$2 billion project covers Amtrak speed increase, safety upgrades, new cars

A trip from St. Louis to Chicago via Amtrak’s Lincoln Service will be about 15 minutes quicker starting this week due to track upgrades that allow for increased speeds.

The Amtrak line ran its first 110 mph service on Monday, up from 90 mph previously, which would make the one-way trip less than five hours long. The trip is now a full 30 minutes quicker than when the service ran at 79 mph when the project began in 2010.

The faster speed doesn’t meet the federal definition of high-speed rail – 125 mph – but the new Lincoln Service is faster than most other Amtrak trains. Less than half of Amtrak trains pass 100 mph, according to a March Amtrak report.

The speed upgrade is part of a broader $1.96 billion infrastructure project aimed at upgrading passenger rail service in Illinois. The funds mostly came from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a 2009 stimulus package passed in response to the Great Recession. Around $300 million in funding for the project came from a mix of state and non-federal sources, according to the governor’s office.

Ray Lang, Amtrak’s vice president of state-supported services, said he believes the upgrades to route speed will help the company make rail travel more appealing downstate.