Let's do more with stimulus than this

Is this really the best we can do with the economic stimulus package? Up to $700 million to add 30 miles an hour to the speed of trains running between Chicago and St. Louis?

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn announced Monday what they characterized as a "unified" push to develop a high-speed corridor between St. Louis and Chicago, a line especially attractive, apparently, because it is entirely enclosed in Illinois. Yet, while we appreciate the project's potential for jobs creation, we can't help wondering if there's not something more urgent and more far-reaching the state could do with more than a half-billion dollars.

Of course, there is. Suburbanites from Grayslake to Carol Stream can see one option - flood control - right outside their front windows today. Anyone driving more than a mile or two on suburban roads or state highways can see another - the virtual crisis of potholes.

But rather than address such immediate and visible problems, the proposal Durbin and Quinn announced aims to upgrade the rail line running through - hmmm, Springfield, isn't that interesting? - and on to St. Louis, enabling trains that can reach speeds of 110 mph to run on Amtrak's most-delayed route in Illinois.

Let's be clear. We like high-speed rail. The nation needs a well-planned, comprehensive network of truly high-speed trains as a significant component of its transportation system. But an expensive proposal that would trim the travel time of just one stretch of rail from five and a half hours to four hours seems hardly to suggest the start of a well-planned rail network.

Durbin called it a "dramatic improvement" to achieve rail speeds of 110 mph on the Chicago-to-St. Louis line, and that may well be. But the question is whether that "dramatic improvement" really achieves anything.

Alas, we suspect that Quinn's tongue-in-cheek (we hope) justification for the line - "It's important Chicago Cubs fans get to St. Louis quicker" - is more indicative of the kind of passenger growth this $500 million to $700 million investment would generate. In short, not much.

The federal stimulus bill, whose premise and goals we support, has been roundly criticized for excessive, meaningless government spending. Sadly, this first major project announced by the U.S. Senate's second-ranking member and the state's Democratic governor doesn't do much to dispel that notion.

We would be more impressed had Quinn and Durbin announced a major highway upgrade, flood-abatement program or school construction assistance in Illinois. Even an Illinois component to a farsighted national high-speed rail proposal would be encouraging. But spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make minor rail improvements in incremental and marginally valuable steps seems hardly to be wise use of our money. This proposal smells an awful lot like the pork that stimulus critics have been complaining about all these months.

Surely we can do better.