Illinois has been awarded $1.2 billion in federal stimulus grants to develop a high-speed rail line that will shorten Chicago-to-St. Louis travel times by nearly 25 percent and remove a bottleneck for Metra, Amtrak, and freight railroads on Chicago's South Side. The grant fell short of the $4.5 billion Illinois had requested. A proposal to bolster service in the Rockford area was among the projects that didn't make the cut.