With new grants in hand, MIPRC looks to a busy 2025 and its Silver Jubilee

With an appreciative nod to the past, the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission’s 2024 Annual Meeting set forth a busy 2025, from starting the work under the commission’s federal grants to greeting a new Congress, to working on new rolling stock planning with Amtrak and marking the Commission’s upcoming 25th anniversary.

All this and more was discussed at MIPRC’s 2024 Annual Meeting, held Nov. 18-20 in St. Paul, Minnesota. A record 79 commissioners, partners and allies attended the meeting, held in St. Paul’s historic Union Depot after most attendees traveled there on Nov. 18 from Chicago or Milwaukee on the six-month-old state-supported Borealis train.

While aboard, MIPRC Commissioner Jennifer Murray, director of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transit, Local Roads, Railroads & Harbors (Wisconsin governor’s designee), gave a briefing on the history of the Borealis – formerly known as “TCMC” (Twin Cities-Milwaukee-Chicago) – and where projects are still under construction along the route.

Upon arrival at Union Depot, Greg Mathis, operations supervisor for passenger rail for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, gave a brief overvIiew of the Depot’s history from its construction in the early 1900s to its heyday – when it hosted trains of nine railroads on 18 tracks, including some of the region’s most famous streamliners like the Zephyr (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy), the 400 (Chicago & NorthWestern) and the Hiawatha (Milwaukee Road) – and during the Amtrak era, when passenger rail service ended for several years, and the Depot wound up being used by the U.S. Postal Service.

Its reactivation as a passenger terminal began in 2005 when Ramsey County bought it and began renovating it to be a local transit hub, Mathis said. He added Union Depot began serving transit passengers in 2012, and intercity passengers again when Amtrak restored Empire Builder (Chicago-Seattle/Portland, Ore.) service there in 2014.

On Nov. 19, following a Year in Review from MIPRC Director Laura Kliewer and updates on passenger rail developments from member state departments of transportation (including the status of their FRA Corridor ID Projects), attendees began focusing on the future with a briefing by Amtrak officials on future rolling stock equipment needs and the Chicago Hub Improvement Program.

Amtrak Director of Network Development Arun Rao said most of the railroad’s current passenger cars are nearing the end of their viable service lives and will have to be withdrawn from service in the 2030s. New equipment will be needed to replace them, and to support plans for new or expanded regional service, Rao said. Given the seven- to 10-year process for purchasing new cars, regional planning for this transition should begin now, he added.

Amtrak has begun its planning process and has ordered new cars for the Northeast Corridor and some long-distance routes, he said, adding that the railroad wants to meet with Midwestern states to discuss their equipment needs and desires, along with funding and ownership options.

He proposed a “workshop”-style meeting with the states that already jointly own and operate the newer fleet of Siemens-built Charger locomotives and Venture cars along state-supported routes in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and Wisconsin, and other interested states.

Concurrent with planning for new equipment is the need to improve access to Chicago Union Station for both trains and passengers, said Amtrak Government Affairs Manager Ismael Cuevas. Union Station serves 120,000 passengers daily between Amtrak and Metra (Chicago’s regional commuter rail system) and relies on decades-old track and yard configurations that cannot support planned passenger rail service expansions or new regional services, Cuevas said.

In addition to station platform and concourse improvements (detailed during the 2023 Annual Meeting), he said the current Chicago Hub Improvement Program (CHIP) also includes:

• Reconfiguring the St. Charles Air Line – an elevated, east-west route from the lakefront to Union Station – to provide a direct connection into the station, which would eliminate the need for Illini and Saluki trains to reverse direction, a 10- to 15-minute maneuver.
• Rebuilding or replacing a 100-year-old lift bridge carrying trains over the Chicago River’s south branch.
• New maintenance facilities, and a new storage/layover yard along Canal Street adjacent to Guaranteed Rate Field.

Cuevas and Rao said Amtrak will be applying for $629 million in grants from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail program for CHIP, and asked MIPRC and member states to support the applications.

Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose, who rode the Borealis with meeting attendees, addressed the meeting, recapping the FRA’s programs under the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law), while FRA Program Lead Barbara Moreno and Freight Railroad Outreach Specialist Megan Neeck described the evolution of the FRA’s Corridor Identification and Development (Corridor ID) Program.

MIPRC Director Laura Kliewer discussed MIPRC’s successful Interstate Rail Compacts (IRC) and Consolidated Rail Infrastructure & Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant applications, which will dictate much of the Commission’s work in 2025 and beyond.

The IRC grant of up to $300,000 over two years was awarded in March 2024 and recently obligated, and will enable MIPRC to expand its capacity for advocacy and promotion of regional passenger rail in the Midwest – efforts Kliewer said began with staff expansion and will continue with the launch of a new e-newsletter, MIPRC Momentum, and a redesigned and improved website.

The CRISI planning grant – an award of up to $1.84 million over five years announced in October –  for “Invest Midwest: The Future of Midwestern Passenger Rail – Phase 1,” is a regional planning project to advance and expand the network envisioned in the FRA’s 2021 Midwest Regional Rail Plan.

This project will include close coordination with member state departments of transportation to engage in region-wide stakeholder engagement and service planning through the development of ridership and revenue forecasting, economic impacts analyses and a phasing strategy for corridors across the Midwest, complementing the FRA’s Corridor ID Program and other route improvements being undertaken by MIPRC states.

Attendees also heard about the proposed Chicago-Ft. Wayne-Columbus-Pittsburgh route accepted into the FRA’s Corridor ID Program, and federal spending forecasts, as well as a spotlight on lessons learned as Corridor ID projects move into the programs second step, presented by MIPRC Partner HNTB.

On the morning of Nov. 20, MIPRC commissioners participated in focus groups to help design the inaugural edition of MIPRC Momentum. The newsletter is being developed to communicate news of regional passenger rail developments to MIPRC commissioners and partners, Midwestern Members of Congress and their staff, as well as to other audiences.

Attendees also discussed MIPRC’s priorities for 2025, including the launch of MIPRC Momentum and an overhaul of MIPRC’s website, the obligation of MIPRC’s CRISI grant, planning for MIPRC’s 25th anniversary, continuing work to have Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota adopt the compact, and beginning discussion of MIPRC’s positions on reauthorization of federal surface transportation funding and passenger rail programs. (See the full list of 2025 priorities on our Current Activities page.)

In a business session, commissioners discussed location options for the 2025 Annual Meeting and initial ideas on how to celebrate MIPRC’s 25th anniversary. They also gave final approval to the FY 2025 budget and elected (or re-elected) a new slate of officers to one-year terms.

Re-elected as chair was Beth McCluskey, associate vice president & director of intermodal growth at TYLin International (Illinois governor’s designee).

Elected as Vice Chair was Jen Murray, director of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transit, Local Roads, Railroads & Harbors (Wisconsin governor’s designee), who replaces Peter Anastor, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Office of Rail (Michigan governor’s designee); and Pete Meitzner, Sedgwick County, Kansas, Commissioner (Kansas’s private sector appointee), who replaces Scott Rogers (Wisconsin’s private sector appointee) as financial officer.