Quinn for Illinois

Illinois will receive more than $1.2 billion from the federal government to build a fast train from Chicago to St. Louis.

The state's share of the $8 billion high-speed rail pie comes amid fierce competition from 23 other states that collectively submitted applications for $50 billion.

The route will travel at speeds of up to 110 mph and travel on Amtrak tracks through Springfield.

The funding is part of the federal stimulus package.

In a joint statement, Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin called the decision "a massive investment into the future of transportation. It is seventeen times more funding than the federal government has invested into passenger rail over the last ten years combined."

Nation-wide, high-speed rail projects in California, Florida and Illinois are among the big winners of $the 8 billion in grants to be announced Thursday by the White House — the start of what some Democrats tout as a national rail-building program that could rival the interstate highways begun in the Eisenhower era.

Thirteen rail corridors in 31 states received funds. The White House, which supplied a list of the grants to reporters late Wednesday, billed the program as "high-speed rail," although most U.S. projects won't reach the speeds seen in Europe and Asia. California's trains would be by far the fastest, exceeding the 200 mph achieved by some trains overseas.

Some of the money will go toward trains with top speeds of 110 mph, while other funds — such as the $400 million allotted to Ohio to connect Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati by rail — will be for trains traveling no faster than 79 mph.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are expected to pitch the program as a boost to the economy at a town hall meeting Thursday in Tampa, Fla. A half-dozen Cabinet members and other senior administration officials were scheduled to fan out across the country for rail events Thursday and Friday. The White House said rail projects will create or save thousands of jobs in areas like track laying, manufacturing, planning, engineering and rail maintenance and operations.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and members of Congress have acknowledged they expect much of the expertise and equipment to be supplied by foreign companies. Except for Amtrak's Acela line between Boston and Washington, there are no high-speed trains in the U.S. and no domestic high-speed rail industry.