Illinois misses the high speed train
Public officials are celebrating Illinois' federal high speed rail grant. Of course they have to highlight the positive side, but it looks to me like Illinois is a loser.
Let's face it... Illinois finished third behind California and Florida. We received less than a third of what the state requested. California received almost twice as much as Illinois. Money for the Chicago-St. Louis corridor is less than half the allocation for just the Midwest region.
Our share of the federal grant isn't enough to start a modern 220mph high speed rail system. It's not enough for a double track that would speed up Amtrak and reduce delays caused by freight traffic. Although, it does provide for planning in preparation of double tracks. It most definitely isn't enough to consolidate rail lines onto the 10th street corridor in Springfield (which none of the freight companies have agreed to anyway).
Months ago, some people were saying Illinois' application for high speed rail funds could be jeopardized by Springfield's opposition. We'll probably never know if that's why we got so little of what the state requested. With any luck, Illinois will get more in the next round of funding. Maybe this controversy will have settled by then.
The funding is enough to facilitate more freight traffic going through Springfield from UP's new multimodal center near Joliet. Remember how opponents of the 3rd Street corridor told us added train traffic would DESTROY downtown? Well, we're getting extra freight traffic through downtown now, but we aren't getting new overpasses or underpasses to help deal with it. Springfield leaders didn't want that.
Speaking of which, remember those scary postcards of huge concrete walls blocking parts of downtown? They're certainly creative but they aren't part of the final proposal.
Springfield could have proposed a different mitigation plan with less obtrusive overpasses but chose not to. The public still has the right to oppose anything as ugly as the imaginative postcards. I've skeptically examined everything I hear from the 3rd Street corridor opponents since realizing that the postcards are a bit of a stretch.
High speed rail would give a boost to downtown. In other cities it increased property values, brought more tourist traffic, more retail traffic and provided a less carbon-intensive transportation alternative. It's disappointing that the benefits are being ignored, probably because some influential businessmen believe they can make more money by routing all train traffic through the low-income, black part of town.