Parade Magazine had an excellent cover story on passenger train service in the U.S. They make the case for more federal funding for this more efficient transportation system and shows how far the U.S. is behind other countries. The new routes in Illinois and their tremendous increase in ridership are highlighted in the article.
The title says it all: “With high gas prices and airport delays, could we make our trains… A Better Way To Travel?”
This was a great story! Something that came to mind from my own days of being involved in rail trails is that the laws for the use of tax dollars through the icetea (?) legislation put the rail lines into a rail bank for future rail use. As I understood it that if the use of rail were ever again needed the trails would be torn up and rail put back in. Perhaps David Jordan would comment on this.
Railbanking does indeed put the right of way in the position of being returned to rail use in the future. However, the cost of returning to rail service is exhorbitant and maybe out of the realm of possibility. The plan to railbank any right of way (ROW)should be studied thoroughly before any such thing is done. There are plenty of abandoned railways out there that have been railbanked and turned into trails. But very few have ever been returned to rails mostly because of the cost. The cheaper cost would be to study the process before hand and determine that no future use could possibly be needed before railbanking is done.
Amtrak expansion won’t necessarily require relaying railroad lines that were abandoned and removed long ago; give an example of a new Amtrak route and more likely than not, the track is already in place, albeit freight-only.
Service to Peoria, the Quad Cities and Rockford will use existing lines, though some signal and track improvements will be necessary.