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Rockford's Rail Service Hopes Are Still Alive, Mayor Says

Victor Yehling/WNIJ News

The report of the death of passenger rail service to Rockford, to paraphrase Mark Twain, was an exaggeration.

That’s the position Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey took at a news conference today to clarify a comment Wednesday by Amtrak Representative Ray Lang to an Illinois House committee.

"I asked (Lang) if Amtrak is coming to Rockford, and he said, 'No,'" said State Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, who chairs the Public Safety Appropriations Committee. State Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Freeport, passed that exchange along to a Rockford news outlet, creating both consternation and confusion.

Morrissey told the news conference, with about two dozen spectators in attendance, that Lang was talking about available operating funds for Amtrak in Illinois following Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposed cuts for the coming fiscal year.

Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told WNIJ News in an e-mail that “the state will decide how much service it will contract with Amtrak to provide.”

“As we testified in Springfield (Wednesday) afternoon and in Rockford on 2/25,” he wrote, “the budget proposed by the Governor does not contain sufficient funds for the current service levels elsewhere in the state.”

Morrissey said today that the lack of operating funds will not affect Rockford’s plans to restore passenger rail service in fiscal 2015-16 because the capital projects to prepare the track and the development projects in downtown Rockford will not be ready for a couple of years.

Rockford’s concern at the present, the mayor said, is completing the capital projects, including the combination train station and parking structure next to the downtown hotel complex in the former Amerock Building and upgrading the track on which the proposed passenger service will travel.

“… the word we received as an organization as late as last week in our conversations with state officials is to keep doing our work on the planning and design on the downtown train station,” he said. “The other funding – the funding that had been frozen by the governor -- is the funding related to the track upgrades.”

Morrissey cited $60 million inserted into the state’s 2009 capital plan for the Chicago-Rockford service. “That hasn’t gone away,” he said. “That’s still part of that legislation.”  

He also referred to the Illinois Department of Transportation five-year plan for 2015 to 2020 that includes $223 million for passenger rail development in the Chicago-Rockford-Dubuque corridor, noting that those funds are still intended to help bring passenger service to Rockford.

“There have been specific line-item commitments made by the state,” he said.

Morrissey acknowledged that Rauner has the right to stop projects while the state conducts a review of priorities, “as long as, at the end of this analysis, there is a continued commitment from the state to maintain capital investments that are going to move our community forward.and move our plans for service on the UP (Union Pacific) line forward.”

“We have huge issues with antiquated infrastructure. That infrastructure needs to be improved that’s a capital investments.

We need to ask and encourage our state legislators to stay positive and keep supporting our service level requests for passenger rail and freight rail.”

Morrissey said he told Cabello that Rockford needs advocacy and support from him and from all the Rockford-area legislators.

“At the end of the day this is part of the political process. The political process can be impacted dramatically and direcly by the willingness of our citizens and our elected representatives to make the claim and advocate for our community.”

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