The threat of a 40% cut in Amtrak funding drew objections from 16 university and municipal officials this morning.
Schools as small as Spoon River College and as large as the University of Illinois rely on Amtrak trains to bring their students to campus.
They say Governor Bruce Rauner's proposal to drastically reduce Amtrak funding would affect enrollment at all downstate schools.
Jude Kiah, transit director at Western Illinois University, the only state university that's not on an interstate, says his school depends on two Amtrak trains per day.
"We don't have bus, we don't have airplane, we barely have any four-lane connection to the north and to the south. This is not a nicety, it's not a convenience, it would be absolutely catastrophic to us to lose this second train."
Illinois State University president Larry Dietz, says the passenger train is a huge part of ISU's appeal to students.
"More that 55 percent of those students, and of our total student body of 25,500 students come from Chicago and it's suburbs. One of our many recruiting points of pride is that Illinois State's campus is less than a 5 minute walk from the most utilized downstate Amtrak station in the state of Illinois."
Dietz told the committee Amtrak provides 4 daily round trips between the central Illinois campus and the city. For students a visit to family, or from family, within the first 6 weeks is critical for the student's ability to graduate, and Amtrak facilitates those visits.
Some lawmakers suggested raising ticket prices to fund the trains, but Amtrak officials said that would not work.
