LaHood urges QC to go all in on passenger rail service

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood celebrated the Interstate 74 bridge by calling on local leaders to get aboard a new all-out effort to win passenger rail service to the Quad Cities during the QCBJ’s Transportation and Infrastructure Seminar. Mr. LaHood, a former congressman from Peoria, Illinois, and state lawmaker from East Moline, was the […]

Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood celebrated the Interstate 74 bridge by calling on local leaders to get aboard a new all-out effort to win passenger rail service to the Quad Cities during the QCBJ’s Transportation and Infrastructure Seminar. Mr. LaHood, a former congressman from Peoria, Illinois, and state lawmaker from East Moline, was the keynote speaker at the Thursday, April 11, inaugural event at Bally’s Quad Cities Casino & Hotel in Rock Island. He also shared the path to removing a major obstacle that has so far derailed a project that Mr. LaHood says could one-day extend passenger train service from  Moline to Iowa City, to Omaha, Nebraska, and beyond. Greg Hass, president and CEO of Valley Construction, the Platinum Sponsor of the seminar, introduced the nation’s 16th transportation secretary Thursday as a “living legend and a friend who got his start right here in the Quad Cities.” Mr. LaHood, a Bradley University alumnus and a former school teacher, came here as director of the Rock Island County Youth Services. He later served as chief planner at the Bistate Metropolitan Planning Commission. “There’s only one other place in Illinois that I love as much as Peoria, which is my home, where I was born and raised and where my wife and I now reside,” he said. It’s the Quad Cities because the Quad Cities, as Greg said, gave me an opportunity for public service that obviously led to other opportunities,” Mr. LaHood told the crowd of more than 220. Those opportunities included representing the Quad Cities in the Illinois General Assembly, working for Congressman Tom Railsback of Moline, and GOP House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Peoria, then serving the Peoria area in Mr. Michel’s old 18th Congressional District for 14 years.

Ultimately, on Jan. 23, 2009, Mr. Hass said, “newly elected President Barack Obama in a very rare move appointed an across-the-aisle Republican to be his secretary of transportation.” Local leaders say that appointment was critical to the eventual completion of the I-74 bridge. “I truly don’t believe we’ve ever thanked our guest enough for this great addition to our area, which we plan to do today,” Mr. Hass said at the QCBJ event that ended with leaders from QC cities and counties presenting Mr. LaHood with an award. It was made by Rock Island-based Valley Construction from a large piece of the I-74 bridge and adorned with keys to each of those bi-state communities.  Bettendorf City Administrator Decker Ploehn said in presenting the award, “A lot of people in this room went to D.C. for a lot of years … to try to get the money” for what was then a $750 million project. “We had success, but we weren't quite there.”

Then a lobbyist told leaders to reach out to the new transportation secretary with deep Quad Cities ties. Mr. Ploehn cold-called Mr. LaHood’s office, and was quickly patched through. During that conversation, a meeting was set up in Washington where Mr. LaHood offered to come to the Quad Cities and declare the old, dated, twin suspension green bridge the “worst bridge in America.”  Mr. Ploehn said “Right there was when everything just moved rapidly and we got the funding and we all know the rest of the story.” Mr. LaHood tells a slightly different version of the tale to the current $1 billion, award-winning I-74 structure. “The bridge would not be standing today without all of you that worked on it. It simply would not. When a community gets together and gets up every day and tries to figure out how to fix something it eventually gets fixed,” he told Quad Cities business, community and transportation leaders at the seminar. “Now what you all need to do is the same thing you did for the bridge,” Mr. LaHood added. “You need to get a core group of people who wake up every day and figure out how you persuade a freight rail in Iowa and the elected leadership in Iowa to take that rail line from here to Iowa City and Omaha.” 

Mr. LaHood also shared a path to make it happen.

As secretary, Mr. LaHood said he worked with then-Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and others to create the passenger rail corridor from Chicago to the Quad Cities. “You provided money, impetus, encouragement,” he said. It went nowhere, however, he added, because the Iowa Interstate Railroad won’t discuss or approve the passenger rail upgrades needed at a critical Bureau County, Illinois, interchange that the freight carrier controls. “To me the only thing standing in the way of making that happen is a freight rail system in Iowa and the Iowa political leadership saying, ‘This is important for infrastructure for the region. for the country,’” Mr. LaHood said. From now on, he added, QC leaders’ first priority must be to find a way to convince influential Iowa leaders to show the Iowa Interstate Railroad that it would be in its best interests to share the rails and improve the interchange at Wyanet, Illinois. Mr. LaHood acknowledged that freight carriers don't like to share their track. He and former  Gov. Pat Quinn confronted a similar problem  when they wanted to grow the passenger rail line from Chicago to St. Louis on track that was controlled by Union Pacific. After four years of negotiating with the railroad for shared use, he said, "We put millions of dollars into that rail line and now the trains go faster there and that rail line is an economic engine for the whole region – from Chicago to Joliet to Bloomington-Normal.”

QC passenger rail requires a similar concentrated effort.

“If you want to really continue to revive the economy of the Quad-Cities you need rail service, and you can’t let these little distractions prohibit you from getting it,” Mr. LaHood said. “If you build passenger rail from Chicago to the Quad Cities you will increase your opportunities for economic development for people coming here, but the Iowa piece has to get done, and you are the only ones that can make it happen,” he added. There is, however, no time to waste, he said because the “stars are aligned” and there are large amounts of infrastructure investment money still available at the state and federal levels. “You should all be very proud to be citizens of this wonderful community because you’ve accomplished a lot and you are going to accomplish a lot more,” Mr. LaHood predicted. “I may not be around to ride that train and some of you won't either, but you've got work on it. You have to make it happen.”