In March 2013, the Brookings Institution released a policy report with recommendations for improving  passenger rail in anticipation of the upcoming reauthorization of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA). According to the report, Amtrak’s ridership has soared in recent years along several short-distance metropolitan corridors, though it declined in... Read More

On March 19, 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure .  Updated every four years, the report card rates the condition of the nation’s transportation, energy, and water infrastructure and provides individual state profiles.  ASCE assigned a cumulative GPA of D+ to the nation’s infrastructure, identifying an... Read More

The Multimodal Opportunities Via Enhanced Freight Act of 2013 (MOVE Freight Act) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on March 5, 2013.  This bill would amend the freight provisions of Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21 st Century (MAP-21), the two-year transportation reauthorization bill passed last summer.  Intended to strengthen MAP-21’s national freight... Read More

On March 6, 2013, Governor Quinn delivered his annual budget address to a joint meeting of the General Assembly. The Governor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 (FY14) totals $62.4 billion for all revenue funds, of which $35.6 billion is for the General Revenue Fund (GRF). The proposed GRF amount exceeds the revenue spending cap of $35.08 billion that was approved by the Illinois... Read More

The Elgin O’Hare Western Access (EOWA) project is on a short list of fiscally-constrained major capital projects identified in GO TO 2040.  It includes three main components: 1.      Reconstructing the existing Elgin O'Hare Expressway and adding an additional lane in each direction. 2.      Extending the Elgin O'Hare... Read More