Next week, the Kansas Department of Transportation will be hosting an online update on the effort to close the missing link in Amtrak service through the Sunflower State.
KDOT’s Passenger Rail Service Development Plan would finally bring rail service back to Wichita, by linking Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer to the Southwest Chief, via our city and several other communities in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma.
It’s a big deal.
Currently, the Heartland Flyer route ends at Oklahoma City. You can get from Newton to OKC and vice versa via Amtrak, but it requires a long ride on a chartered bus.
Extending the rail route 180-some miles north to Newton would bring uninterrupted service linking Wichita and Kansas City to Amtrak’s rail hub in Fort Worth.
That would open Kansas passenger rail service to large stretches of Oklahoma and Texas.
In addition to the state’s two major metro areas, also benefiting would be Topeka, Lawrence, Hutchinson and Garden City, where the Southwest Chief currently stops on its Chicago-to-Los Angeles route.
It seems like a no-brainer to fix this. But nothing is ever that simple where politics is involved.
In the press release announcing next weeks’ Zoom meeting, which is open to the public and starts at 1 p.m. on Dec. 11, KDOT wrote this: “The project builds upon efforts in 2011 when KDOT completed a rail feasibility study and established a Passenger Rail Service Development Plan (SDP), which outlined Amtrak Heartland Flyer rail service expansion into south central Kansas.
“Due to a growing federal interest in passenger rail services and potential funding sources, the project is now being re-evaluated.”
Sadly, the phrase “whistling past the graveyard” comes to mind.
The election of Donald Trump to another term as president and majority Republican control of the House and Senate will more than likely mean Kansas will be left waiting at the station for a train that will never arrive.
In July, Republicans in the House (where spending bills originate) proposed a budget including deep cuts for Amtrak operations nationwide and zero dollars for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Grant Program, a Transportation Department fund for improving and expanding passenger service.
The Senate pushed back on partnership defunding, proposing an allocation of $100 million, an increase of $25 million over 2024.
Congress ultimately decided to pass a temporary spending resolution that kept the government running, but put off contentious decisions — including the future of Amtrak — until after the November election.
