The Vernon J. Ehlers Station is a

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

Grand Rapids, Michigan Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County, Michigan, Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the List of municipalities in Mi ...

, United States served by

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

, the U.S. national railroad passenger system. The station is the terminus of the Pere Marquette line that connects Chicago's Union Station to Grand Rapids. It opened at its new location on Century Avenue under the Wealthy Street/ US Highway 131 overpass, immediately south of The Rapid's

Central Station Central stations or central railway stations emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as railway stations that had initially been built on the edge of city centres were enveloped by urban expansion and became an integral part of the ...

. It is named in honor of then-Congressman Vernon J. Ehlers. The new central location allows easy connections to twenty local

Rapid Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a ''run'' (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a ''cascade''. ...

buses as well as

Greyhound The English Greyhound, or simply the Greyhound, is a breed of dog, a sighthound which has been bred for coursing, greyhound racing and hunting. Since the rise in large-scale adoption of retired racing Greyhounds, the breed has seen a resurge ...

and

Indian Trails Indian Trails, Inc. is an inter-city bus company based in Owosso, Michigan, with offices in Romulus (in Metro Detroit) and Kalamazoo. History Indian Trails was founded in 1910 in Owosso as the Phillips-Taylor Livery Service, whose main busi ...

intercity services. No plans have been announced yet to move

Megabus Megabus may refer to: *Megabus (Europe), a low-cost coach service with services in Europe owned by ComfortDelGro. *Megabus (North America) Megabus, branded as megabus.com, is an intercity bus service of Coach USA/ Coach Canada operating in the ...

services from their location opposite the old Amtrak station at Wealthy/Market to complete the multimodal transit hub.

History

The earlier

Union Station A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...

(1900) was demolished, 1958–1959, to make way for US Highway 131 expansion into an freeway. Several companies ran passenger trains through the station:

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midw ...

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

and

Pere Marquette Railway The Pere Marquette Railway operated in the Great Lakes region of the United States and southern parts of Ontario in Canada. It had trackage in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and the Canadian province of Ontario. Its primary connections in ...

later assumed by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. The previous Amtrak station opened in 1984 at the corner of Wealthy Street and Market Avenue in downtown Grand Rapids. In October 2011, groundbreaking occurred on the new station. It is named in honor of former Michigan Congressman

Vern Ehlers Vernon James Ehlers (February 6, 1934 – August 15, 2017) was an American physicist and politician who represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 until his retirement in 2011. A Republican, he also served eight years ...

. The new station enables fully intermodal transit while allowing for more efficient train turnarounds. It was funded by a US$3.8 million grant from the

Federal Railroad Administration The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is an agency in the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). The agency was created by the Department of Transportation Act of 1966. The purpose of the FRA is to promulgate and enforce rail saf ...

and $850,000 from the City of Grand Rapids. Due to delays in construction from

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

and the City of Grand Rapids, the station construction started in the summer of 2013. The new station opened on October 27, 2014. Like its predecessor, the station has no checked baggage service, and is open one hour before trains arrive. However, a Quik-Trak kiosk is available. A

Thruway Motorcoach Amtrak Thruway is a system of through-ticketed transportation services to connect passengers with areas not served by Amtrak trains. In most cases these are dedicated motorcoach routes, but can also be non-dedicated intercity bus services, tran ...

route runs between this station and

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropolit ...

to connect with the ''

Wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for "gluttony, glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is ...

.''

Transit connections

lies a short distance north of the new Amtrak station.

References

External links

Grand Rapids Station (Michigan Passenger Stations)
{{Grand Rapids, Michigan Amtrak stations in Michigan Railway stations in the United States opened in 1984 Transportation in Grand Rapids, Michigan Buildings and structures in Grand Rapids, Michigan Transportation buildings and structures in Kent County, Michigan