March 10--Amtrak on Tuesday renamed its operations center in Chicago to honor Joseph Szabo, a fifth-generation railroader who headed the Federal Railroad Administration for 51/2 years of the Obama administration.
Szabo, 56, left the administration in December to return to Chicago, where he is a senior policy adviser on transportation at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
The Amtrak board of directors dedicated the operations center at Union Station as the Joseph C. Szabo Chicago Control Center in recognition of Szabo's contributions to intercity passenger rail travel and railroad safety, officials said.
The center dispatches 580 Amtrak and Metra trains and 120,000 passengers daily at Union Station and on Amtrak lines in Michigan, Indiana and Louisiana, according to Amtrak.
Szabo was the first Federal Railroad Administration administrator to come from the ranks of rail workers. He was employed as a conductor and a switchman during his 38-year career in the railroad industry.
He also represented rail workers in Illinois as state director of the United Transportation Union for nearly 13 years. And he served as mayor of Riverdale from 1997 to 2000.
jhilkevitch@tribpub.com
