Regional Amtrak feasibility study could get DeKalb County Board support

SYCAMORE – The DeKalb County Board on Wednesday will have a chance to support an initiative seeking to determine the feasibility of returning a passenger rail service, through Amtrak traveling between Chicago and East Dubuque, to DeKalb County.

Specifically, the County Board could vote to approve a resolution that DeKalb County supports initiatives aimed at bringing a passenger rail service to northwest Illinois and endorses a federal- or Illinois-funded feasibility study.

During the board’s Committee of the Whole meeting March 13, DeKalb County Administrator Brian Gregory said a passenger rail service has been conducted in the past on the route in question, the Twin Cities Zephyr Amtrak route.

That service went by the wayside years ago, he said, but some want to see it return.

“There’s a group or coalition that is trying to get a feasibility study put together,” Gregory said. “[They’re] looking for state or federal dollars in order to fund a feasibility study to see if that route – which [to] my understanding would use the same lines that are there, so it wouldn’t need its own separate track – is something that would be feasible, or maybe a more cost-effective way to bring this type of service to communities like DeKalb County.”

In January, DeKalb city leaders affirmed the city’s commitment to supporting the same feasibility study in a nonbinding resolution.

The County Board executive committee voted to advance a resolution in support of the feasibility study. Board members Kathy Lampkins, a Republican from District 2, and John Frieders, a Republican from District 12 who chairs the executive committee, voted against the resolution.

A passenger rail service isn’t unheard of in northwestern Illinois, said County Board member Jim Luebke, a Democrat from District 9. He recalled riding a train along the same route that the feasibility study would look into almost 50 years ago.

“It was in the late ‘70s. It was called the Blackhawk. I used to ride it from Galena to [the] Great Lakes – well, to Chicago,” Luebke said. “I think it ran once a day.”