The route will eventually continue west to Dubuque, Ia,. with en route stops in Freeport and Galena.
The new route that will be utilized is on tracks owned by Metra and the Union Pacific Railroad.
The decision followed unsuccessful negotiations to use tracks owned by the Canadian National Railway.
IDOT officials said they are hopeful that agreement can be reached in the future with Canadian National to extend the service between Rockford and Dubuque on CN-owned tracks.
The new route will use Metra’s Milwaukee District West Line and connect to the UP near Big Timber in Elgin, officials said. Amtrak will use its existing trains when the new service is launched next year, Shacter said. The state is procuring new locomotives and coaches for 110 mph service on the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor and for expanded passenger service elsewhere in Illinois. Some of the new equipment will be used on the Chicago-to-Rockford service in 2017 or 2018, he said.
Of course, all bets on this and other state-sponsored services may be off if Bruce Rauner is elected in November, which seems likely.
Good news. The sooner passenger trains are running to Rockford again, the better. The routing makes a whole lot of sense as well.
This routing makes a lot more sense to Rockford by potentially serving one or two communities on the MILW-West Metra line between Union Station and Elgin,as well as Marengo and Belvidere before reaching Rockford. In any case the CN apparently was resistant to hosting more than one train each way.
Actually serving Huntly is far more important than Marengo due to the large Dell Webb retirement community located on the south side of Huntly.
True. Huntley could provide ridership out of proportion to its population due to the large number of seniors.
With proposed service frequency of two round trips per day, and stopping at every burg between Rockford and the end of Metra’s Milwaukee Road service, the only scheduling that makes the slightest bit of sense is two AM inbounds (to Chicago, of course) and two PM outbounds. This means, in turn, that the service will be strictly commuter, using Amtrak to go where Metra cannot, because Rockford lies outside Metra’s statutory service area. Based on the foregoing, extending the service to Dubuque (or anywhere beyond Rockford, for that matter) is a waste of money*. After all, who in his right mind wants to take a commuter train making every whistle stop from Dubuque to anywhere but Chicago, and who wants to get up before the cows to do so? Yes, the old Milwaukee Road portion of this route passes through, but doesn’t stop at, Bensenville or Franklin Park, inconveniently close to O’Hare Airport – this service, remember, is slated to be offered by Amtrak, which is most definitely not in the local commuter rail business. Moreover, count on Metra to resist fiercely any attempt to let Amtrak stop at its (Metra’s) stations, which are intermediate between because it would certainly divert some captive passenger revenue to a competitor. At least, if I were Metra, that would be my position, and I’d not hesitate to use all the political muscle at my disposal to make it stick.
And this brings us to the outfit that would be providing the service. Amtrak, to put it politely, comes along with a lot of very heavy baggage, and not the most favorable name among the travelling public. Widely known as an outfit that is limping along from month to month (hey! read the posts along here that talk about Amtrak: none exactly euphoric about the quality of the services Amtrak provides today) is hardly the sort of reassurance riders want to sample.
Seriously folks, is it worth $223 million to get one or two trains per day between Rockford, IL and Elgin, IL. (Elgin - Chicago already has Metra service.)
The state of Illinois can’t pay its bills in a timely manner and cannot cover its pension obligations. It’s already increased the income tax. Do you really think $223 million should be spent on this?
Billion, You need to pause for a minute and think of current operations. Rockford and Milwaukee are about equal distances apart, 86 vs. 90ish miles. Both rail services have or will have 3 intermediate stops, Milwaukee Airport, Strutavent and Glenview, vs Belvidere, Huntley and Elgin for the Rockford service. Given the success of the Hiawatha Service seems this station stoping is acceptable to the riding public. As to sharing stations with MERTA, seems to me that that already occurs at Joliet, Summit, Homewood, LaGrange, Naperville and Glenview so I can’t see it as much of a problem here.
The “Amtrak stopping at Metra stations” argument doesn’t hold water. Amtrak already stops at La Grange and Naperville on the BNSF, along with Glenview on the Metra Milwaukee North line. And in a roundabout way they also serve Homewood next to the Metra Electric.
There continue to be rumors of extending Metra the short distance from Elburn to DeKalb.
If I remember correctly, you can ride Amtrak from LaGrange or Homewood or Glenview to Chicago IF you are connecting to another Amtrak train in Chicago, Otherwise they will not sell you a ticket and will not allow you to board the inbound train. You can buy a ticket from New Haven to New York, but from Stamford you must be connecting to another train in New York or riding beyond New York. Trenton to Philladelphia or New York or Newark is OK. I do not know the policy at Princeton J.c or Newark Airport.
On another thread Buslist reported that the Illinois House passed a resolution supporting rail service between the Quad Cities and Danville. If this had been posted 14 days ago I’d think it was an April Fools Day joke. The pols in Springfield must be smoking something other than cigars if they think such a route could ever be viable.
Mark
Comparing Milwaukee with Rockford is like comparing Paris with Joliet – both have French names.
Hardly. Rockford is no great shakes as a city (150,000) but neither is Milwaukee (600,000). Hiawatha service has been a great success and growing. The Blackhawk service could be, also.
they should extend Metra service to DeKalb even if for no other reason than the fact that it was on one of the rejected alignments for this service.
I remember several routes were considered, but I do not recall the details of that one. After DeKalb on the UP/CNW, what track would it have used to Rockford? The DeKalb route was not one of the four considered in the Amtrak feasibility study of 2007, however.
Of course the railroad north from DeKalb to Sycamore is long gone. There’s the line from Rochelle to Rockford, but that would not be of any interest as a part of Chicago - Rockford, even though the northern part of that line (past the Rockford airport) was part of one of the route options considered.
Metra to DeKalb and Amtrak to Rockford (Dubuque) are fundamentally 2 non-related items. Shouldn’t be an either or — both are very needed. (And while dreaming, I’d love to see passenger service restore on UP West to at least Clinton, IA, but I think that’s waaaaaay off in the future.)
Running the CZ or a day train to Omaha on the old Overland Route would be great, but I doubt if it would be welcomed by the UP.