid a reverse movement of fast through trains--made it necessary to build the handsome new station in a rather inaccessible part of the town. That much was against the new tunnel.
Yet if the Michigan Central had been possessed of a real vision it might easily have made a complete triumph of the change. Let me show you how it could have been done.
Suppose, if you will, a loop created by the taking over of the Brush Street passenger terminal and approach tracks of the Grand Trunk--so long used by the Detroit branch of the New York Central--and then the Grand Trunk, along with the Canadian Pacific and the Wabash, invited and urged to use the Michigan Central tunnel and passenger-station, at a fair compensation, of course. Then suppose a short length of rapid transit railroad--it probably would be an elevated structure--built along the water-front from the old Michigan Station to the Brush Street Station. Ergo! A complete standard railroad loop has been created threading upon its way the new passenger-station, now transformed into a real union station for all the standard railroads entering Detroit.
Now turn your atlas quickly to the map of Toledo. A similar possibility exists there. The parallel railroads of the Vanderbilts coming in from Detroit sweep around two sides of the town. There is abundant trackage upon the other two sides. A loop has been created, a double-tracked loop, if you please, with an excellent double-tracked link (easily capable of further multiple-tracking) connecting them. The old New York Central Station at Toledo is nearly as badly located in reference to the town as the new Michigan Central one in Detroit. Yet with this double loop that I have so roughly indicated there could be a constant and high-speed operation of electric multiple-unit rapid transit trains, free from all street traffic interruptions. A man coming into the main passenger terminal of either town from New York or Chicago or any other outlying city, by a swift and easy platform change of cars, could be set down in a few more minutes in virtually any section that he wished to reach.