Officials from Tri-County Regional Planning and the City of Peoria will announce today that all flights from Peoria will no longer connect directly to Chicago and other major hubs. Instead, Peoria will have just one airline that will provide shuttle service to the Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington, Illinois. 
From there, travelers can transfer to a major airline to reach hub cities.
“Bloomington is really where Peoria’s travelers want to go,” said Terry Kohlbuss, the executive director of the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission. “We’ve always considered Chicago a secondary destination.”
When asked why the Peoria area would seemingly be taking a step backwards given that no airlines had announced any plans to cut direct service to Peoria, Mayor Jim Ardis replied, “It’s part of our long-term goal of having all transportation options pass through the Bloomington-Normal area first.”
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood agreed. “We started many years ago with the interstate highways and successfully got them concentrated in the Twin Cities. Peorians are already dependent on Normal for passenger rail service. Air service is the next logical step in the process.”
The final step, said Kohlbuss, will be to reroute the Illinois River away from Peoria and through the twin cities where it can provide a natural boundary between Bloomington and Normal. But he added that it will “probably be several years” before the state is able to afford that project.