WASHINGTON — Illinois has finally assembled enough money to restart passenger rail service between Chicago and the Quad Cities, ending a nearly two-decade effort and clearing the last major hurdle for a project that should strengthen the region’s rail ties to downtown.

The Quad Cities, which straddle the Iowa-Illinois border, have gone without passenger rail since 1979, despite their history as the center of the Rock Island Line. A new Amtrak connection would make Chicago’s rail network more complete — nearly every major metro region in Illinois has direct service to the city, with the Quad Cities, Rockford and Peoria the notable exceptions. The state is also working to extend Metra commuter service to Rockford in the coming years.

The last piece of the funding puzzle fell into place in late August when the Federal Railroad Administration agreed to extend Illinois’ access to federal money first committed under President Barack Obama in 2010. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who helped secure the original funding, said the extension allows the state to “finally make this long-planned project a reality and open up new transit possibilities for Illinoisans.”

Other pieces were already there. The Quad Cities built a station combining bus and rail service, and the state already owns the trains that will make the trip.

Still, actual passenger service remains years away. State officials must finish negotiating with the freight railroads that own the tracks the Amtrak trains would use, and the Illinois Department of Transportation must oversee hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure work — including replacing a deteriorating rail bridge over the Rock River and installing a signaling system required by federal law for passenger trains.

Nevertheless, local leaders in the Quad Cities said locking in the funding is a significant achievement.

“Illinois relies on rail to push our economy forward and to ensure statewide connectivity, but we’ve been missing a critical route between Chicago and the Quad Cities,” Durbin said.

The reopened line would further reinforce Chicago’s standing as the central node in a Midwestern network of intercity passenger rail routes. Bringing passenger service to Moline also tees up potential expansions to Iowa City, Des Moines and Omaha, if Iowa and Nebraska officials choose to pursue them.

In the Quad Cities, local leaders hope the rail will strengthen the economic ties between the area and Chicago.

The service could boost recent efforts to redevelop downtown Moline, in particular, where the station sits next to the John Deere Pavilion, a museum showcasing one of Illinois’ best-known manufacturers and its signature green tractors. The city is improving areas along its waterfront that opened up when an interstate highway bridge over the Mississippi River was moved. Train service could also bring more people to places like Augustana College in Rock Island and the Quad Cities River Bandits’ minor league ballpark in Davenport, Iowa.

“It opens us up to more economic development in general,” said Elizabeth Tanner, senior director of government affairs for the Quad Cities Chamber. “It increases workforce opportunities because of the ease of transportation. It increases tourism and weekend trips to anyone who wants to travel between the two areas and anywhere along the route.”

U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, an Illinois Democrat whose district includes the Quad Cities, said the appetite for a Chicago connection runs both directions.

“When I talk to young people in the Quad Cities or Peoria or Bloomington-Normal — all cities I represent — they want that connection to Chicago,” he said. “The next generation is going to want to get on a train, open up a laptop, watch a movie and then they’re in downtown Chicago.”

Despite widespread support for the project among Quad Cities leaders, delays have dogged it since its inception.

In 2008, Durbin, then-U.S. Sen. Obama and Iowa’s two U.S. senators asked Amtrak to restore Quad Cities service. After Obama became president, Illinois and Iowa secured a $230 million federal commitment in 2010 to launch service between Chicago and Iowa City, with Illinois responsible for a $177 million share. But Iowa later pulled out of the project after electing a Republican governor, while Illinois pressed ahead.

The project then stalled under Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who froze it in 2015 as part of a larger funding freeze he instituted when he took office. He lifted the freeze more than a year later, but by then he and the Democrats who ran the state legislature were enmeshed in a two-year budget stalemate that further delayed progress.

After Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker took office, state officials struggled for years to win over the freight railroads that own the tracks: BNSF, which operates across much of the Western United States, and Iowa Interstate Railroad, a regional carrier that runs on former Rock Island Line track.

The 55-mile stretch owned by Iowa Interstate between Wyanet and Moline needs significant upgrades to handle fast passenger trains. It currently handles only freight, particularly grain cars hauling corn and soybeans, and some stretches of the rail are more than a century old.

Just as interstate highways need to be wider and smoother than typical country roads, railroad tracks that handle faster trains require more robust engineering and safety features than those that handle slow-moving freight. Federal law also requires passenger tracks to be equipped with positive train control, a set of technologies designed to prevent train collisions and worker deaths.

But freight railroads have often resisted expanded passenger operations. It took Amtrak, for example, two decades to restore passenger service along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina because freight rail companies there opposed it, a standoff broken only after President Joe Biden’s administration exerted significant political pressure to get it done.

In Illinois, several Quad City officials grew so frustrated with Iowa Interstate’s objections that in 2023 they asked the state to take the dispute to the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that handles railroad disputes. Illinois never pursued that option, and Iowa Interstate did not respond to a request for comment.

The Biden administration also provided a $30 million grant in 2024 to help Iowa Interstate rebuild bridges, including ones that would be used for the Quad Cities passenger trains.

The breakthrough ultimately came in Springfield. Last year, Quad Cities lawmakers got funding for the languishing passenger rail line included as part of the massive transit rescue plan for the Chicago area that passed in last fall’s session. The transit bill set aside up to $476.7 million for the Quad Cities route and a Peoria-to-Chicago connection.

“For any corporation, it does come down to money, but I do think that this is an important enough project that the state should be investing in it,” state Sen. Mike Halpin, a Rock Island Democrat, told the Tribune.

“The additional funding we passed is certainly an additional commitment on the part of the state that this project is something we want to do and is going to be seen to completion,” he added. “In some cases, the private sector doesn’t necessarily want to move forward (with proposed projects) because they know governments can change and priorities can change, and they may not ever see the benefit of a proposed project.”

But he thinks the transit package made clear the state was serious about fixing the problem.

“With a substantial federal and state investment, this project got to the point where it was ‘real,’ and I’m glad they were willing to buy in at that point,” Halpin added.

One obstacle remained: The original 2010 federal grant was set to expire at the end of July. Durbin and other Illinois officials had persuaded the FRA to extend the deadline several times over the years, but President Donald Trump’s second administration had also repeatedly withheld grant money from Democratic-led states, leaving no guarantee it would sign off on another extension.

But in late August, the approval came through.

“It certainly is a positive development,” Halpin said. “We’re seeing a lot of transportation dollars get stuck in Washington, D.C., and so I’m glad the FRA has agreed to an extension for this.”

Once construction is complete, the plan is to run two round trips per day.

Rick Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based High Speed Rail Alliance, said that rate of service isn’t frequent enough to build ridership.

“If you want people to ride the train, the train has to run when people want to ride the train,” Harnish said, arguing for at least five daily trips — one arriving by the start of the business day, another in late morning, one or two in the afternoon, and evening options before and after dinner.

Given how long it’s taken for the state to get money for the initial service, “we should be planning for the right kind of service now,” Harnish added.

Proponents of the current plan, however, argue the initial schedule will prove that there’s demand for the service, and then the railroads can expand their options later.

“The FRA grant specifies funding for two round trips per day,” said IDOT spokesperson Maria Castaneda. “In the future, if ridership warrants, IDOT would consider more frequencies.”

Sorensen said the benefits of a new passenger rail connection extend beyond tourism and economic development. A self-described railroad enthusiast who quips he might be the only member of Congress with model trains in his basement, Sorensen said he makes a point of traveling by train once a year from the Amtrak station in Galesburg, in his district, to Washington, D.C..

“When you sit in the dining car on Amtrak, at first it’s a little awkward, but then you open up and say, ‘Where are you from?’” he said. “We need to do that.”

Halpin said he hopes the growing rail network could also help bring the state together.

“I hear a lot when I’m traveling my district about how different we are from Chicago,” he said, “but we’re all in the same boat. There are some common threads that we might not realize until we’re able to actually get there on a regular basis and take the opportunity to exchange those viewpoints and just be present in other parts of the state.”

“I think it has the possibility of not just bringing us together physically, but bringing us together intellectually as well,” he said.