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.
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