(The following story by Jeff Fox appeared on the Blue Springs Examiner website on April 20, 2010.)
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — Amtrak has a good thing going and figures the inconvenience of a temporary schedule change is the best way to maintain momentum.
For about six weeks starting Sunday, Amtrak will run its early trains earlier and its late trains later on the Kansas City-to-St. Louis line that includes stops in Independence and Lee’s Summit. That helps clear time in the middle of the day for workers who are replacing more than 20,000 railroad ties on a 20-mile stretch from Jefferson City to Centertown.
“The crews can be more productive if they can work solid blocks of hours” and not have to clear the tracks for passing trains, said Mark Davis, a spokesman for the Union Pacific, which owns and runs the track Amtrak uses.
Amtrak’s Missouri service has shown substantial improvements in on-time performance in the last year or so, and the temporary schedule change is to help make sure passengers don’t sit through long stops or have to be put on a bus for part of the cross-state trip, as has been the case during previous maintenance projects.
“The last thing we want to do is go back to the way things were,” said Jorma Duran of the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Track improvements to that line have helped Amtrak run on schedule almost all the time – 94 percent in March – and Amtrak says that reliability has gone hand in hand with higher ridership. Most of the track from Independence to Jefferson City is a single line – creating bottlenecks – and officials have said the addition of 9,000 feet of track near California, Mo., last fall has helped.
“In fact, that bottleneck being relieved is the biggest difference,” Duran said.
The schedule change is from this Sunday through June 16, although Duran said MoDOT hopes the weather cooperates and the work can be done more quickly. He acknowledged that “it’s going to be a mild inconvenience” for riders but said the improvements will mean better service in the future. In fact, MoDOT points out, without such regular maintenance, trains are eventually forced to run slower for safety reasons.
Amtrak, with a state subsidy, runs four trains a day across the state, a route connecting Kansas City to St. Louis, with eight stops along the way, including Independence, Lee’s Summit, Jefferson City and Kirkwood.
Here’s the temporary schedule:
* Train 314, the early morning train out of Kansas City, will run one hour earlier. Instead of leaving at 7:30 a.m. and arriving in St. Louis at 1:10 p.m., it will leave Union Station at 6:30, stop in Independence at 6:49, stop in Lee’s Summit at 7:06 and arrive in St. Louis at 12:10 p.m.
* Train 311, the morning train out of St. Louis, will run two and a half hours earlier. That means leaving St. Louis at 6 a.m., stopping in Lee’s Summit at 10:49, stopping in Independence at 11:05 (instead of 1:35 p.m.) and arriving in Kansas City at 11:40.
* Train 316, the afternoon train out of Kansas City, will run an hour and 15 minutes later. It leaves Union Station at 5:15 p.m., stops in Independence at 5:34 (instead of 4:19), stops in Lee’s Summit at 5:51, and arrives in St. Louis at 10:55.
* Train 313, the late train out of St. Louis, also will run an hour and 15 minutes later. It leaves St. Louis at 5:15, stops in Lee’s Summit at 10:05, stops in Independence at 10:21 (instead of 9:06) and arrives in Kansas City at 10:55.
If that schedule holds, that keeps Amtrak out of the Jefferson City-to-Sedalia portion of the line from about 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. The UP will make similar shifts in its cross-state schedule.
The $3 million project is part of about $22 million in work the Union Pacific plans for this year on the Kansas City-to St. Louis line. Another $10 million project, installing new rail, is planned near St. Louis this summer.