(The following story by Thomas Geyer appeared on the Quad City Times website on September 30, 2009.)
DAVENPORT, Iowa — For proponents of passenger rail service between Chicago and Iowa City, having the chance Tuesday to see routes validated that it just may become a reality.
“I think it’s very exciting,” Darrell Terronez of Silvis, Ill., said at a public comment session at the i wireless Center in Moline. “This will be great for the area, as we get tourists from the Chicago area.”
Of course, travel to Chicago will be much easier, he said.
Terronez said that when he and his wife travel to Chicago, they sometimes will drive to Naperville, Ill., and take the train to see plays and other events.
Tammy Nicholson of the Iowa Department of Transportation said an environmental assessment of two proposed routes for service from Chicago to Iowa City has been completed. Now, she added, the public has until Oct. 15 to comment on the assessment.
Route A, or the northern route would start at Union Station, travel along the BNSF Railway and pass through Naperville, Plano, Mendota and Princeton before connecting with the Iowa Interstate Railroad at Wyanet.
The southern route, or Route B, would follow the METRA line from Union Station to Joliet and then go to Morris and LaSalle on the CSXT rail line, which moves freight. It would then connect at Wyanet.
After Wyanet, the trains would travel west to Geneseo, the Quad-Cities and Iowa City.
“We looked at both routes with the environmental assessment, and there are a number of things pointing to Route A as being the preferred route, and that’s because the route is shorter; it’s about 20 miles shorter in length,” Nicholson said. “It also already has some passenger rail service at 79 mph for a major part of the route.”
That means it would require fewer upgrades to prepare it for passenger service, she added. Also, ridership estimates are higher for Route A, and the overall environmental effects are less.
Like all rail service everywhere, she said, it will continuously require government subsidies.
Rock Island Alderman Paul Foley, 3rd Ward, said the rail service has the potential to be an economic boon to the Quad-Cities.
“It will connect us to Chicago even further,” Foley said. “Chicago is a global economy, and you always want to be connected to those global economies. I think for tourism it’ll be great for the Quad-Cities as a whole, for all the events we have.”
George Weber, bureau chief of the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the deadline for submitting the application to the Federal Railroad Administration for funding is Friday.
There still will be much to work to do when funding begins rolling in, he added.
“Say we get our funding for 2010, we could have some of the corridor constructed by 2012,” Weber said. “I think our goal is to get everything done by 2014.”
Weber said that many people have been working for passenger rail service from Chicago to Iowa City for more than a decade, “and I think we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”