(The following story by Brad Olson appeared on the Caller-Times website on January 25.)
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Texas group met with Amtrak officials Saturday at the Radisson Hotel on Corpus Christi Beach to discuss marketing and promotional issues for two of Texas’ rail lines.
Extending Amtrak’s service into Corpus Christi was not a scheduled topic of discussion at the meeting, but local officials and members of the Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization, or TEMPO, said bringing Amtrak and TEMPO together in Corpus Christi was a step in that direction.
Tom Niskala, president of the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the two groups to the city at the beginning of the meeting, and said later that he was enthusiastic about having them here.
“Clearly, we’re glad to have them here,” he said. “Hopefully, the Corpus Christi attractions will be appealing to them.”
Niskala said he hoped the visit could be a starting point for bringing an extension of railway service into Corpus Christi. That could happen in one of two ways, he said. Either Amtrak will extend the rail line to the city, or they will establish a motor coach connection, in which passengers could get off the train in San Antonio and onto a bus leading them here.
Amtrak’s Texas Eagle train now runs from Chicago to San Antonio but connects to trains that reach more than 70 cities, including Los Angeles. The route was in jeopardy of being closed by Amtrak until last week, when the Senate approved a $1.2-billion-dollar subsidy for the railway. It wasn’t the first time Amtrak needed a financial booster shot.
Amtrak has had trouble garnering enough riders to maintain business in Texas. In 1997, the Texas Eagle Mayor’s Coalition secured a bridge loan from the state that enabled Amtrak to continue operations here. The Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization was originally set up as an oversight committee to supervise Amtrak’s use of the loan.
Now, the organization is dedicated to furthering grassroots marketing of the Texas Eagle service, as well as promoting travel and tourism for communities along the route.
Kim Lemley, director of tourism for the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she hoped those efforts would eventually extend to Corpus Christi.
“This is a service that would benefit our local citizens in Corpus Christi and the tourism industry as it offers other means of transportation linking San Antonio to Corpus Christi,” she said.
Lemley also credited John Wright, a local architect and a TEMPO member, with bringing the two groups together in Corpus Christi.
“Typically, they would not meet in a city where they don’t have service,” she said. “He was instrumental in bringing them here,” she said.
Wright said that he has had trouble getting local political representatives and city officials to warm up to the idea of finding ways to bring rail service here.
“The response of the community is perceived as an indicator of our desire to have this service in Corpus Christi. I don’t think that there’s ever been an effort made to do that. I just don’t think anyone has stepped forward in the city,” he said.
One of the challenges politicians might be facing in pursuing the issue, he said, is that Amtrak is currently in a mode of non-expansion.
But one option would be to establish a private railway that links Corpus Christi and San Antonio that Amtrak would operate, according to Fred Babin, manager of transportation at the Port of Corpus Christi.
Babin, who also attended the meeting, said that because Amtrak is a business, ridership potential in the area would be a primary consideration.
Mark Magliari, a media relations manager for Amtrak who attended the meeting, said that extending service into Corpus Christi “has been a long time coming,” although a workable deal was not something he foresaw in the immediate future.