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2/1/2023
A project to improve a Metra route in northern Chicago qualified for a $117 million "Mega" infrastructure grant award, federal officials announced yesterday.
The grant is one of nine valued at a combined $1.2 billion that the Biden administration awarded under the new National Infrastructure Project Assistance Discretionary Grant program known as Mega.
The $117 million will help fund the Metra Union Pacific North rebuild Fullerton-to-Addison project, which calls for replacing 11 bridges, 4 miles of track structure and 1.75 miles of retaining walls along Metra's UP-N line.
Metra estimates that the project will reduce passenger-rail delays by 38 million hours over the next 30 years, American Public Transportation Association (APTA) officials said in a press release.
The grant is one of four awarded yesterday to "critical" passenger-rail and transit projects, they said.
"Providing the necessary investment to modernize our public transit and passenger-rail systems will allow agencies across the country to meet growing community demands for increased mobility choices that will reap economic and environmental benefits nationwide," said APTA President and CEO Paul Skoutelas.
Also among those nine awards was a $292 million grant for a project that will help prepare for the future replacement of Amtrak's Hudson Tunnel. That project calls for replacing the two rail tubes that Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains use to travel under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. President Joe Biden was in New York City yesterday to announce that grant award.