Moline, Ill., there is a new train station in the same building as a new hotel and just-opened stores.
All that’s needed is the train.
The Quad Cities have wanted a passenger train to and from Chicago since the Rock Island Rocket stopped service to the community of Mississippi River towns in the 1970s. Legislators began planning a new line a decade ago, but the project has been frozen a few times since, most recently during the Illinois budget impasse.Rockford wants a train too — the old Black Hawk train from Chicago through Rockford to Dubuque, Iowa, stopped running in 1981. Plans for a new Black Hawk also were put on hold.
But with the election of Democrat J.B. Pritzker as governor, and with strong local support, hopes are rising for the eventual revival of both routes.
“We’re hoping with the new administration that they’ll put a higher emphasis on passenger rail and keep it moving,” said Ray Forsythe, planning and development director with the city of Moline, which is part of the Quad Cities along the Illinois and Iowa border. “… We’re pretty excited.”
As for the Rockford line, “It’s a popular idea in northern Illinois,” said state Sen. Steve Stadelman, a Democrat from nearby Caledonia. “It’s a matter of getting the political will and the financing. … We have a new governor who talked about the importance of transportation infrastructure. I hope he’s willing to take a look at the idea.”
Funding for both projects came out of the 2009 capital bill — the last one seen in the state. The state appropriated $150 million for Amtrak expansion for both the Quad Cities route and service to Dubuque via Rockford, along with money for rail upgrades for the existing line between Chicago and St. Louis, said Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association.
Plans for the Black Hawk line were limited to Rockford first, with the idea of pushing onto Dubuque later.
In 2011, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded a $177.3 million grant to the Illinois Department of Transportation to complete planning, environmental review, design and construction of the Quad Cities line, with the intent of having two passenger rail service round trips daily.
But in 2015, “a few projects were put on pause,” IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said. These included plans for both new rail routes.
Harnish said it was harder to get service started on the Quad Cities line than anticipated.
“The Illinois Department of Transportation worked on it while they were trying to do many things at once” Harnish said. “They weren’t able to get the deal done.”
The Quad Cities route would run along BNSF tracks to the small village of Wyanet in Bureau County, at which point the rail switches to a different owner, the Iowa Interstate Railroad, which carries freight.
Illinois resumed planning and engineering work on the Quad Cities line in late 2016 and resumed talks with the Iowa Interstate late last year, Tridgell said. Negotiations on the Black Hawk route with Union Pacific have not resumed, he said.
About $25 million in improvements to BNSF’s Eola Yard in Aurora were finished within the past year, Tridgell said. These were needed to accommodate extra trains that would be using the yard once the Chicago-Moline service begins.
Amtrak passenger service already runs along the line from Chicago to Quincy. Federal Railroad Administration spokeswoman Desiree French said improvements on the BNSF line are already helping Amtrak’s California Zephyr and Southwest Chief long-distance services.
The state and the railroad administration are negotiating with the Iowa Interstate about upgrades needed for passenger service along the single-track line from Wyanet to Moline. These include installation of positive train control, a federally mandated system designed to automatically stop a train to avoid danger if an engineer fails to do it. There also needs to be a connection between the BNSF and Iowa lines.
A representative from Iowa Interstate Railroad was not available for comment.
There was concern that the federal grant would expire, but IDOT has worked out extensions, Tridgell said. He could not give a timeline for when the Moline line could happen.
Though there has been no recent financial help for the Rockford line, voters in Winnebago and Boone counties overwhelmingly approved an advisory referendum supporting it in the Nov. 6 election.
Amtrak is interested in operating both the Rockford and the Quad Cities routes, when and if they happen, spokesman Marc Magliari said. He noted that studies of both routes have shown them to have high potential for passengers.
Meanwhile, traffic is growing on the route from Chicago to St. Louis, which shows the demand for passenger trains in the state. With ongoing improvements along the route, including track upgrades for higher speeds and new stations and locomotives, passenger volume has grown to 719, 634 in the most recent fiscal year, up 12 percent from 2010, Magliari said.
Getting more state money, and in turn more federal money, for routes to the Quad Cities and Rockford will not be easy. It will first require a new state capital bill. A spokeswoman for Pritzker said the incoming governor is committed to “working across the aisle” to get a capital plan that will leverage as much federal money as possible. Lawmakers say they expect it will happen next year.
But there will be a lot of competition for that money from other infrastructure needs, especially roads, water systems and transit agencies.
Moline’s Forsythe remains optimistic. He said a train would connect the Quad Cities with the Chicago area and will be a great help to students from Western Illinois University’s Quad Cities campus and Augustana and St. Ambrose colleges.
“We’re just being patient,” he said.
mwisniewski@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @marywizchicago
