Amtrak

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.

Tourism officials have launched a campaign to encourage more people to do their summer vacation travel by train.

The massive influx of federal money for Amtrak from the infrastructure law will help the Chicago-to-St. Louis corridor — even though much of the rolling stock on the corridor has been replaced over the last decade, says Normal Mayor Chris Koos, a nominee to serve on the board of the passenger rail system.

The federal government has signed off on higher speed Amtrak passenger trains between Chicago and St. Louis, running through Bloomington-Normal, completing more than three decades of effort to bring high-speed rail to the state and the nation's passenger rail service.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos says a potential campus area grocery store may require both the university and town to help it succeed. And he said Tuesday that a lot more work needs to be done before such a project is ready to move forward.

Amtrak began to cancel trains scheduled to stop in Bloomington-Normal on Thursday as the country prepared for a freight rail strike that’s already spilling over into passenger service even before it begins.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos says he'll push for more long-distance passenger train routes if he's confirmed to Amtrak's Board of Directors.

Normal Mayor Chris Koos would like to see the community develop guidelines for a shovel-ready industrial park, something the Economic Development Council has begun to talk about. But during a WGLT interview on Sound Ideas, he shied away from specifying what the town should provide to make it happen.

President Biden recently nominated the mayor of Normal to a seat on the Amtrak board, which oversees the nation's passenger rail service.

Amtrak riders will soon have fewer options when traveling through Uptown Station.Amtrak is cutting the frequency of its Texas Eagle service (between…