(The following story by Edward Hoogterp appeared on the Flint Journal website on June 20.)
LANSING, Mich. — One year after the state solved a budget problem that threatened to eliminate two of Michigan’s three Amtrak passenger trains, revenue and passenger counts are increasing on all three routes.
Ridership is up 8.8 percent on the Blue Water Line (formerly the International), which serves Port Huron, Flint, Lansing and Kalamazoo; 11.7 percent on the Pere Marquette, which runs along the Lake Michigan shoreline from Grand Rapids to Chicago; and 13.6 percent on the Wolverine, which parallels I-94 between Detroit and Chicago.
The state is paying Amtrak $7.1 million this year to operate the Pere Marquette and Blue Water lines. The same amount is in a 2005 budget proposed by the Michigan Department of Transportation.
“I don’t think they’re ever going to operate independently without the state assuming some responsibility,” said Rep. Scott Shackleton, R-Sault Ste. Marie, chair of the House Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee, which has approved the funding for next year.
” At least you know that more people are enjoying and benefiting from our support of those lines.”
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the national rail service saw a 6.2 percent ridership increase for the first eight months of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
“The Michigan trains are doing even better than the system as a whole,” he said.
Overall, the three Michigan lines carried 339,000 travelers in the eight months ending May 31, up from 301,000 in the same period a year earlier. Ticket revenues totaled $9.1 million for the current period, up 12 percent from $8.1 million for the year-earlier period.
A year ago, the International and Pere Marquette lines were in jeopardy, as Amtrak threatened to end the service unless the state removed a $5.7 million cap on the subsidy for the two lines.
(The Wolverine Line, from Detroit to Chicago, is part of Amtrak’s national system. It operates with assistance from the federal government, but no state subsidy.)
Lawmakers acceded to the subsidy demand, while insisting that Amtrak improve scheduling and restore ticket agents to stations in Port Huron, Flint and Lansing.
In April, Amtrak replaced the International line, which ran from Chicago to Toronto, with the new Blue Water line, which operates from Port Huron to Chicago. The new line serves the same Michigan cities. Eliminating the Canada connection allowed a schedule change to make Chicago travel more convenient. Passengers from Flint, for example, can now board Amtrak about 6:30 a.m. and reach Chicago just after 11 a.m., Central Time.
In part because of that change, the line’s May ridership jumped 20 percent from a year ago.
“That’s an encouraging amount of progress,” Magliari said.
The new schedule brought a protest from Indian Trails Inc., the Owosso-based firm that operates a bus line parallel to the Blue Water Line.
Indian Trails president, Gordon Mackay, complained to the Legislature that Amtrak’s new schedule puts a subsidized train on virtually the same schedule as the Indian Trails bus from Flint to Chicago. He worried that any Amtrak gain would come directly from his bus customers.
An Indian Trails spokesman said this week it’s too early to say if that’s actually happening.
For the eight months from Oct. 1 through May 31, the Wolverine Line carried 230,000 passengers, Blue Water Line had 57,000 and Pere Marquette recorded 52,000, according to Transportation Department figures.
“Pere Marquette has been showing great ridership for more than a year,” Magliari said.
The state’s Amtrak appropriation is included in the House version of the transportation appropriations bill for 2005. The bill had been delayed in the Senate for several reasons, including concern over Amtrak’s potential competition with Indian Trails, according to a spokesman for Sen. Shirley Johnson, R-Royal Oak, who chairs the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee.
While subsidized train routes serve urban centers in the southern third of the state, the Transportation Department pays bus companies to carry passengers in northern Michigan.
Greyhound is receiving some $1.4 million this year for three Upper Peninsula routes. Indian Trails receives subsidies on two Lower Peninsula routes, $254,000 for a line serving the Northeast Lower Peninsula from Bay City to St. Ignace, and $173,000 for a line up the west side of the state from Grand Rapids to St. Ignace.
David Hetfield, traffic director for Indian Trails, said neither line could survive if the service were based on actual expenses.
Inter-city bus lines also get a government subsidy through a system under which the state buys new buses and leases them to the operators for a nominal amount.
The northern bus lines serve areas where the automobile is often the onlyway to get from one town to another. “The majority of our ridership is senior citizens, college students and lower-income families,” said Hetfield.
Even in tough budget times, it’s likely that the state will continue the subsidy.
“It is important, and we do want to maintain those bus lines,” Shackleton said. “The appropriations bill has always highlighted that … we want that alternative of transportation available.”