In Business

Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, listens to U.S. Rep., Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., talk to media Thursday after the Rail Delivers Jobs summit at Sand Creek Country Club in Chesterton. (Photograph by Jon L. Hendricks/The Times.)

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood made an impassioned pitch Thursday to 300 Northwest Indiana business leaders to become partners with the Obama administration when it comes to high-speed rail.

“If Indiana gets its act together, you could be a dominant player in this plan in this region of the country,” LaHood told them at a Rail Delivers Jobs summit in Chesterton.

Getting the five-year reauthorization of the federal transportation bill passed by Congress, with the Obama administration’s $53 billion request for high-speed rail intact, will be key to getting the job done, LaHood said.
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The United States’ top transportation official is coming to Chesterton to boost freight, passenger and high-speed rail as the solution to rebuilding the U.S. economy.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood will be the keynote speaker at the Rail Delivers Jobs summit on Thursday at Sand Creek Country Club in Chesterton.

“It’s unusual that a U.S. cabinet secretary comes to Northwest Indiana,” said Rex Richards, executive director of the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce. “And it’s very significant that he is coming to talk about the key issue of rail, which is an important part of our total economic development program.”
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High-speed trains are shown in the Part-Dieu train station in Lyon, central France. The Indiana High Speed Rail Association is pushing for a “signature” high speed rail project for Indiana, such as a Chicago to Indianapolis to Cincinnati route via a high-speed rail station at the Gary/Chicago International Airport. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, file)

Advocates for high-speed rail in the Midwest received new hope Tuesday when President Barack Obama set a goal of providing 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years. For Illinois, that means routes where trains reach 220 miles per hour.

With a goal of putting 35 million people within a three-hour trip to Chicago, the Midwest High Speed Rail Association advocates building four bullet train routes. It also hopes existing Amtrak service will be modernized to bring trains up to speeds of at least 90 miles per hour by 2020.
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