State OKs Amtrak route through Belvidere

By Thomas V. Bona

BusinessRockford.com

Everyone’s all aboard on a new Amtrak route for northern Illinois. Now someone just has to pay the fare.

Illinois Department of Transportation officials said Thursday they support changing the proposed Chicago-Rockford-Dubuque, Iowa, route. Leaders in Winnebago and Boone counties lobbied — successfully, as it turns out — for the route to go through Belvidere instead of the old Black Hawk route that goes through Genoa.

IDOT had been waiting for formal word that there was a local consensus and got it Thursday, when George Weber, head of IDOT’s railroads bureau, said the state will back whatever local leaders want.

The next step is finding funding for the $30 million project, either through federal stimulus money or a state capital plan. The best case scenario would have service beginning in late 2011 or early 2012.

Local leaders pushed for the different route because they believe it could not only shave 20 minutes off a one-way trip, but also draw more passengers because it would travel through a more populous area. Moreover, it improves the chances of a commuter rail route on the same line later on.

“When the state comes in and makes an investment in this rail corridor and we can utilize the investment down the road for other transportation services in our region, everybody wins,” said Steve Ernst, executive director of the Rockford Metropolitan Agency for Planning, which includes leaders from Winnebago and Boone counties.

Preliminary plans call for once-daily round-trip service between Chicago’s Union Station and Dubuque, with stops in a northwestern Chicago suburb, Belvidere, eastern Rockford, downtown Rockford, Freeport and Galena. The route is unchanged between Rockford and Dubuque.

Amtrak hasn’t had a presence in the region since 1981. Three years ago, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, spearheaded efforts to bring the service back. A study was finished in 2007, but lack of a state capital plan meant there was no money for the work.

In the meantime, local leaders studied the Belvidere route and felt it was the better choice and could get to Chicago in just over two hours.

The project languished until earlier this year, when the federal stimulus package — known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — passed with money for Amtrak projects. Meanwhile, Gov. Pat Quinn made a push for a long-delayed state capital plan that could come together this summer.

State officials will send an application for stimulus money when guidelines come out this summer. The goal is for stimulus money to pay for most of the project, with a capital plan filling any gap. Local officials may have to fund new train stations.

It’ll take two construction seasons to get the rails ready, and at least that long for Amtrak to refurbish old cars to put on the new route, something that’s also being funded by the stimulus package.

Contact staff writer Thomas V. Bona at 815-987-1343 or tbona@rrstar.com.