MetroLink will soon get $223 million from the federal government to replace aging light rail cars and repair damage from flooding, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in East St. Louis on Monday.
The first portion of the federal money, $27 million, will help repair damage sustained last summer during record flooding. The remaining $196 million will fund 48 new light rail cars.
“We know how much transit means to people, and we know that this community has been through a lot,” Buttigieg said in a speech at MetroLink’s Emerson Park location.
The flooding last summer killed two people and left thousands with damaged or destroyed homes across the St. Louis region. It also damaged a MetroLink power station in St. Louis.
“We had a tremendous rainstorm,” said Taulby Roach, CEO of Bi-State Development, the agency that runs MetroLink. “As a matter of fact, we lost two light rail vehicles.”
Beyond the extreme weather knocking out rail cars, MetroLink leaders said many others need to be replaced. Normally, the light rail cars are supposed to last around 25 years. But 30 of MetroLink’s 86 cars have been in service for 30 years and are due for an upgrade.
Buttigieg, alongside U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield; U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis County, and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, praised the MetroLink investment as the work of President Joe Biden’s administration.
The $27 million in disaster relief came from a 2022 appropriation Durbin and Bush helped secure. The other $196 million is part of a program connected to Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed in 2021.
“I spent eight years as a mayor, but I never had the experience of a federal administration coming through with this kind of funding,” Buttigieg joked.
Local officials said earlier this year that Emerson Park, the site of Monday’s press conference, would be the location of a new $13.6 million public safety center. The facility is currently being built and is scheduled to be completed in February.
The 16,000-square-foot center will include a new St. Clair County dispatch operation and space for the sheriff’s department.
Nearly $10 million for the project came from Rebuild Illinois, a legislative priority of Gov. J.B. Pritzker that the state legislature passed in 2019. The remaining $3.6 million will be footed by the St. Clair County Transit Authority.
Buttigieg and the other Illinois elected officials also made a stop in the Urbana-Champaign area earlier Monday. The transportation secretary announced a $22.6 million grant for a project there that would eliminate a highway-rail crossing.
