Illinois Amtrak Service

Illinois high-speed project wraps up track and tie replacement | Railway Track & Structures -- last bit of track replaced for the project.

The Chicago to St. Louis high-speed rail project is on schedule to reduce the five and a half hour trip between the two cities by 30 minutes at the end of 2015 and another 30 minutes by the end of 2017. By the end of 2015, more than two-thirds of the corridor will be capable of hosting trains running at 110 mph, compared to just 15 miles today between Dwight and Pontiac.

Work will continue on the 300 grade crossings, with four-quadrant gates for two or more lanes and dual gates for one lane. Also going in will be Positive Train Control and 13 sidings.

The project's home page: Official IDOT Illinois High Speed Rail - Chicago to St. Louis

At a bare minimum slow orders for the current timetable have now vanished and construction delays related to the track crews will now be confined to grade crossing replacement work. I would look for some timekeeping improvements for all trains on that line over the next month or two.

Governor Rauner delivered the Budget message to the General Assembly (both houses), and suffice to say, there will be cuts.

The media has noted that cuts in mass transit are proposed. Who knows if the Amtrak trains are considered "mass transit" to the media.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Governor Rauner delivered the Budget message to the General Assembly (both houses), and suffice to say, there will be cuts.

The media has noted that cuts in mass transit are proposed. Who knows if the Amtrak trains are considered "mass transit" to the media.

It's reported elsewhere that Rauner proposes reducing funding for the Amtrak trains in Illinois by over a third ($42m to $26m). But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. There's an old saying about the federal budget in DC--the president proposes, but Congress disposes. While I'm not familiar with the Illinois constitution, I would suspect something of the same dynamic prevails in Springfield. The legislature may have the final word on how much funding Amtrak receives.

The "42 to 26" reported by Mr. Aficionado appears at line 6665 of the Operating Budget Detail (.xls format). There are other line items around there, capital and operating, that could also impact Amtrak operations.

But remember, this is simply opening bell of Round 1.

I would, however, forget about any route expansions such as Chi-Rockford and Chi-Quad Cities.

Finally regarding "the dynamics", the State House and Senate are solidly controlled by Democrats, but that hardly means they all sit around the campfire together roasting smores and singing "kumbyah". Who knows what's ahead now that a Republican governor, who won office with a "shake up Springfield" campaign message (and of course "heap big wampum"), has been added to the fray. An enacted budget by FYE Jun 30, uh, what's that around these parts?

Illinois has many more fiscal problems than Amtrak service to address.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:I would, however, forget about any route expansions such as Chi-Rockford and Chi-Quad Cities.

I agree. Wonder if the propects would be different for Quad Cities if they had actually done something over the past six years.

It helps to some degree that the new Superliner corridor-configured cars and Charger engines are already a sealed deal with such large numbers of state-sponsored options built into the base orders. Even in a constrained budgeting environment it becomes nearly an automatic endeavor to drain the options unless the initial order is rife enough with problems for an early exit to be prudent. The cost gets front-loaded on the base order by starting up the factories and design/testing that the options (which in this case are pretty large) end up being relatively affordable no-brainers to pick up. Rauner is not such an ideologue that he'd abort an in-progress order strictly on principle like the Wisconsin Talgos debacle...and as long as he's got to answer to a Legislature from the other party he isn't going to press to decline the options. Those are rubber-stamp pickups in pretty much all cases except for a reliability-troubled base order, and the 'job creation' aspects are not something he'd want to mess with given that the back end of these orders are going to be right around the next election year for him. So the equipment deal inked before the last election really is a big deal indeed for how effectively it backstops any potential service cuts in the Chicago hub during this Congressional term and this gubenatorial term. I agree you're not likely to see any progress on new routes while Illinois's budget is as FUBAR as it is, but service cuts? Probably not given that these routes are overwhelmingly likely to be flushly-equipped for higher demand on current schedules and additions to current schedules. Credit Boardman's and the states' foresight at squaring that equipment deal explicitly before the political winds had first opportunity to blow in any unfavorable direction.

Considering how it is federally funded, I am far from convinced that Quad Cities is not going to go forwards. I think the ball is largely in the legislature's court here as to what we will end up seeing in Illinois.

R30A wrote:Considering how it is federally funded, I am far from convinced that Quad Cities is not going to go forwards. I think the ball is largely in the legislature's court here as to what we will end up seeing in Illinois.

Be careful in how much may be state funded. If they started work to make the Wynet connection, all may not be lost. If it is still in design phase, EIS study, may not happen for a time just like the Chicago Rockford train.

Actually, until there is a federal transportation & Amtrak bill passed to get past October this may be a tough year. I expect the same for TN or any other state till the federal deals are done.

When the keystone corridor received capital investment 8 pennsylvania to improve reliability and trip time the annual loss (before state subsidy) dropped from the 35 million or so to less than ten million. In other words, what would have cost the state 35 million cost the state 9 million. I cannot predict the impact exactly I suspect the same should happen when the new schedules are implemented on the st louis corridor.

Suburban Station wrote:When the keystone corridor received capital investment 8 pennsylvania to improve reliability and trip time the annual loss (before state subsidy) dropped from the 35 million or so to less than ten million. In other words, what would have cost the state 35 million cost the state 9 million. I cannot predict the impact exactly I suspect the same should happen when the new schedules are implemented on the st louis corridor.

Lots of big-time projects have to happen to make a real improvement in reliable timekeeping. For the employees' part, the jobs are already as tight as they can get without fouling federal HOS requirements. Like, you get your 8hrs off on paper (maybe a few mins more, if you happen to arrive in good shape), and that's it. The cafe attendants, not subject to HOS, have even more ridiculous schedules: to the point where several of them choose to forego the travel time to/from the hotel, and just sleep on the car. So additional savings aren't likely to be found in crew costs. Without super major mega-billion-dollar infrastucture improvements, they're simply not going to be able to speed things up enough to get a whole round-trip out of one crew.... at least not without paying overtime, and routinely risking dying on the law.

The best hope is to generate additional passenger revenue. This means raising prices, and/or improving reliability. So far timekeeping has not improved one bit since the "HSR" project started. That's no surprise, because there is more freight on the route than before (the only reason UP went along with the whole deal was so they could build their "Global 4" yard just south of Joliet, and have the state pay to improve the railroad for them). The passenger train schedules are surprisingly fragile, to the point where just one freight train meet (or, say, taking the slow "Hi Line" route out of St Louis, or taking a few cross traffic delays on the IC getting out of Chicago) can throw off all of your meets with the opposing passenger trains - potentially costing you up to 30+ more minutes of delays. Delays on flagging road crossings are common too - they are still having problems perfecting crossing timings almost 20 years after the first "high speed test trains" ran. (Long story behind that, and I don't even know 100% of the details, so I won't get into it.) The only real way to reliably run this service is to double track a good portion of it, and to get all of the PTC & signaling right. Well, now we know that there won't be money for all this, at least not for a good while longer.

It's kind of hard to speed up the schedules very much, when you're dealing with two congested freight terminal areas, and everything in-between is single track and sidings. Even with CTC it's still pretty poor. There's no point in running 110, and upgrading the sidings to 50, just to get to the stop signal at the other end of the siding that much faster, to sit and wait that much longer. Hopefully it will all come together a little better when the ITCS/speed upgrades are propagated over more of the route? It's going to be a long learning process for the crews and dispatchers, to figure out the new speeds and where the new meeting points should be.

WBBM 780 / 105.9 reported this morning during the 5AM CT hour that there will be some kind of pow-wow between NARP, MWHSRA, and the RTA to "influence" Governor Rauner away from his proposed budget cuts affecting rail in Illinois.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/03/21/ ... evelopment" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Governor plans to visit states such as IN, TX, and WI that have picked off businesses from IL and try to win them back. The advocates think a passenger rail system is part and parcel to success. They even have up their sleeve an excise (sales) tax such as there is in the RTA counties extended to those that benefit from the State funded Amtrak routes.

Finally, this radio station's political discussion show "At Issue" airing and streaming at both 930 A/P Today will guest RTA Chairman Kirk Dillard.

As of right now, what are the sections on the CHI-STL line that currently are operated with 110 MPH revenue service? Is it still only the 15 mile section between Dwight and Pontiac? Although that is a starting point, it isn't terribly impressive, given the fact that it can take a heavy train 10ish miles to accelerate to 110. What other sections are close to being ready for revenue 110 service?

Yes, it's still only Dwight - Pontiac where they run at 110, but on my Texas Eagle trip it was evident that most of the track between around Joliet and St Louis is upgraded, and the ride quality was excellent. The Eagle of course still runs at 79 max. I think we did get passed by a train doing 110 while sitting in the siding between Dwight and Pontiac!

Some ongoing work was evident in several locations but much of the track appeared to be up to 110 mph standards.

Matt Johnson wrote:Some ongoing work was evident in several locations but much of the track appeared to be up to 110 mph standards.

Wow! Those are amazing photos Matt! Thanks for the much needed update there. Very encouraging to see such obvious progress.