(The following story by Rich Shopes appeared on The Tampa Tribune website on March 5.)
TAMPA, Fla. — Amtrak officials are pitching a plan for increased train service between Florida cities, including Tampa and Orlando.
The rail agency hopes Florida will embrace intercity rail as roads become clogged and gas prices soar.
Amtrak would like to eventually see trains running back and forth between cities such as Tampa and Orlando, or Jacksonville and Miami.
Rail officials are in the midst of a weeklong swing through the state to meet local officials and tout the advantages of rail.
On Monday, Amtrak officials met with state Reps. Ed Homan, R-Temple Terrace, and Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, and state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland. Tuesday, they met in Tampa with Mayor Pam Iorio.
“By Friday, we’ll be in Miami,” said Ray Lang, senior director of state and local government affairs for the quasigovernmental agency.
Iorio said that she welcomes the idea of increased train service between Tampa and Orlando but has no illusions about the fiscal hardships facing the state.
“I think it is very positive,” she said. “I think it makes a lot of sense to have a reliable service … but this would cost the state money at a time when the state is trying to cut costs.”
Amtrak already offers limited service in Tampa. The Silver Meteor and the Silver Star make two stops daily at Union Station in Tampa on a route that extends all the way to New York.
Unlike the long-haul trains, intercity rail is designed to have trains running shorter routes between two or more cities in a state, traditionally with multiple trips each day.
Fourteen states have deals with Amtrak for intercity rail. The largest is California, which pays the rail agency $84 million a year to run 16 daily roundtrips between Oakland and Sacramento and 10 daily roundtrips from Los Angeles to San Diego.
On the low end is Vermont. It pays $4 million for a single daily roundtrip from New York to Montpelier, the state’s capital, and to St. Albans near Lake Champlain and the Canadian border.
Amtrak officials stress that no routes or station stops have been decided in Florida, though they hope their tour will drum up support for the idea.
“That would be up to the state to decide. They might want to run from Jacksonville to Miami to start with,” Lang said.
Creating a plan and gaining legislative approval could take years.
So far, Lang isn’t sure where state officials stand. After meeting with Dockery, Homan and Ross, he said he hoped Amtrak officials might be called by a legislative committee at some point to explain the program.
Dockery said that it might make more sense to partner with Amtrak than to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create a 61-mile commuter line in Central Florida.
The state and CSX are working on a deal estimated at $491 million.
That plan is controversial. Most of the money would go to CSX to pay for upgrades on its existing freight lines. Only $150 million would go toward the commuter line.
Many locals, citing traffic concerns, also have objected to CSX’s plan to locate a freight hub in Winter Haven.
“Amtrak can run a passenger rail line without having to buy the line and without the state having to buy the line,” Dockery said.