Mayor Duncan wants Amtrak station project to be shovel-ready

Amtrak is pressuring communities with passenger stops to buy into its goal of rebranding its image and functionality by constructing new passenger stations.

For small communities like Du Quoin the proposal is for the construction of unstaffed passenger pavilions. The stations have no heat or air conditioning and no restrooms, but they are enclosed.

To that end, Du Quoin Mayor Rex Duncan and a group of community leaders met with Amtrak's Director of Government Affairs Derrick James last December to talk about Amtrak's goals and held a preliminary discussion of a new station for Du Quoin.

With a number of designs in hand provided by Amtrak, Mayor Duncan met on Friday at Alongi's with city administrator Brad Myers, Robyn Laur Russell from economic development at SIU, commissioner Kathy West, tourism director Judy Smid, city engineer Ted Beggs and Tyler Vontemps, special projects director for Congressman Bill Enyart.

Although the plans are readily available to reconstruct Du Quoin's original turn-of-the century passenger station in the Illinois Central Railroad archives, such a multi-million dollar undertaking is overzealous and impractical on every level.

Du Quoin has only approximately 12,000 boardings a year on Amtrak's Illini and Saluki passenger trains while, by comparison, Carbondale has 135,000.

In December, James explained Du Quoin's use of the east end of the chamber office as a boarding station no longer complies with Amtrak's regulations.

However, the massive concrete boarding platform and safety railing is largely compliant. The next generation of Amtrak passenger cars should provide walk-on entry at ground level.

Duncan said the current chamber office and Amtrak station --a converted Du Quoin National Bank drive-through facility taken over during the end of the Armstrong administration---is inefficient as a matter of heating cooling and upkeep.

He said the building's days are numbered.

There is also a security issue for the chamber director and anyone in the office at the time because of the transients using the Amtrak part of the building who walk into the chamber office asking to use the restroom or phone.

The group discussed the possibility of keeping the chamber office and putting the passenger station on the south side of Main Street in a city-owned parking lot across the street from Home Lumber Co.

However, city engineer Ted Beggs said the cost of constructing the same boarding platform that already exists at the chamber building would be extraordinary.

Although Du Quoin has a new five-year passenger agreement with Amtrak, Kathy West questioned the need to build anything new. She worries that Amtrak could end passenger service here in five years with the agreement expires.

At the end of the discussions it was felt that the best plan would be to demolish the chamber building, relocate the chamber offices elsewhere (perhaps at the expense of the chamber) and build an unstaffed passenger station that would borrow from the already-available Amtrak design above. The cost would be anywhere from $150,000 to $300,000 with a federal transportation (TIGER) grant paying for most of the project. Du Quoin's share would come from TIF business development funds.

Mayor Duncan deemed it important to apply for the federal funding, but have Du Quoin's plan "shovel ready" while the funds are being applied for.

Congressman Bill Enyart's special projects director was at the meeting and said he would assist in any way possible.