Amtrak ridership up, Illinois to fund more trains

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Poppa_Zit

Giving this topic more thought, I think the one well-defined mission common to all government programs is to spend every penny in this year's budget -- whether necessary/wasteful or not -- so they don't cut next year's budget. Or even better, get more money allocated next year, thanks to a granted request for an increase.

Private enterprise is not much better. I've seen plenty of department managers in large corporations spend like crazy at year end because there's money left over in the budget and they don't want next years budget cut. Plus I don't think we can dismiss the health care companies and defense contractors role in government waste. The 'problem' with Amtrak and the USPS might be not enough lobbying $$$ coming back to DC. If Amtrak were privatized, would it be any different than Haliburton? Who really ends up getting the money from those earmarks?

But since the topic is Illinois, IMO it's entirely likely that increased Amtrak service to Springfield is a bone to downstate in order to increase metro area funding. Illinois is a lot like DC, with 3 principle players who don't trust each other but do shift alliances as it suits them. The 3rd player is the collar county moderate pro-business Republicans. Both the CTA and Metra are looking for more funding, so the collar couties would ally with Chicago for funding. Adding something for downstate gets the downstate conservative Republicans onboard and doesn't hurt the Democratic governor either.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Being a lifelong Chicagoan, I have come to the conclusion regarding honesty in government that what people say and what they do are rarely the same thing. People claim they want good government but will go to their precinct captain or alderman rather than deal with bureaucracy, even if said bureaucratic requirements are minimal, such as filling out a form for a fence permit. They will then vote for the village officeholder (assuming that they bother to vote at that level) who helped them out. The public gets the degree of honesty in government that they really want, regardless of what they say.

[daveklepper]

If you are caught in a traffic jam and cannot get an appointment on time, simply because the train service you used to depend upon has been withdrawen, you might very well say that someone who says a sketchy train service has no effect (mind you I did not use the word "stupid" in connection with "major effect", only "No effect" and that is a big difference, so I really wasn't aware of attacking anyone on this thread) on traffic congestion. What I meant to say, is simply that the assumption that a track used for a sketchy passenger service represents bad land use as compared to a highway lane is stupid, because the track may also (probably is) also used or intensive freight service. Otherwise, I agree with your point and I really wasn't attacking anyone, just trying to prevent the stupid comparison of a track being used two or four times a day by a train with a highway with a continuous stream of traffic. I apologize for not making that point clear.

[Poppa_Zit]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by Poppa_Zit

QUOTE: If you can't state rather explicitly and in mostly quantifiable terms, why you're spending money, you probably shouldn't be spending it.

It's the whole "problem" of Amtrak. No mission statement. No real goals. Just status quo.

Great thoughts there. But why limit it to Amtrak? How about applying it to ALL government-supported programs, which seem to operate pretty much the same way.

I can't think of any examples, except maybe the USPS. Most gov't agencies I can think of seem to have well defined missions.

Which ones are you thinking about?

Giving this topic more thought, I think the one well-defined mission common to all government programs is to spend every penny in this year's budget -- whether necessary/wasteful or not -- so they don't cut next year's budget. Or even better, get more money allocated next year, thanks to a granted request for an increase.

I have seen this in action. One of my employees, in her previous job, was a government administrator (education) with a large budget. She tried to do the right thing, i.e. be responsible with the tax dollars she was intrusted with. Each year, though, with a few weeks left in the fiscal year, she still had tens of thousands of her budget dollars unspent because they weren't needed. So did many of her fellow administrators. Yet she and the others were ordered -- ORDERED -- by their superiors to spend every dime allocated to those programs before the end of the fiscal year. The reason -- see paragraph above.

[Poppa_Zit]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CSSHEGEWISCH

I would look at anything regarding government waste coming from that well-known conservative to libertarian think tank known as the Heritage Foundation with a fair amount of skepticism. They have long tended to view any government spending beyond the Defense budget as wasteful. People will complain about waste and fraud, but only when it involves programs which they do not utilize. Also, government practices are a reflection of the society at large, not an aberration.

I hear that. It is obvious where you stand based on the labels with which you color the Heritage Foundation, which incidentally, I neither condone nor bless. I suppose you have an alternative, more-centered source?

I view with skepticism the Heritage Foundation's interpretations of the facts, and the spin applied therewith. I accept no analysis with blind faith, choosing to study the facts and do my own thinking.

Included in the Top Ten list (amid some clever editorializing) are some irrefutable facts about waste in government programs, which more than illustrate my point. It is naive to believe that there is no wasteful or unnecessary government spending outside of Amtrak, or the USPS. Just look at any major legislation and see the pork trying to get a free ride. Having a defined "mission statement" is irrelevent to whether a program contains waste.

Since you appear to live in the Chicago area, have you missed the evidence in the George Ryan trial? Hired Trucks scandal? I care about these things, yet they do not touch my life in any way.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by wallyworld

One of the apparent problems with a Rockford-Chicago routing seems to be a lack of folks who regularly commute between the two on a regular basis. .

LOL, thousands commute daily between the two. the cheap cost of housing and the great Metra Park and Ride in Elgin make if very feasible for Folks to live in Rockford and commute in a relatively fast time to downtown. Drive I-90 between rockford and Elgin any day between 5am and 9am and you'll see it is a very bustling highway full of commuters.

Me Personally, I catch the CoachUSA bus to the city, had to go in really early once (aka left my house at 5am) and you wouldn't belive the number of cars on Harrison Ave in Rockford going eastward to the I-90 ramp (for those that don't know this is a major 4 lane through the city and Belvidere) at that time. heck you'd think it was 5pm at night and everyone was going to the mall!

The city and State have really been trying for years to get Metra to Rockford to help move these people better. Unfortunatly, the communities between Elgin and Rockford have been fighting it, not to mention some Chicago/suburbs Politicians (obvious reason being the built it and they will move theory). They really don't want to lose that power hold they have right now over the state.

Metra to rockford would be a big deal, especially since they want to put it at the airport (where parking is free and they really want the airport linked to O'hare and Midway too). It's a win-win for the state, but some people just don't want to see it that way.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I would look at anything regarding government waste coming from that well-known conservative to libertarian think tank known as the Heritage Foundation with a fair amount of skepticism. They have long tended to view any government spending beyond the Defense budget as wasteful. People will complain about waste and fraud, but only when it involves programs which they do not utilize. Also, government practices are a reflection of the society at large, not an aberration.

[Poppa_Zit]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by Poppa_Zit

QUOTE: If you can't state rather explicitly and in mostly quantifiable terms, why you're spending money, you probably shouldn't be spending it.

It's the whole "problem" of Amtrak. No mission statement. No real goals. Just status quo.

Great thoughts there. But why limit it to Amtrak? How about applying it to ALL government-supported programs, which seem to operate pretty much the same way.

I can't think of any examples, except maybe the USPS. Most gov't agencies I can think of seem to have well defined missions.

Which ones are you thinking about?

I decided to save on some typing. But how are these for starters?

(Click link for complete details)

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/bg1840.cfm

The Top 10 List of Egregious Waste.

1. The Missing $25 Billion

2. Unused Flight Tickets Totaling $100 Million

3. Embezzled Funds at the Department of Agriculture

4. Credit Card Abuse at the Department of Defense

5. Medicare Overspending

6. Funding Fictitious Colleges and Students

7. Manipulating Data to Encourage Spending

8. State Abuse of Medicaid Funding Formulas

9. Earned Income Tax Credit Overpayments

10. Redundancy Piled on Redundancy

[wallyworld]

One of the apparent problems with a Rockford-Chicago routing seems to be a lack of folks who regularly commute between the two on a regular basis. I could not, even on my best day imagine commuting by car between the two. This may be due to my own ignorance of facts of those that do. Even with the lack of roads in the interurban era, Elgin and Belevidere normally cut cars on westbound runs between the two, at Marengo Shops, down to a single car. Perhaps Class 1's had more frequency. Exoburbia seems to have some limits although its amazing as to the amount of development around IRM. Amtrak tried Janeville on the W&S, but it bombed, much to my disapointment, although it was'nt surprising. In this thread, one question occurred to me-what is the longest commuter run operated by a transit agency outside of Amtrak? LIRR? Good thread.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Poppa_Zit

QUOTE: If you can't state rather explicitly and in mostly quantifiable terms, why you're spending money, you probably shouldn't be spending it.

It's the whole "problem" of Amtrak. No mission statement. No real goals. Just status quo.

Great thoughts there. But why limit it to Amtrak? How about applying it to ALL government-supported programs, which seem to operate pretty much the same way.

I can't think of any examples, except maybe the USPS. Most gov't agencies I can think of seem to have well defined missions.

Which ones are you thinking about?

[Poppa_Zit]

QUOTE: If you can't state rather explicitly and in mostly quantifiable terms, why you're spending money, you probably shouldn't be spending it.

It's the whole "problem" of Amtrak. No mission statement. No real goals. Just status quo.

Great thoughts there. But why limit it to Amtrak? How about applying it to ALL government-supported programs, which seem to operate pretty much the same way.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Paul Milenkovic

QUOTE:
Getting back to land use, it would be possible, but downright stupid, to say that a one train a day or four trains a day service doesn't reduce highway land use because obviously a continuous stream of traffic on one lane in each direction is going to top the ridership of the sketchy Amtrak service, even with the average of 1.2 people per car.

QUOTE:
Paul Melinkovik needs to be reminded that by far the greatest perecentage of auto use is SINGLE OCCUPANCY, and thus Amtrak does generally come out ahead as more fuel efficient

I would like to address the issue of civility of the discussion. I know that everyone wears their ethnic heritage on their sleeves these days (Milenko is a variant of Michael, the "vic" suffix denotes a patronomic, the construction is much like Blagojevich where the "j" is a "y" sound, both names are to be pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, and our family opted out of the "h" at the end as a subsitute for the diacritical mark in Roman script or a special character in Cyrillic script), and everyone takes offense at everything, but some boundaries need to be drawn.

I am correct that I have been called "downright stupid" on account that I pointed out that a skeleton train service would make a minimum impact on highway congestion? Have I called anyone a name for criticizing a position that I was trying to explain?

With that aside, I am a person deeply interested in both the engineering and public-policy issues surrounding transportation of all modes and especially railroads. Railroads are part of my family history ranging from my great-grandfather Viktor Heim, who was a civil engineer in the employ of the Austrian State Railway in Croatia, to my father Veljko Milenkovic, who holds patents on technology related to RRollway, a high-speed car wide-gauge rail car-ferry system once promoted by GATX, and who also engineered a power coupling for the US DOT Pueblo rail test facility.

I really like trains and would like them to play a more significant role in transportation. There is also an emotional factor on this forum because many of us, myself too, approach passenger trains as railroad fans and not necessarily as transportation analysts.

Metra is of the scale that it makes a major impact on traffic congestion and the vitality of the Chicago downtown. Call me stupid, but two trains a day between, say Rockford and Chicago, are not of that scale. Even if those trains provide a necessary accomodation to people who cannot drive, they are such a small part of the transportation picture that they are more of the form of a demonstration project. There is no shame in a demonstration project -- the Metroliner started out that way.

A demonstration project, in exchange for its public expenditure and subsidy, should, demonstrate. If trains are advocated as a means of saving fuel, they should demonstrate fuel efficiency, and the fuel use of such a train should be quantified and reported. If the train is to substitute for car trips, there should be some assessment of ridership and market as to how many people are leaving their cars behind. If trains are to be a cost-effective part of the transportation mix, the costs of running that train should be broken down by route segment -- maybe the subsidy is high on a per-passenger basis because of the small scale, but some reasonable analysis needs to be made to demonstrate that the per-passenger subsidy could be reduced if the operation greatly expanded in scale.

This forum is able to discuss the steam-Diesel transition in the 1950's and argue the merits of the Niagra, the Duplex, and the J based on the technology, the numbers, and what happened historically. I know this is hard because a lot of feeling are on the line, but I would like to have discussions of passenger trains, the pros and the cons on that same level. Gas at $3, $4, $5/gallon or more is not going to bring back the passenger train unless people get a handle on passenger train economics. I fully support passenger rail subsidy, but in exchange for that subsidy, the public, the stakeholder in this, should get better information on the fuel economy, capital and labor economics of the subsidized trains.

What a great post!

If you can't state rather explicitly and in mostly quantifiable terms, why you're spending money, you probably shouldn't be spending it.

It's the whole "problem" of Amtrak. No mission statement. No real goals. Just status quo.

I'm all for Amtrak and increased passenger rail subsidy, but lets be clear about what we're trying to do, who we're doing it for, and what it's costing us.

I just took a terrific trip from Denver to SF on the Cal. Zephyr. Wonderful train. Great crew. Nice equipment (despite being 20 years old). But, it's not any faster/cheaper/better than 40 years ago. Lots of reasons why, I know, but one BIG one is there is no monetary incentive for Amtrak to pursue improvement. If they save money, they just get their subsidy whacked by that amount.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Poppa_Zit

Right now, with interest rates going up, sellers in places like Naperville are having a hard time getting the same home prices they got six months or a year ago.

They haven't reduced real estate tax bills, though.

The tax issues in towns like Naperville are largely self-induced. The state plays a minimal role in funding education, despite what the state Constitution says, and most funding comes from local property taxes. Naperville is annexing and building faster than they can provide infrastruction to support it. DuPage County has various boundry agreements, but Will county does not and the northern part where Naperville has been annexing farmland in checkerboard fashion is a real mess. All those new subdivisions need new schools, new fire and police, not to mention utilities. The old 2 lane road network quickly becomes gridlocked. The new tax base is insufficient to expand services at the level needed so tax rates go up. I'm fortunate to live in an established part of un-incorporated DuPage that has resisted annexation efforts by 3 different towns and because we didn't vote for any local tax rate increases, my property tax bill went up 4.83% while my property's value went up a whole lot more than that.

Illinois Income tax is quite reasonable compared to other midwestern states and unlike Wisconsin, Illinois does not tax retirement income. Instead we are hit with a multitiude of sin taxes, user fees, tollways, utility taxes, etc. IMO we'd actually be better of raising the state income tax, since it is deductible from Federal income tax while all these other taxes and fees are not.

[Poppa_Zit]

Right now, with interest rates going up, sellers in places like Naperville are having a hard time getting the same home prices they got six months or a year ago.

They haven't reduced real estate tax bills, though.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by SchemerBob

Where are they going to get the equipment to make these trains possible?? Amtrak only has a little over 200 mainline locomotives. Illinois may have to chip in and buy some equipment, like California and Oregon has, if they want these trains to roll!

Other than the equipment problem, though, the idea sounds great.

Well the cars are a problem, the Locomotives not so much they only need 155 a day. They are going to get there own pool for the new PTC Signal System the units will be 50-65 at the moment but could change.

[Paul Milenkovic]

QUOTE:
Getting back to land use, it would be possible, but downright stupid, to say that a one train a day or four trains a day service doesn't reduce highway land use because obviously a continuous stream of traffic on one lane in each direction is going to top the ridership of the sketchy Amtrak service, even with the average of 1.2 people per car.

QUOTE:
Paul Melinkovik needs to be reminded that by far the greatest perecentage of auto use is SINGLE OCCUPANCY, and thus Amtrak does generally come out ahead as more fuel efficient

I would like to address the issue of civility of the discussion. I know that everyone wears their ethnic heritage on their sleeves these days (Milenko is a variant of Michael, the "vic" suffix denotes a patronomic, the construction is much like Blagojevich where the "j" is a "y" sound, both names are to be pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, and our family opted out of the "h" at the end as a subsitute for the diacritical mark in Roman script or a special character in Cyrillic script), and everyone takes offense at everything, but some boundaries need to be drawn.

I am correct that I have been called "downright stupid" on account that I pointed out that a skeleton train service would make a minimum impact on highway congestion? Have I called anyone a name for criticizing a position that I was trying to explain?

With that aside, I am a person deeply interested in both the engineering and public-policy issues surrounding transportation of all modes and especially railroads. Railroads are part of my family history ranging from my great-grandfather Viktor Heim, who was a civil engineer in the employ of the Austrian State Railway in Croatia, to my father Veljko Milenkovic, who holds patents on technology related to RRollway, a high-speed car wide-gauge rail car-ferry system once promoted by GATX, and who also engineered a power coupling for the US DOT Pueblo rail test facility.

I really like trains and would like them to play a more significant role in transportation. There is also an emotional factor on this forum because many of us, myself too, approach passenger trains as railroad fans and not necessarily as transportation analysts.

Metra is of the scale that it makes a major impact on traffic congestion and the vitality of the Chicago downtown. Call me stupid, but two trains a day between, say Rockford and Chicago, are not of that scale. Even if those trains provide a necessary accomodation to people who cannot drive, they are such a small part of the transportation picture that they are more of the form of a demonstration project. There is no shame in a demonstration project -- the Metroliner started out that way.

A demonstration project, in exchange for its public expenditure and subsidy, should, demonstrate. If trains are advocated as a means of saving fuel, they should demonstrate fuel efficiency, and the fuel use of such a train should be quantified and reported. If the train is to substitute for car trips, there should be some assessment of ridership and market as to how many people are leaving their cars behind. If trains are to be a cost-effective part of the transportation mix, the costs of running that train should be broken down by route segment -- maybe the subsidy is high on a per-passenger basis because of the small scale, but some reasonable analysis needs to be made to demonstrate that the per-passenger subsidy could be reduced if the operation greatly expanded in scale.

This forum is able to discuss the steam-Diesel transition in the 1950's and argue the merits of the Niagra, the Duplex, and the J based on the technology, the numbers, and what happened historically. I know this is hard because a lot of feeling are on the line, but I would like to have discussions of passenger trains, the pros and the cons on that same level. Gas at $3, $4, $5/gallon or more is not going to bring back the passenger train unless people get a handle on passenger train economics. I fully support passenger rail subsidy, but in exchange for that subsidy, the public, the stakeholder in this, should get better information on the fuel economy, capital and labor economics of the subsidized trains.

[daveklepper]

Getting back to land use, it would be possible, but downright stupid, to say that a one train a day or four trains a day service doesn't reduce highway land use because obviously a continuous stream of traffic on one lane in each direction is going to top the ridership of the sketchy Amtrak service, even with the average of 1.2 people per car. But the reason it is stupid is that the track is there anyway for freight service in such a situation, and the hope is there for more ridership and then more economicial subsidation of additional service to the point where a second or third track may be necessary and that additional track will then save two or more additional highway lanes from being necessary. One track can handle 80,000 people per hour past a point using the best electric railway technology. On highway lane with 1.2 occupancy can handle about 2,640 people per hour at decent highway speeds, a car every 1.5 seconds, and exceeding that brings the speed down to about 22-25 mph which is the speed at which the maximum number of cars can pass a given point on one lane. The reason slow highway speeds move more traffic is the matter of stopping distances, with higher speeds spacing cars farther apart more than just linear increases with speed. This need not be true with state of the art automatic railway operating, however, with an engineer on board only for emergencies and to pu***he close the doors button at stations.

The 80,000 people per hour is a capacity figure that is routinely exceeded on certain New York City subway lines and there involves standees. On a commuter railroad, it would require electric automatic operation and double deck equipment for an all seated load. Twelve-car double deck mu trains running every 1.5 minutes with each car seating about 165 people.

[n012944]

Originally posted by Poppa_Zit
[
While the value of a house in Naperville is high, so are the prices -- as well as the property taxes. I am not a financial wiz, but it seems to me much of the "gain" in a home's value over five years in Naperville is wiped out by the higher annual real estate taxes (plus interest had those additional taxes been invested).

The "Even though you don't have any kids in school, the school system makes your house worth more money" theory works only in an economy where the value of houses continues to spiral upwards and the interest rates on mortgages stays fairly low. Also, to assume that higher school district taxation somehow equates to a better school system is a fallacy."

One could also argue that having the better school system would allow your home to lose less of its value, then those with lesser school systems. And in most cases those school systems that have more funding do better than those with less, that is common sense.

[

An "expensive model collector"

• Reply

with the Illinois public education system is that I help pay for it. For everybody's FYI, the "average" pay for a high school teacher in Downers Grove, IL was $74,000 (with about 2 1/2 months off in the summer time, full benifits, good retirement, etc. How'd you like that nice job.) That was the last year I lived in DG. You know what, they went on strike for more money.

Now just where was that "more money" gonna' come from? Please see my aforementioned property tax bill.

[daveklepper]

Those are all good ideas and it is mostly incompetent political interference that prevents their implementation. Amtrak was on its way to a "Yield" fare policy, with of-peak fares by time of day and by day of week, etc, but told this was "unfair" by politicians. Similarly, their are people who pay double the fare to ride a first class car with decent sit down meal on the trip but then Amtrak would be accused of subsidizing meal costs with the fare price.

If we could get Gunn back as running the show and give the freedom to do things right I think you would see these ideas implemented.

On East Coast Amtrak has always borrowed commuter authoriity complete trainsets for holiday and other heavy periods, times that don't usually interfere with the weekday commuter rush hours. Why not do the same for Milwaukee service? Put two Horizen consists together for double capacity and replace one with a METRA set.

[Paul Milenkovic]

QUOTE:
Paul Melinkovik needs to be reminded that by far the greatest perecentage of auto use is SINGLE OCCUPANCY, and thus Amtrak does generally come out ahead as more fuel efficient

This matter of single-occupancy of an automobile representing a profligate use of resources needs to be put to rest. An automobile rarely operates with all seats occupied, and it often operates with only one seat occupied -- a 25% load factor if you assume a 4-seat car. A common carrier mode of transportation can operate with more of the seats occupied because that is the whole point -- that people pool rides into one large vehicle rather than have personal vehicles. But a common carrier mode must operate at less than 100% load factor and often operates with much less than 100% load factor.

Consider the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha train -- it carries 450,000 passengers a year, but with 7 trains a day in each direction 365 days a year on a four-car fixed consist, it is providing 1.5 million seats a year -- the load factor is shy of 30 percent. But, you say, everytime I have been on it it has been packed, and they are talking about adding a car to the consist. Of course it has been packed when you have been on it because the times no one is on it you haven't been on it either to note that fact.

Is a 30 percent load factor a failure on the part of Amtrak? This is marginally better than that wasteful 25 percent load factor of the single-occupant auto (the load factor of the auto is higher because on intercity trips, occupancy averages somewhere between 1 and 2 occupants per trip in the car). The low load factor is not a failure when what you are trying to do is provide a frequent service to make it convenient to more people. What does single-occupant auto driving do -- it also makes the car more convenient, that you don't have to wait for a passenger before making a trip.

Land use? Metra, with its multiple train lines and 11-car (densely packed) trains carries up to 75,000 passengers an hour -- nearly 40 freeway lanes (needed in each direction unless you do that Kennedy Expressway directional lane thing). California's Surfliner, sending 400 seats per hour, replaces a fifth of a freeway lane in each direction under peak conditions.

Back to the load factor issue. One of the arguments for the conventional locomotive-drawn passenger train is that you don't require a fixed consists -- you can couple on more cars, something you can't do with Talgo (fixed consist) or a bus or an airplane (fixed number of seats). Amtrak runs the Hiawatha train with a fixed consist, but people tell me there is a rush hour on the Hiawatha where people can't get seats. Why aren't they coupling on a couple of suburban bilevels for that rush hour to accomodate the overflow crowd, although in a more cramped seating arrangement?

Have labor costs gone so high that it is cheaper to turn away passengers than switch a couple of cars in and out of a consist?

If they can't get a lease on a bilevel (Wisconsin Central has some used ones they bought, parked in Janesville), why can't they go to a higher seating density in the four-car Horizon consist? Why can't they go to some demand fare structure (higher fare for the popular times, lower far for off-peak times)?

[daveklepper]

Paul Melinkovik needs to be reminded that by far the greatest perecentage of auto use is SINGLE OCCUPANCY, and thus Amtrak does generally come out ahead as more fuel efficient. But the big issue is LAND USE. In Illinois, this does not refer to long-distance touring trains. Not doing something about better public transportation into and out of Chicago from the entire state and nearby Indiana and Wisconsin means grid lock on the highways or lots of additional land usurped by highway widening and new highway construction, which Illinois at this point cannot afford anymore.

[Poppa_Zit]

QUOTE: Originally posted by senshi

What Illinois needs to develop is more rail transport in the Northwest part of the state. The Rockford to Janesville area could use passenger rail connections to Chicago. Also a resurrection of the at least a portion of the Kate Shelly route could help improves ties among the communities along the route (plus give rail access to the only state university without passenger rail, NIU).

But that would take money, I mean people, off the tollways wouldn't it.

Would there really be enough demand to develop rail passenger service, say Madison to Janesville to Rockford to Chicago? Maybe one train a day, but I doubt it...

Maybe Metra someday will extend its UP route to DeKalb once or twice a day. That would be more likely, but won't happen for at least another 10-15 years.

Most students attending Downstate state colleges come from the Chicago area and the Amtrak Illinois service works because of the extreme driving distances and cost of fuel. But under former governor Dan Walker, tolI road I-88 was built west out of chicago for quicker access to DeKalb (NIU) because most students are from the Chicago area and have cars, or are commuter students. IIRC, it was said he okayed to project because he had several childen attending NIU.

[senshi]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Modelcar

...Wish more states were in financial shape to build and support rail transportation systems. Believe so many are just on the brink of being able to supply basic needs to it's citizens.

Not sure if you can say that about Illinois, we are borrowing money from all over the place to pay for everything.

What Illinois needs to develop is more rail transport in the Northwest part of the state. The Rockford to Janesville area could use passenger rail connections to Chicago. Also a resurrection of the at least a portion of the Kate Shelly route could help improves ties among the communities along the route (plus give rail access to the only state university without passenger rail, NIU).

But that would take money, I mean people, off the tollways wouldn't it.

[Modelcar]

...Wish more states were in financial shape to build and support rail transportation systems. Believe so many are just on the brink of being able to supply basic needs to it's citizens.

[Anonymous]

AS An illinoian, I follow stories like this regularly. this is in fact part of an overall rail trainsit program that has been in the works for over 20 years now, it has in no way any relation to current gas prices.

The Illinois Government, City and Counties and even the our federal represenitives have all been working to better link the state together for a long time now. In fact, soon the Metra will be expanded westward to Rockford and may even one day continue west to Moline. There is even a feasibility study on mtra suggesting it may be economically feasible to Link to Springfield.

The grand idea is to make Metra Illinois Public rail system, with Amtrak supplimenting certain sections that it already services. The State is just offsetting the costs to get Amtrak to run more often.

As for the stupid teacher, they should get back to focusing on the students and not their wallet. $74k is outradious for a teacher, the average pay in Rockford (the last i heard) was around $30k a year. I can go on about the public Education system, but this is a train forum, so I won't.