http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune....ff--filli.html
Chicago as a high-speed rail hub: Has the time for this idea finally come?
The conventional wisdom forming about Barack Obama's infrastructure investment is that it will take care of small stuff--filling potholes and fixing bridge decks, not building dams and bridges like those sponsored in the great public works of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
That view may well be true. But in the final round of negotiations over the stimulus bill, the White House put its political muscle behind a big increase in funding for mass transit--$8 billion, far beyond what either the House or Senate were advocating in their version of the stimulus plan. The idea, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told reporters, was to create an infrastructure program of national impact.
Now cities and regions around the country are vying for those rail funds. Among them: Groups pushing for a Midwest, high-speed rail network centered in Chicago, an idea that the Chicago Architectural Club explored last year with an ideas competition for a station for such a network (above left). It would be located just east of Union Station. Despite the practical hurdles in its way, like the two buildings now on the site, perhaps this is an idea whose time has finally come.