Lincoln Service - Upgrades

Upgrades

In July 2010, the state of Illinois and the Union Pacific Railroad reached an agreement under which track speeds between Dwight and Alton, Illinois are to be raised to as high as 110 miles per hour (180 km/h). This speed will cut the travel time between Chicago and St. Louis by 90 minutes, bringing the trip to under four hours. Construction on this stretch, which began on 17 September in Alton, will cost $98 million and is expected to be completed by the end of 2010. Most of the funding will come from $1.1 billion in stimulus money for Illinois high-speed rail from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The remainder of this grant, as well as $400 million in funding from the state of Illinois, will be used to complete a high-speed rail corridor for the remaining portions of the St. Louis–Chicago track. Senator Dick Durbin suggested the Dwight–Alton upgrades will create some 900 jobs, while the overall project could generate 24,000. From October 2009 to July 2010, more than 500,000 passengers used the route between Chicago and St. Louis, an 11 percent increase on the previous year.

On 22 March 2011, an announcement was made in Chicago that an additional $685 million would be used to upgrade trackage and grade crossings between Dwight and Lincoln. Construction on the improvement project began on April 5th, 2011.