But will they ride it?

High-speed passenger rail from Iowa City to Chicago is becoming reality, thanks to a $230 million federal stimulus fund boost, announced this week.

Gov Chet Culver was in Iowa City on Tuesday to celebrate. He's coming back Thursday with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Raymond LaHood.

Here at The Gazette, our inboxes are flooded with news releases. Politicians, business groups, Amtrak - everybody wants to be the first to tell you about the money, and maybe take a little credit.

They should be excited: Obama's plan for high-speed and intercity passenger rail is ambitious - a little like Eisenhower's interstate roads. Most rail projects funded so far link major population centers - like San Francisco to Los Angeles, Chicago to Minneapolis, Boston to New York.

The Iowa City-Chicago line is a big win for the area. Or it will be, if people actually ride the thing. That's the next big wait and see.

Officials say the line to Chicago will be running by 2015, making two daily round trips with stops in the Quad Cities, and Geneseo, Ill.

If Iowa City Historian Irving Weber is to be believed (usually a safe bet), the last time a passenger train stopped in Iowa City was 3:45 p.m. on May 31, 1970, Johnson County Historical Society Curator Leigh Ann Randak told me Tuesday.

Bringing back intercity passenger rail has been a dream around here for so long, you almost have to wonder if project planners haven't let all those grant proposals go to their heads.

Iowa Department of Transportation officials say the line will serve 246,800 passengers in its first year. Last year, DOT told us 187,000 annual passengers.

And the list of environmentally friendly elements that have some people calling this route “The Green Line” (to be honest, I prefer “Corn Belt Rocket” - the name of that old Chicago-Iowa City-Omaha passenger line) keeps getting bigger: Recycled construction materials, paperless ticketing and LEED Certified stations, soy lubricate - heck, maybe even biodiesel - all the way down to serving locally grown food in recyclable and biodegradable containers in the dining cars.

The train will save nearly 90,000 tons of greenhouse gas and save more than 10 million gallons of fuel in the first 30 years.

It will save $16.3 million in highway user costs and another $7.4 million a year in highway safety costs. It will create 600 new jobs a year in the first four years, and add $25 million a year in business activity after that.

That is, if people ride it.

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jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net