CHICAGO — Days after a challenge from federal legislators, Amtrak and its partners have applied for four grants which would enable more than $500 million in improvements as part of the program to upgrade Chicago Union Station and related infrastructure.
The grant requests for elements of the Chicago Hub Improvement Program met a Dec. 16 deadline to seek funding under the Federal-State Partnership for Interstate Passenger Rail. They come after Sen. Dick Durbin called on Amtrak, Metra, Canadian National, and Union Pacific to agree on the details of the requests during a CREATE Program media event, saying “enough is enough” after long-running negotiations [see “Legislators urge Amtrak, CN, Metra, UP to reach deal …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 13, 2024]. Durbin, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley had made a similar appeal in a letter to CEOs of those entities released the same day.
An Amtrak spokesman outlined the four grant applications in an email:
— $176 million for land acquisition and environmental clearance to expand Amtrak’s Chicago Maintenance Facility, a joint application with the Illinois Department of Transportation. IDOT, the Chicago Department of Transportation, and Amtrak would provide a $44 million match.
— $128 million for Union Station platform capacity expansion and ventilation improvement final design in a joint application with IDOT; IDOT, Metra, and Amtrak would provide a $32 million match. This would involve expansion of four station platforms as well as upgrades to the ventilation system.
— $117.6 million for environmental clearance and state-of-good-repair work for the South Branch Viaduct. Amtrak, Metra in a joint application with CDOT. Amtrak, Metra, and CDOT would provide a $29.4 million match. The 1914 two-track bridge about 1.5 miles south of Union Station, the only vertical lift bridge over the Chicago River, is a significant source of delays for Amtrak, Metra, and freight railroads.
— $32 million for final design of Union Station concourse modernization in a joint application with IDOT; IDOT, CDOT, Metra, and Amtrak would provide an $8 million match. The project calls for upgrades to the station concourse, mezzanine, and entrances.
If all grants are awarded, they would total $453.6 million, with Amtrak, IDOT, CDOT, and Metra combining for $113.4 million in matching funds.
The full Chicago Hub program includes more than $1.1 billion in projects, including track reconfigurations on Chicago’s South Side and an Amtrak line in Michigan. The project partners sought more than $250 million under the federal Mega grant program in 2022, then went after $870 million in Mega funding in 2023 [see “Chicago Hub project vies for big chunk …,” Trains News Wire, Aug. 3, 2023]. Neither bid was successful, but the FRA did award $93.6 million last year under the Federal-State partnership — $49.6 million to convert the station’s mail platform to passenger use, and $44 million for preliminary engineering and environmental assessement for the platform expansion/ventilation project program [see “Chicago Union Station to receive more than $93 million …,” News Wire, Dec. 6, 2023].
The program also received another $3 million Federal-State partnership money in 2021, $8.4 million in Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements money for infrastructure work in Michigan this year, and $40 million in federal capital set-asides outside of the grant programs for the mail platform and station concourse projects.
More on the Chicago Hub project is available here and here.
Seems only fair for Chicago to get some improvements after all the $$$ sunk into the Philadelphia’s station & Penn Station in NY. Especially the expansion of the maintenance facility which is sorely needed to keep the aging western LD cars running.
The bridge definitely needs replaced. In the summer Amtrak runs hoses and sprinklers onto the bridge to keep the rails from expanding in the heat. The rail expansion was causing problems with the rails aligning on the ridge ends.
Does anyone in Illinois think that open insurrection against the incoming president’s deportation program will help?
I’m not giving my opinion, as I fully support CREATE and fully support Union Station improvements. I’m telling you-all what’s going to happen.
As long as the Durbin/Duckworth combo are in office it will stay funded in some form.
Included in this effort is to find a way to replace the South Branch Chicago River lift bridge. Also called the Pennsylvania Bridge since it was built by the Pennsylvania from 1912-1914. It was a pain in the neck to build back then and I can guarantee it will be no different to replace this one.
Everytime I took Amtrak up to Chicago in the 1980’s, that bridge would hold us up due to some mechanical issue with it. One time it came down and somehow became misaligned and stopped 1 foot above. It took an hour for the field crew to raise it back up and get it aligned again.
Many people would say, just replace it with a bascule trunnion type, but that would require raising the elevation of the rails on both sides as ground level is less than 15 feet above the Chicago River here. Or they would have to build large cofferdams on both sides and narrow the river passage, which is still active with shipping commerce (mostly at night or Sundays). It will be an interesting engineering challenge.
FWIW: The company that designed it is still around and have won contracts to upgrade it from time to time with new lift motors.
Why not shoot for the moon with a fence around it, right?