Leadership Quote by Jerry Costello

“Train service is particularly vital” is the kind of line politicians use when they’re trying to turn a budget fight into a matter of daily survival. Jerry Costello isn’t waxing poetic about rail; he’s staking out a constituency and putting a human face on infrastructure. By naming Southern Illinois University, he anchors an abstract public good (transit funding, route preservation, station investment) to a recognizable local engine of jobs, enrollment, and regional identity. “Students and employees” is doing quiet rhetorical work: it stretches the beneficiary list from young voters to the payroll backbone of families who reliably show up in elections.

The subtext is pressure, not praise. Costello is implicitly warning decision-makers that cuts to service don’t land evenly. In a downstate region where car ownership isn’t universal and where long drives to Chicago or St. Louis can be expensive, rail becomes access: to classes, shifts, healthcare appointments, internships, and a social life that keeps students from transferring out. The word “vital” is calibrated urgency, suggesting that a train schedule isn’t convenience; it’s the difference between making it and not.

Contextually, this is classic downstate Illinois politics: fighting the gravitational pull of Chicago-centric planning by reframing transportation as equity for smaller cities and campus towns. It’s also a preemptive rebuttal to the “just drive” argument. Costello’s move is to make the train a campus utility, as essential as broadband or housing, and to dare opponents to argue that opportunity should be stranded on the platform.