(The following story by Scott Richardson appeared on the Bloomington Pantagraph website on September 14.)
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Cutting minutes from a train ride between Normal and Chicago is taking years.
In 2002, news reporters joined government officials on an Amtrak passenger train in Normal to race over shiny upgraded rails toward Pontiac at speeds reaching 100 mph and more. The trip was to preview the imminent approach of high-speed rail service in Illinois. Officials promised Amtrak would slash 20 minutes from the trip between the Twin Cities and Chicago.
But safety issues sidetracked the project.
Now, six years later, officials are hoping the high-speed rail plan is moving ahead again — in time to take advantage of renewed interest in rail travel brought on by higher gasoline prices.
It’s about time for train advocates like Rick Harnish of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association.
“At the grassroots level, there’s an understanding that we need better trains and fast,” he said.
Regulations currently limit train speeds to 79 mph, and trains are running late far more often than not. Still, Amtrak is setting ridership records. July ridership was the highest in Amtrak’s 37-year history. August figures released last week showed more than 500,000 people have ridden Amtrak on the Chicago-to-St. Louis route so far during fiscal year 2008. That’s up 15 percent from a year earlier. Add in the Chicago-to-Quincy and Chicago-to-Carbondale routes and ridership leaps to just less than one million — up 16 percent from the same period in fiscal 2007.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., credits greater public awareness about the need to reduce dependence on foreign oil and cut pollution and traffic congestion.
“Amtrak is not the past. It is the future,” Durbin told an Amtrak summit in Normal a few weeks ago. “Aviation downsizing and the high cost of driving have led to a dramatic increase in Amtrak ridership.”
“Intercity corridors are up 20 percent with aging equipment and on-time performance not stellar,” added Amtrak president Alex Kummant.
Even more people are expected to answer the call of “all aboard” when every train on the St. Louis-to-Chicago corridor travels at more than 100 mph on the stretch from Springfield to Mazonia near Joliet by late 2010, said Michael Franke, Amtrak’s assistant vice president for state and commuter partnerships in the central region.
A handful of Amtrak trains travel at that speed now elsewhere in the United States. In the Midwest, a route in Michigan, which broke the 90 mph mark earlier this year, is slated to reach 100 mph before the end of 2008. At that pace, Franke estimated about 20 minutes could be cut from the 21⁄2 hours a train takes to reach Chicago now.
“For the Midwest, this is high speed,” Franke told the rail summit.
Reducing traffic
State officials decided to lay the groundwork for faster trains in Illinois beginning in the mid-1990s. The goal wasn’t to compete with airlines, but to reduce vehicle traffic, said George Weber, acting bureau chief for the bureau of railroads within the Illinois Department of Transportation.
“The idea was to get some cars off the road,” said Weber.
A few years later, the federal government targeted certain rail corridors for potential upgrade to high-speed service. Enough money, about $100 million, was found for the St. Louis-to-Chicago route. By 2004, track was improved to handle trains at speeds of 110 mph. At the same time, four safety gates, instead of the usual two, were installed at 69 public road crossings. Private crossings received two gates.
But that’s where progress stalled.
Because of the speeds involved, engineers could not depend on the old-style trackside light signals to alert them that tracks were clear ahead and still give them enough time to stop in emergencies. High-tech equipment was sought so signals inside the trains would let engineers know well in advance if the track was busy ahead.
The system also would allow the locomotive to stop automatically if the engineer failed to respond to a problem. The device would work as a fail-safe to prevent a real-life replay of the scene from the movie “Silver Streak” when an Amtrak train crashed into Union Station in downtown Chicago.
After several years and at least $12 million, designers could not get the new gizmo to work. As a result, Weber said the partners in the project recently decided to use an older system “off the shelf” that will do the job.
“The technology has been around since World War II,” Harnish said. “All we have to do is take the technology that’s been proven and put it to work between Joliet and Springfield.”
Money is a holdup now. About $10 million to $15 million more is needed to equip the trains with the devices. The state has applied for grants to get the job done. Approval could come any day. Franke said Amtrak also hopes for money to be included in the Illinois capital budget at the center of an ongoing stalemate between Gov. Rod Blagojevich and fellow Democrats in the Illinois House. Political support is there: Illinois currently is second only to California is providing state support for passenger rail service.
Weber said switching the Springfield-to-St. Louis segment to high-speed rail traffic could cost as much as $125 million more. If that was done, two hours could be cut from what is now a 51⁄2-hour trip from Chicago to St. Louis. But Weber doesn’t see that money becoming available any time soon.
Advocates like Harnish hope trains will go even faster one day, perhaps reaching speeds of 150 mph as they do in some places in Europe. He recently rode a train in Madrid that went so fast a trip from Chicago to Normal would take just 45 minutes.
“Imagine to be anywhere in the Midwest ready to do business in three to four hours. That changes everything,” Harnish said. “When you talk about Chicago to Minneapolis in 21⁄2 hours, it really changes the dynamic of how cities interacted. That is the kind of thing this country desperately needs.”
On time
But officials agree going faster will not mean much if trains still don’t arrive on time. On-time performance on the St. Louis-to-Chicago run has been as low as 14 percent during one month this year.
“That is unacceptable,” said Durbin.
The senator is insisting rail companies that own the tracks Amtrak leases do more to give passenger trains higher priority so they aren’t delayed by freight trains so often.
Aging Amtrak equipment and too few rail cars to handle new rail travelers also are issues. Durbin has introduced legislation to encourage rail car makers to relocate to the United States and to provide money to rehabilitate older Amtrak rolling stock.
“Just imagine if there were as many seats as people wanted to buy and if they were on time,” Harnish said. “We could double the length of these trains.”
Amtrak also is looking to expand trains traveling at standard speeds.
More trains have been added to existing routes, including from St. Louis to Chicago, in recent years. Three new routes are being explored in Illinois, including Chicago to the Quad Cities, Chicago to Peoria, and Chicago to Dubuque, Iowa by way of Rockford, Freeport and Galena.
Durbin thinks money for more and faster trains, more train cars and other improvements could come from devoting a portion of the highway gasoline tax to Amtrak.
Harnish sees reason for hope.
“It is clear people really want to be able to take the train,” Harnish said. “That message is getting through to elected leaders.”