High-Speed Rail:

“It’s a dramatic reduction in the cost of travel, so it makes it possible for us to go visit each other or have people come visit much more often. And that’s when things happen, either more productive business meetings or stronger social ties or the ability to get better educational opportunities.”

    -Rick Harnish, Executive Director, High Speed Rail Alliance

“It really makes the region a much more attractive place to live and do business, which means we will be able to compete better. We’re not competing Chicago to Paris, we’re competing Midwest to France. If we can bring everybody together it makes it much easier for us to be an attractive place to attract business.”

– John Buck, Chairman and CEO, The John Buck Company

“The city of Peoria can certainly benefit by having passenger rail for economic reasons, but also for social equity reasons. Equity is about fairness and expanding opportunities to include those who have often been left out…People could actually go to work in Chicago, go to work in St. Louis, and come back the same day.”

– Rita Ali, Mayor, Peoria, IL

“We did a study about 10 years ago that suggested this would increase our business sales in the Chicago metro region by about $16 billion a year.”

– Rick Harnish, Executive Director, High Speed Rail Alliance

“We need to decide what we’re going to do. We need to have a big discussion…. We need a better, more coordinated plan for the future.”

– Rick Harnish, Executive Director, High Speed Rail Alliance

“This is really a lot about politics because it’s going to take federal dollars to make this happen. We should expand our regional approach to all of these states to see how we might work because everybody’s better off. Everybody has congestion, even Cleveland and Detroit. So the more we can get people from cars to trains, the better the climate is, the easier it is for everybody to travel.”

– John Buck, Chairman and CEO, The John Buck Company