(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - All aboard, the city of Peoria could be one step closer to securing passenger rail service via Amtrak after receiving federal funding.

Currently, Peoria is the largest metro area of the state without Amtrak.

And to break down what all this means is Peoria Mayor Rita Ali, and Tri-County Regional Planning Commission executive director, Eric Miller.

Thanks for joining us.

- It's a pleasure to be here.

- Absolutely.

- Let's start with the most recent developments, the federal money that was announced in December, Mayor.

Tell us about that and what that means for this whole process.

- Sure.

So Peoria, the corridor that we have proposed from Peoria to Chicago Union Station and all those cities in between, was selected by US Department of Transportation, their Federal Railroad Administration, to become part of the new Corridor Identification Program.

This is huge, even more so than the $500,000 seed money that's set aside, because it makes it a federal project and it puts us in line to be closer to implementation of our corridor.

- All right, good news to hear.

I know you both been in Peoria quite a long time.

Do you all remember when Amtrak was here previously?

I think it ceased operations in the late seventies.

- Yeah, in fact, there's been a number of efforts since then to sort of revive that, which have failed.

So, this is very exciting news, but yeah, I remember it was called the Prairie Marksman and it went to the city of East Peoria at that time.

- Is that a hurdle at all in this process, knowing that we did have Amtrak at one time and it didn't work for whatever reason?

Does that make things a little more difficult in this process of trying to get it back?

- Yeah, I don't think so.

I think having Amtrak here at one point is ultimately, a boost for us in that we were served by passenger rail and for a lot of different reasons, mostly funding and ridership that, that service waned.

But we're seeing all sorts of information that would tell us that ridership would be stronger than ever.

And again, with the passage of the new Transportation Bill and the emphasis on rail, there's no better time than now to be having these discussions and this planning work being done.

- And I would add to that, Mark, that the proposed corridor that we have from Peoria to Chicago is the old Rocket line.

And so, there's existing rail, even though it's in bad shape, it's an existing line that has to be fully upgraded, in some cases replaced.

Some of the track has to be replaced.

But so I think it's more advantageous that it is an existing line for us.

- And I know these communities, and we'll put up a map for you like LaSalle-Peru, Utica, Ottawa, Morris, and then into Joliet.

They've gotta be excited.

Those smaller towns about having a potential rail service.

- They're very excited, they are our partners.

We started this journey about two and a half years ago with a group of 20 Peoria leaders.

We've expanded that and now we have about 60 leaders that are working on this, because those cities in between Peoria and Chicago, the LaSalle-Peru, the Morris, Illinois, the Uticas, they're all part of this project.

And they're very excited not just about getting to Chicago, but about coming to Peoria.

And that's what's great about this opportunity is that this is not a one-way track.

We want people from the northern cities to come to Peoria for medical care, for recreation, for hospitality.

We want the visitors to come here to help to boost our economy and to visit this great city of Peoria.

- And it's good to have an affordable option out there too.

I remember in college, I would take the Amtrak from St. Louis to Chicago.

And without that, I mean, I couldn't afford to fly every time I wanted to go home or go back to school.

So this is good, especially for those people who may not have a lot of money and wanna travel.

- You're exactly right, Mark.

And you know, Amtrak is very present in a lot of college towns.

Well, Peoria is also a college town.

Bradley University was very much a part of this initiative.

They remain a part of this initiative.

The students want Amtrak, a 93% of over 30,000 people that were interviewed during our feasibility study said that they would use or likely use the Amtrak service.

- I was gonna bring up those numbers.

Yeah, 83% said very likely, somewhat likely 11%.

So, those are great numbers.

As far as the next step in the process, where do we go from here?

- So, we're going to have a kickoff meeting on the 23rd of January with the FRA.

Our team will meet with them to talk about next steps.

But where we are right now is we will be working on step one in a three-step process to get to Project Pipeline.

Our goal is to get to Project Pipeline, because that means implementation, construction, actually the development.

But there are three steps along the way, and the first step, step one is putting together that statement of work for a service delivery plan.

Step two, is developing that service delivery plan.

And then step three, I think is some of the pre-engineering type of work.

- Preliminary engineering, Correct, yeah.

- Okay.

- And when you talk about preliminary engineering, is that taking a look at the existing tracks and finding out what kind of shape they're in and what needs to be done?

- Absolutely.

These are existing tracks and they've been in place for over hundreds of years.

And so, right now they're being used for freight.

I believe the speed limit on them is 15 miles an hour.

And we wanna bring that up to 79 miles an hour, which obviously, involves a lot of improvements in a lot of different structures.

And these are sort of variables that we don't know yet.

But once the engineering takes place, we'll get to know those and we'll get to sort of know what the top end number is for ultimate implementation.

- And do you have an estimate yet for ultimate implementation as far as what it could cost?

- You know, there's been some numbers thrown about and it's very expensive.

I think the billion dollar number was mentioned, but that's replacing a lot of rail line, a lot of bridges that probably need to be replaced anyway.

So, I don't want people to think that this is all because of passenger rail, because it's going to improve a freight rail that's very productive for the region as well.

- And one thing people are probably curious about too is how this is gonna be paid for.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- So, how do we get into that?

- So, let's talk about the steps.

Step one, there's no match required.

It's a half a million dollars that's provided by the federal government being a part of this Corridor Identification Program.

That's why we were, you know, so excited to become part of this effort.

And it's the first, we're the first of 77 of 93 applications, 77 corridors were selected across the country, and the Peoria corridor is one of those.

So for step one, developing this statement of work, we don't have to pay anything.

Step two, there's a 10% cost.

We'll find out what it costs to develop that service delivery plan.

We find that out in step one.

We have to pay 10% of that.

We've already budgeted for that.

And then step three, in terms of the preliminary engineering, there's a requirement for 20% of the cost.

These are step one, two, and three have already been budgeted for.

Some of that comes locally, that's already raised and reserved.

Some of that comes from the state of Illinois Department of Transportation.

- Okay.

So, we're hoping IDOT can contribute in the future.

And the federal government, I'm sure we're looking to them for some funds.

- [Eric] Yeah.

- Absolutely.

Once we get to that Project Pipeline, that's when the doors open for a federal state financing program opportunity to help get the funding behind this.

- Yeah, this all wouldn't be possible without the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed.

Now going on three years ago, set aside $66 billion for rail improvement projects.

Passenger rail is obviously a large component of that.

And this current administration believes in passenger rail that it's sort of a foundational principle for them and for our country.

And $66 billion is more than ever has been invested in rail before.

So, that's why this opportunity's before us.

If it weren't for that, I think this would be somewhat of a pipe dream.

But this is very realistic at this point in time and we really feel like we've got a really nice shot at making these improvements to get passenger rail service here.

- Absolutely, and it will be a game changer for Peoria, both economically, attracting new businesses, attracting new visitors.

And I have to throw a shout out to our partner in this, and that's former US Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, because he's been my key partner in helping to pull together the team, helping to reach out to both Amtrak and the USDOT Federal Railroad Administration.

We've had preliminary meetings with them prior to becoming part of the Corridor Identification Program.

And having known people in those areas, having that experience, he's been a real door opener for us.

- He's got a few connections.

- A few.

- Yeah, that helps.

What about our state senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin?

Have they been involved or consulted about this?

- Absolutely, both of them wrote letters of support.

The Governor wrote a letter of support.

I think we had about 80 letters of support throughout the state of Illinois.

But from the top all the way through, you know, from Peoria business leaders to LaSalle-Peru and Morris business leaders, everybody seems to be on board with this, and we're very excited to have the support.

- [Eric] There's nothing but green light so far.

- That's good.

What kind of a timeline are we looking at, best case scenario on this?

When can we start seeing people getting on and off the train in Peoria?

- I would say best case scenario, seven years.

I've been throwing out this seven to 10 year number and you know, when you look at Normal, Bloomington, Illinois and talking to Mayor Koos over there, from start to finish, it took seven years for them to actually see passengers get on a train.

I wanna ride that train, Mark.

Of course, I want my children and grandchildren to enjoy it as well.

But, you know, I drive to Bloomington, Illinois, I drive to Galesburg, Illinois to get on the train to go to Chicago for various meetings.

I like the train.

I think, you know, it's a safe opportunity.

It's also a, you know, I think it helps with equity, I think it helps with reducing pollution, and it's just a good option that we should have right here in the city of Peoria.

- I'm glad you mentioned Mr. Koos, we'll be talking to him a little bit later.

He's a big proponent of Amtrak, that's for sure.

And have you, in talking with him, and looking at the effect that it's had on Bloomington Normal, have you been able to use some of that information in our pitch to bring it here to Peoria?

- Absolutely, we did a feasibility study as part of this whole process over the past two years.

And we learned from what Normal has done in the past.

Bloomington Normal I should say, he's the mayor of Normal.

They still call it the Bloomington Station, but what is that station called, Uptown?

- Well, it's in Uptown Normal.

- Yeah.

- Uptown Normal.

But he says it was a game changer for them in many ways.

And so, we want it to be a game changer for Peoria as well.

- Yeah, when we first started off, just providing passenger rail service to Peoria was the goal.

We didn't really care where we went.

We just wanted to be on the map.

And as it turned out, you know, some of the advisement that we received from USDOT and all of our other advisors, they said, "Well, if you're gonna go somewhere, you gotta go to Chicago, 'cause that's Amtrak's hub for the United States."

So, that's how we ended up in Chicago.

We're not trying to sort of duplicate what Normal's doing, we're trying to compliment what Normal's doing.

But again, you know, we've been out without passenger service for a long, long time.

And one fact that the mayor likes to throw out is we are the largest urban area without any Amtrak service in the state of Illinois.

And so, we're trying to rectify that.

- Was there any consideration of maybe trying to get a line between Peoria and Bloomington Normal?

- Yeah., back in 2013, Tri-County Regional Planning Commission commissioned a study to sort of study what sort of a commuter rail line.

And again, commuter rail is not passenger rail.

It's sort of two different animals.

And commuter rail has a different set of investment.

- [Mark] Would that be more like metro in Chicago?

- Yes, exactly.

- Okay.

- But you need that daily ridership to be there day in and day out.

And ultimately, what killed it, it wasn't the ridership.

There was a sort of a connection on the Bloomington side that wouldn't make it sort of in a timely manner.

So, that failed for a variety of reasons.

But we didn't have $66 billion of federal investment at that time, which may have made that study come out differently.

- We talked about, you know, what was it a year and a half ago, two years ago?

When you put out the Q&A for people and where a lot of people said they would support this, they would write it.

Did you learn anything else about what people wanted or passenger habits during that survey?

- People want fast, affordable, and frequent.

And that's why we're looking at five rides a day, or five trains a day.

And we're looking at affordable service, so frequent.

And you know, we're looking at options just like initially we didn't have Utica on the map, but then that was thrown out as part of our discussion that who wouldn't want to go to the state park there?

- Sure.

- And maybe just go to the state park and for a day and come back the same day.

And that may be a seasonal type of opportunity, but I love to go to the state park.

- It's beautiful up there.

Have you figured out how long a ride from Peoria to Chicago would be?

- We're looking at three hours that it would take three hours.

And initially, we had a lot of talk about high speed train service and really we are talking about higher speed train service, because true high speed is about 200 miles an hour.

We're not gonna get that in this area.

And, you know, there's a possibility that at some point we'll move from 79 miles per hour up to 110, which is about the fastest that we get here in Illinois.

- Yeah, great.

- So, what are you looking for from the citizens of Peoria, Peoria County, people on this line that goes to Chicago?

Is there anything they can do or should be doing, if they're interested in this service to help maybe speed things along or just show support?

- I would say just continue to watch, stay in tune with what's happening.

If there's any way that you can continue to show your support to our state and federal representatives, just to let them know we're expecting this.

We're continue to want and need this for this area.

And I think that the excitement is there.

The expectation is growing, and the milestones.

We've reached several milestones.

We started out just with a local group talking about, you know, the desire for this.

And then it grew into a feasibility study that said this is a feasible opportunity, and then it grew into a state plan.

This corridor is part of the state plan for passenger rail and now it's a federal project.

So, we are meeting various milestones.

The ridership is there, we're going to go through these steps.

Step one is gonna kick off in a couple weeks.

And then, you know, after you complete one step in the process, that's when you can go into the next step.

So, we plan to complete one, two, and three and get into that Project Pipeline.

That's the goal.

And that's really the goal of the new infrastructure bill for passenger rail.

- Okay.

- But just to add onto that, Mark, you asked what we can do.

To show support like the Mayor indicated, but not object.

Because there'll become tough decisions down the line and we don't expect the city of Peoria to bear all this expense for these local matches.

And so, what we're gonna go out to communities and ask for their support and helping the city sort of supplement some of the match money that's gonna be required.

And to keep this project moving along, you gotta show continued support and the money's gotta be there at the right time.

So, the planning work needs to get done.

It's gonna take a amount of time that is not two days, but it's not five years.

It's gonna be sort of in that time and we're gonna have a little ask along the way.

And as long as we can continue that commitment and say, "Hey, we're all in support of this, nobody's against it, and we've got the funding to move forward," that's what makes a successful project.

- Eric's exactly right.

Even with the development of the grant application to apply for the corridor ID that cost several thousand dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, and Peoria stepped up, but then Peoria County stepped up, Morris, Illinois, Utica, the governments, you know, in the northern cities, they all stepped up and pitched in money.

So, there's financial commitments all throughout the partnership, all those key stakeholders.

- You have to think there's a good radius of people around Peoria, not just in the city or county, that are gonna wanna use this service eventually.

Well, this is very interesting.

I know it's not gonna happen overnight, but you seem to have a good grasp on timelines here and what needs to be done.

So, we will be following this project for years and years to come.

- Wonderful.

- We thank you both for coming on.

- Thank you for the opportunity.

- Thank you.

- Our Phil Luciano traveled to Normal recently to find out how the town has benefited from Amtrak.

- [Phil] What can rail service mean to a community?

More than just the clickety clack of train tracks.

Look at Normal's Uptown Station.

It's not just a train stop, but a community and commercial hub.

In addition to seeing 10 Amtrak trains daily, the station provides bus connections.

The upper floors serve as the town of Normal's city hall and council chambers.

The station sits along a 37-mile bicycle and pedestrian pathway.

And it's just four miles from the central Illinois Regional Airport.

- It's an economic development engine.

It absolutely is.

- [Phil] Before Uptown Station opened in 2012, Koos and other civic leaders spent more than a decade of strategic planning.

- And it was kind of our realization that all these people were coming into our community and never set foot in our central business district.

- A bright modern facility has helped spur ridership as well as local spending.

- So if you have a clean, attractive train station well located, it makes people feel more comfortable about the journey.

You know, their first interaction is with a nice, clean, modern building and that gives 'em a lot more confidence about using the trains.

- [Phil] The inviting station has prompted day trips and other tourism to Normal in Bloomington from visitors from as far away as St. Louis in Chicago.

- Yeah, we've seen that, we really have.

You know, we have a art festival in the summer and I've met people that have come down for the festival for the day from Chicago, and trains have a lot to do with that.

It's a very convenient way for them to come down, spend a day, and then get back home.

- [Phil] The dynamic of the station has spurred local investment as well as an economic boost - In terms of a number, it's really hard to calculate, but I would say, you know, we have two hotels right over here and one's a conference hotel, and the access of train travel was important to them for getting those conferences.

We're center of the state and the conferences tend to be regional.

And so, people will get on a train, come down here for a day and a half, two days, get on a train, go back home.

They never touch a car the whole time they're here.

- [Phil] Within walking distance of the station, visitors can stroll through a retail district, rich with shops and restaurants, many of which have been around for years.

Many also come for the Children's Discovery Museum created as part of the station redevelopment.

- The Children's Discovery Museum, which believe it or not, will get day trips from schools up and down the corridor.

They'll take the train in.

So, it's a double trip for the kids.

They get to ride the train and they spend a day in the Children's Museum.

- [Phil] In addition to all those positives, Uptown Station also provides a bonus local benefit.

- You know, I think the enhanced service and the fact that it's a new train station, yeah, there's a lot of pride for having that in the community.

People, you know, more people are using it now than they did prior to the station being built.

So, it reflects.

- Back here with Phil Luciano and it's hard to believe that for those of us who haven't lived in Peoria forever, that there was Amtrak service at one point.

- That's true.

The other part that I can't believe is that 30 years, 20 years, even 10 years ago, I would've thought this would be impossible, but it's moving to the possible.

It's right at the federal level now and you know, they start talking about billion as in B and you're like, whoa, that's a lot of money and it is a lot of money for you and for me for Peoria, but Ray LaHood has said it's gonna be like 4 billion and he didn't even blink.

He goes, "Oh, it doesn't matter, it's federal money."

And what he meant is that this is at a level where there's a big pot of dough and why not for this project.

So, time to take advantage of it.

- Yeah, and it's one of those things you hope that it's gonna be in everyone's best benefit for it to work, you know?

You don't wanna spend all that money and then have people not use it, but it'd be a good opportunity I think to get people not only out of Peoria, but into Peoria.

- Oh yeah, and the thing, if you're thinking, well, I don't take the train, I don't do a lot of trains, that's only part of the equation.

As Mayor Koos was talking about, look what a station can do.

I think a lot of people think of a train station, it's like the old ones in the small town, you know, a platform and maybe one ticket agent.

No, it's an opportunity for mass development around there, like a new hub, and that'd be great to have downtown Peoria.

- It'd be nice to have an uptown normal type vibe- - Right, right.

- in downtown Peoria.

- Sure, sure.

- If that is possible.

Well, this is a story we'll be following for a long time, my friend.

- Yes, sir.

- But it will happen in our lifetime according to the mayor.

You gotta see this coming up in just a few minutes.

- A lot of great stories about the people and places of central Illinois and I think this one's got me, it's got you, it's got Julie.

We're all in this one.

- Holy moly, the three, I better say Musketeers, as long as Julie's in it, it's fine.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, that's what the people want.

All right, thanks very much for joining us tonight.

We hope you enjoyed the program.

You can watch past episodes of "At Issue", and you gotta see this on our website wtvp.org.

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Have a good night.

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