CARBONDALE, IL (WSIL) -- Starting Monday, Amtrak is resuming its full service between Chicago and Carbondale, including their national route on the City of New Orleans.
Service levels were reduced by half because of the pandemic. Now, Amtrak tells News 3, demand is picking back up and they're prepared to meet it.
Customers in Southern Illinois and parts of Missouri and Kentucky have seen various levels of service since the pandemic began, says Amtrak's Marc Magliari. Now those services are set to fully return starting next week.
"We've been progressively restoring service across southern Illinois," explains the Chicago Based Amtrak Spokesman. "First, the City of New Orleans train went to daily at the end of May, now, we're back to running the twice-daily Illini and Saluki with morning and afternoon departures from Chicago, and from Carbondale, starting Monday."
Magliari says the routes are important to returning students and faculty at campuses up and down the line, "And also, we'll be running the full service with three each way, every day, in time for the Du Quoin State Fair at the end of next month," he says, adding, "So the timing really couldn't be better."
Local businesses and city officials welcome the return of those routes. Home to Suites by Hilton's front desk employee William Spearman says many of their customers use the train.
"We're right across the street and being so that has a direct impact," says Spearman of the routes' return. He says the return of the routes will help boost traffic at Hilton, but more-so, it will return more people to Carbondale's downtown.
Officials with Ride Mass Transit, a service making frequent stops at the station have seen empty pickup-and-drop offs since the route reduction. They say ridership overall is down more than 50% over this time before the pandemic. Masks are still required on public transportation and Amtrak says it's too early to speculate if COVID Variants will have an impact on resuming the routes.
They have seen a steady rise in demand since January as vaccinations were underway.
"We're about 60-percent or so of normal, which, is ahead of some of the projections we had," says Magliari. "So, we want to restore service, at the state's direction as we're doing, because there are more people wanting to travel and the good news is, we're doing it in time for a couple big events in southern Illinois."
Right now the City of Carbondale says they are working with the Multi-Modal design team, as part of the team toured the station Wednesday planning for multi-purpose downtown transportation center. Their final design is expected before Fall of next year.
The following services will be fully restored:
- Lincoln Service, between Chicago and St. Louis, with intermediate stops, including Normal and Springfield
- Trains 301 and 305 departing from Chicago
- Trains 302 and 304 departing from St. Louis
- Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr, between Chicago and Quincy, with intermediate stops, including Macomb and Galesburgo
- Trains 381 departing from Chicago and 382 departing from Quincy
- Illini/Saluki Line, between Chicago and Carbondale, with intermediate stops, including Champaign
- Trains 391 departing from Chicago and 392 departing from Carbondale
Tickets for Amtrak trains for travel beginning July 19.
