Bush came to Aurora to sign last transportation bill

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President George W. Bush is applauded after signing the transportation bill at the Caterpillar plant in Montgomery on Aug. 10, 2005. Watching the signing are House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois (right) and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (seco

Updated: November 4, 2011 6:20PM

Six years ago this month, then President George W. Bush came to Aurora to sign the six-year federal transportation bill.

On Aug. 10, 2005, sunny skies shone over a platform outside the Caterpillar Tractor Co.’s Aurora plant on Route 31, where the president, future president Barack Obama and Speaker of the U.S. House Dennis Hastert all were seated. Obama was a U.S. senator at the time.

Also on the dais were U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, six other Illinois congressmen, members of the House and Senate transportation committees, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

Some 4,000 onlookers watched Bush sign the 1,700-page piece of legislation, which he said would expand and modernize the nation’s infrastructure while creating thousands of new working-class American jobs.

The $287 billion spending measure contained more than $6 billion in appropriations for nearly 400 Illinois projects.

Some of the projects included in that authorization were:

Route 30 improvements, which have been done.

The STAR Line commuter rail system linking Joliet, Aurora and Elgin to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, which still is a long-term project.

The Prairie Parkway, which has had its corridor protected and has some construction money still allocated. That allocation could be lost in a new, lesser federal transportation bill.