Peoria Station

Another airline war is heating up in central Illinois. Central Illinois Regional Airport to be more specific. Bloomington-Normal’s commercial airline facility is going to take a huge hit come June 3 when AirTran Airways withdraws its thrice-daily Atlanta and quad-weekly Orlando nonstops. But CIRA officials have done a splendid job attempting to fill the gap. [...]

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Bloomington’s Pantagraph is reporting that additional air service will be announced for Central Illlinois Regional Airport at 10:00 Wednesday morning. Since the airline has already loaded its schedules, I can confirm that Frontier Airlines, which already announced quad-weekly Denver flights beginning May 16, will announce thrice-weekly flights to Orlando starting in late May. Since Frontier’s service will be to [...]

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This evening, I attended Public Information Meeting regarding the Illinois State Rail Plan at the Peoria Public Library’s downtown campus. Details of the plan can be found here. From what I heard, it was fairly well patronized with 47 attendees. This beats prior a meeting held at Rockford by a long shot (23 attendees) and is close to the Chicago [...]

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New ADM bulk commodities warehouse at Creve Coeur, Illinois Archer Daniels Midland Co’s new bulk commodities warehouse, located on Wesley Road in Creve Coeur, is operational. Looking closely at the photo above, you can see two Bell Grain Co. trucks unloading or waiting to be unloaded. When this facility began taking shape last fall, I began to [...]

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Don’t forget Monday, January 27 at the Peoria Public Library: The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has scheduled a series of ten Public Information Meetings to gain public input on the current and future passenger and freight rail needs within the State. The Illinois State Rail Plan will identify anticipated trends, needs and issues that [...]

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Last week, Direct Air announced that it is going to start using 235-seat Boeing 767s on select flights between Springfield and Punta Cana, Florida (near Fort Myers) from mid-March to the end of service April 28. Twice-weekly service using 150s-seat Boeing 737-400s has been selling out, thus the decision to upgrade. Peoria can boast having Central [...]

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It’s that time of month again! Ask your transportation (or industry) related questions here. As always, if I don’t have an answer, I’ll find it. Soon, I will post in-depth analyses of TP&W and Union Pacific freight trains that link Peoria with the nation’s rail system. – David P. Jordan

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I like passenger trains. I wish Peoria had them. But publicly-funded hard roads built since the First World War, tax-supported air travel infrastructure and interstate highways long ago killed passenger rail as a profitable, privately-operated enterprise. The final blow came in 1967 when the US Postal Service announced it was ending railroads’ mail contracts. Amtrak was [...]

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   Two asphalt tank cars are shown February 18, 2012 spotted at rail facilities that have been in development since Summer 2011 Last August 13, I posted this story after discovering two new tracks built on (or near) Peoria Barge Terminal property. Six months later, I still have no definite answers as to who their [...]

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