ALL ABOARD
More Amtrak trains would be terrific for Chicago and the entire Midwest
President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan is an opportunity to get more Amtrak service rolling. Illinois and the entire Midwest would be smart to get behind the push.
Amtrak, the national passenger train service, has long been seen by some as an operation that works well on the East Coast, but not in parts of the country with less population density.
But a 2035 Vision Plan that Amtrak laid out recently shows how Chicago and other parts of the country could get an economic jump-start from Biden’s infrastructure legislation, titled the American Jobs Plan. Chicagoans before long could be riding trains to Duluth, Green Bay, Iowa City, Louisville and other cities, as well as enjoying more frequent train service to Carbondale, Champaign-Urbana, Milwaukee and St. Louis.
For many Americans, train trips would be more convenient and comfortable than short airplane flights, which require a drive to an airport and showing up a couple of hours early to get through security. And Amtrak makes stops along the way that airplanes don’t.
Amtrak would use much of the money from Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan to beef up its busy East Coast service. But it also hopes to add 30 new Amtrak routes and add trains to 20. As one of Amtrak’s major national hubs, Chicago would be linked to many more cities.
Amtrak does a better job of funding its operations through passenger fares than metro commuter rail services do. Yet Congress and many state officials have mercilessly squeezed its budget over the years. The result has been pared-back service and a lurching from funding crisis to funding crisis. Even in Illinois, which should know better as the historic heart of America’s railroads, former Gov. Bruce Rauner trimmed funding for Amtrak, delaying a decadeslong goal of 110-mph trains linking Chicago and St. Louis. But the 2019 capital bill in Illinois did include $500 million to establish new routes from Chicago to Rockford and the Quad Cities and improving service to Carbondale.
The states are required to partner with Amtrak, and if they won’t cover operating costs for routes of under 750 miles, Amtrak discontinues service. But Amtrak hopes Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which includes $80 billion to upgrade and expand the nation’s passenger and freight rail network, would allow it to cover the heavy costs of the first few years of adding service. After that, the states still would have to step up to pay operating costs, but the costs could be comparatively low.
“My big fear about policy is we will get a major infusion [of federal money] without the needed buy-in from state and local governments,” Joseph P. Schwieterman, director of DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, told us.
Expanding rail service — and maintaining it — is not easy.
Amtrak’s new service would run on existing freight lines, but this would require new holding tracks so that freight trains could move over to allow passenger trains to pass. That could run into community opposition. When Amtrak proposed a service upgrade between Chicago and Milwaukee a few years ago, residents of several North Shore communities fought to prohibit a holding track next to their Metra line, partly because it would eliminate a buffer of vegetation along the rails. Wisconsin is drawing up an alternative plan.
Freight train companies, which own most of the nation’s trackage, sometimes resist hosting less-profitable passenger service, even though Amtrak has the legal right to use the tracks. Amtrak is still trying to resume service on tracks washed out by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Amtrak recently filed a petition before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to gain authority to do so.
States might decide they don’t want to shoulder their share of the costs. When the U.S. Department of Transportation gave Ohio $400 million in 2010 to connect Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland, the state sent the money back.
The high cost of implementing Congress-mandated Positive Train Control, which helps keep trains from running into each other, shifts money from other priorities.
None of these hurdles should stop Amtrak in its tracks. The need for more service is clear. Amtrak trains stop in Houston, Atlanta and Cincinnati only once a day or less, sometimes in the middle of the night. Amtrak does not service major cities like Las Vegas, Nashville, Columbus and Phoenix at all.
Train advocates say Amtrak’s expansion plan represents the bare minimum of what needs to be done. For Chicago, additional investment — beyond Amtrak’s initial plan — could bring high-speed service to Milwaukee and other regional cities and a high-speed link between Union Station and O’Hare Airport’s terminals. Trains could zip between Chicago and Milwaukee in 60 minutes.
Historically when it comes to Amtrak, there has been a flood of funding from time to time, followed by years of going nowhere because of fights over cutting costs. That’s no way to run a railroad.
FOR CHICAGO, ADDITIONAL INVESTMENT — BEYOND AMTRAK’S INITIAL PLAN — COULD BRING HIGH-SPEED SERVICE TO MILWAUKEE AND OTHER REGIONAL CITIES AND A HIGH-SPEED LINK BETWEEN UNION STATION AND O’HARE AIRPORT’S TERMINALS.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, a Democrat, must be frustrated. On the steam of her passion for gun control, Kelly was elected in 2013 to serve Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District, which stretches from Chicago’s South Side to Kankakee.
Yet the poisonous threads of gun violence continue to be embedded in the fabric of American life.
“I am devastated” by “each and every family” that has lost someone to gun violence, Kelly said gamely on Thursday, speaking at a virtual meeting of the City Club of Chicago, “and I am committed to advocating for policies and legislation that will help save lives and end this terrible epidemic.”
The epidemic is raging. Chicago is reeling from two horrific incidents involving guns. On March 29, police shot Adam Toledo, 13, in Little Village. He allegedly had a gun. Then on Tuesday, 21-month-old Kayden Swann was shot in the head in an apparent road rage incident on Lake Shore Drive. He was in critical condition over the weekend.
Every weekend, multiple murders and dozens of shootings torment our city.
As Kelly spoke on Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden was appearing in the White House Rose Garden to announce plans for executive actions to restrict gun access.
One executive order would modify federal rules to curb homemade “ghost guns.” A second order would limit access to tools that can modify pistols to make them more lethal. Biden also intends to undergird “red flag” laws that can block dangerous individuals from getting guns.
Kelly applauded Biden for the steps “that he can take without legislation. Since we have such a hard time in getting things passed.”
Kelly recently introduced the Prevent Gun Trafficking Act, a federal law that would prohibit the straw purchase of firearms. Such legislation might attract bipartisan support in the House, but it faces dimmer prospects in the Senate.
Meanwhile, violence is reaching into the highest levels of our democracy. On Jan. 6, Kelly was in the House gallery as legislators were voting to certify the results of the November presidential election. As a mob of insurrectionists surged into the Capitol, Kelly and her colleagues were told to put on gas masks.
“I was,” she recalled, “on my hands and knees on the floor behind the wall that protects us from falling onto the House floor.”
The Capitol Police eventually led Kelly and others out to a secure location where, Kelly said, “we waited for many hours. It was terrifying and agonizing to walk through the hallways where one insurrectionist had just been killed, where we would later learn Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had been murdered.”
Kelly, who was recently elected the new chair of the Illinois Democratic Party, said she works hard to reach out to Republicans to build support for gun control and other legislative measures. Yet Jan. 6 epitomizes why bipartisanship is so imperiled by our toxic politics.
“I’m not going to lie,” Kelly said, speaking about her fellow Democrats. “January 6 did something to many of us.”
“We know that some of our [Republican House] colleagues were involved in that. They were giving speeches to the people that later, you know, came into the Capitol carrying the Confederate flag,” Kelly continued. “We saw who did not vote for President Biden’s, you know, election to be certified. It’s very difficult to work with people like that. That are just being negative to be negative.”
Hear from U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., when they join Laura Washington and Chicago Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet for a live conversation At The Virtual Table this Thursday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m.