09.21.09

Durbin Announces $6.58 Million in DOT Grants for Illinois Transit

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced today that several Illinois transit projects have been funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Today’s funding is part of the Department of Transportation’s announcement of $100 million in Recovery Act funding for 40 transit agencies across the country that are pursuing cutting edge environmental technologies to help reduce global warming, lessen America’s dependence on oil and create green jobs.

 

• Illinois Department of Transportation, Statewide: $4,030,000 in funding for the purchase of 31 hybrid buses to replace 31 diesel vehicles through a statewide paratransit bus hybrid program. The following transit agencies will benefit from this program: Champaign Urbana; Rockford; St Clair; Springfield; PACE Suburban Bus; Rock Island; Bloomington-Normal.

 

• Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago: $1,500,000 in funding to construct electrified stalls that will deliver electrical power for up to 80 vehicles and provide services such as heating and air-conditioning to vehicles that would otherwise be left idling during overnight cleaning and prior to morning pullout.

 

• Rock Island Metro, Rock Island: $600,000 in funding to construct a solar thermal system on the building roof that will provide hot water for the operations building and the maintenance building.

 

• Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District, Champaign-Urbana: $450,000 in funding to replace the existing conventional Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system with an efficient geothermal HVAC system. Geothermal HVAC systems are highly effective systems with improved efficiencies over conventional systems due to the heat exchange process with an underground source that maintains near constant temperatures.