For Chicago's many ex-Michiganders, your future Thankgiving pilgrimages will be slightly shorter. more ›

Mayor Daley took time out of his farewell tour of all 50 wards yesterday to talk about a recent trip to China he took recently and the relationships Chicago has with China he helped forge during his time in office. more ›

High-speed rail took another step to reality yesterday with the announcement yesterday of funding for a second phase of a line between Chicago and St. Louis. more ›

Illinois is among 12 states that will divvy $1.2 billion in high speed rail funding previously allotted to Wisconsin and Ohio. Illinois will receive $42 million in funding. more ›

Walker's opposition to the rail project could have direct consequences on employment in Wisconsin, however. Spanish train-builder Patentes Talgo, which is building two cars for the existing Amtrak Hiawatha line, is being courted by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, who has embraced the federal funding to upgrade rail service in the Midwest. Talgo has said that if Wisconsin doesn't change its mind about funding for rail, the company will leave no later than 2012, after delivering two trains that it has committed to build for the state of Oregon. more ›

The news this week has been filled with reports that recently elected Republican governors in Midwestern states want to turn down cash for high-speed rail projects funded through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. To read the news reports, however, one would think that these conservative, cost-conscious governors would simply refuse the funding on the principal that we can't afford to build a high-speed rail network right now. more ›

One of the bullet points of Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker's campaign was opposing the construction of a high-speed rail line from Milwaukee to Madison, due to the $7.5 million annual operation costs Madison would have to pony up. Walker has pledged to reject $810 million stimulus funds geared toward the construction of the line. more ›

Even though he's out the door next spring, Mayor Daley is back from a visit to China loaded with nifty ideas and he's really, really pushing his high-speed train to O'Hare idea. According to Daley, our friends in China and Korea want to help us make this magical unicorn train to the airport a reality: “They’re all interested. … Everybody’s interested. ... They want to design it. They want to build it, operate and maintain it … with people working here." Daley insisted his leaving office wouldn't deter these investors from wanting to get involved and then played the "everyone else has one" card: more ›

Mayor Daley announced the creation of a blue-ribbon committee (literally - it's called the "O'Hare Express Blue Ribbon Committee") to study the feasibility of building a privately financed and operated high-speed train from O'Hare to Block 37. “It has to be almost a separate private system,” Da Mare said in a press conference at City Hall. He's hoping that the 17 member panel, made up of local civic, labor and business leaders and led by Lester Crown of Henry Crown and Co, can figure out a way to build and operate a system parallel to the Blue Line without any city or government money. “The mandate from the mayor is: ‘No city money. No government money.’ ” Crown told the Sun-Times. “There’s already interest by private investment funds, foreign investment funds,” Daley said. “They’ve come to see me, I’ll be very frank, talking about this. That’s exciting.” more ›

• The search is on in Wisconsin for a 9-year-old girl from Chicago who fell into Lake Michigan while kayaking.
• Responding to Stedman's comments from last week, Mayor Daley insists that the city really really does like Oprah.
• Two teens were wounded in an overnight shooting in Gage Park.

High-speed rail in the Midwest is slowly chugging along. The Illinois Senate passed a bill today to create a 12-member commission that's charged with coming up with an initial plan by March 2011 for how to build the system. The commission will decide how to structure a public-private partnership to design, build, and operate the system and recommend how to approach funding and integrating with existing transportation systems in the Midwest, according to the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association. more ›

Union Station's massive Great Hall, which is popular for movie sets (but not with waiting passengers), may soon receive an overhaul. Amtrak has asked seven architecture and real estate firms to come up with ways to make the hall and its surrounding vacant office and retail space more vibrant and more transportation-oriented. How does Chicago's Union Station look in comparison to other heavily-trafficked and iconic train stations around the U.S.? See photos above for a look. more ›

The CTA trains are another story, but if you use Metra and Amtrack trains to get around Chicagoland area, your ride may soon get a little faster. more ›

Last year it was announced the city might be a high speed rail hub. Today, it was confirmed as Illinois learned how much funding will be received to build a high speed rail link between Chicago and St. Louis. The Obama Administration announced Illinois will be awarded $1.23 billion of the $8 billion in economic stimulus grants, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for the designated 31 states to develop 13 high-speed rail corridors linking major cities and the rural areas between them. Illinois officials, along with Gov. Pat Quinn, hoped the city would receive at least $2 billion. The grant will serve as a down payment towards construction of a Midwest high speed rail network, which will total $2.6 billion and connect every major city within 400 miles of Chicago. more ›

Eight Midwest states are busy readying another high-speed rail project proposal in the hopes of getting a piece of the $8 billion in funding set aside by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The proposal, which is due Oct. 2, uses Chicago as a hub for a Midwestern high-speed rail system that would connect most of the major cities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. The trains would travel 110 mph, compared to a current top speed of 79 mph for most Amtrak trains in the area, according to an article by NPR. more ›

When he isn't warning Chinese government officials of the duplicitous ways of the current White House administration, Mark Kirk has been fairly vocal about how we should handle the current economic downturn. Kirk, who is running for the U.S. Senate Seat that is up for grabs next year, has been a critic of how the money in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is being spent. One of those key criticisms is that there is too much "social spending" and not enough focus on infrastructure spending. Few would disagree that capital spending on transit and buildings has a direct impact on putting people to work. And the debate over social spending - such as student loans, extended unemployment benefits and education spending - is as valid as the divide between fiscal conservatives and their counterparts in the progressive camps. more ›

State legislators approved a huge $29 billion public works program to create jobs and repair the state’s infrastructure, however roughly $500 million can be spent in legislator’s home districts on pet projects such as $50k for the Candlewick Lake Association, a gated lakefront community near Rockford with a 220-acre lake and a 9-hole golf course. The community did not ask for the money but according to Candlewick’s general manager, “We certainly will find good use for it,” he told WBBM. Other projects slated for grants include: more ›

The proposals for the regional high speed rail systems have been submitted as each region is competing for part of the $8 billion payday, but the Midwest region, with Chicago as its hub, got a big boost from V.P. Joe Biden who called the Midwest proposal, "one of the most comprehensive plans that have been put forward so far." In total, the system would cost around $9.6 billion and take 10 years to complete. [Tribune] more ›

Speaking at a luncheon at Chicago's Union League Club, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood reiterated his call for a Midwest "high-speed rail czar". The idea, which LaHood proposed to Governor Pat Quinn last month, would entail "somebody, maybe a retired rail person, who gets up every day, and the only thing that person thinks about is developing the high-speed rail corridor in the Midwest," LaHood said. "That's the way it is going to happen." According to LaHood, a joint program administrator would work with states in the region to figure out how to use portions of the $8 billion allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build a high-speed rail network in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. more ›

Before leaving for Mexico to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama outlined his vision for a series of high-speed rail corridors around the nation, including a nine-state, 3,000 mile Midwestern network that features Chicago as a hub. "High-speed intercity passenger rail can play a critical role in certain travel markets, but the United States has historically failed to invest in this mode," said a statement released by the White House. "The president proposes a long-term strategy intended to build an efficient, high-speed passenger rail network of 100- to 600-mile intercity corridors as one element of a modernized transportation system." more ›

Last October, we took a look at the possibility of Chicago becoming the center of a nine-state high-speed Amtrak network. With the passage of President Obama's stimulus package, though, this could be much closer to reality. Among the bill's provisions is $8 billion for high-speed transit lines, now seemingly up for grabs. It hasn't yet been decided how much money will be spent and where, but there's already controversy over which proposed line will get the money and even over one of the lines itself, one GOP'ers have taken to calling "The Sin Express," which would connect San Diego to Anaheim and then Las Vegas. more ›

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a bill, the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act, that President Bush says he'll sign [though the margin of yeas to nays - 74 to 24 including yeas from both Illinois Senators Obama and Durbin - made the bill veto-proof] that will send $13.1 billion in funding to Amtrak over the next five years. Part of the funding could go to creating a nine-state high-speed rail network throughout the Midwest, composed of 3,000 miles of track, of which Chicago would serve as the hub. more ›