(The Associated Press circulated the following article on July 17.)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Construction along the railroad tracks used by Amtrak in Missouri has forced the company to ferry passengers onto buses for part of their trips this summer.
Union Pacific is spending $32 million to repair and improve track between Kansas City and St. Louis, and sometimes the Amtrak train cannot get around the heaviest construction work.
Amtrak used buses for at least one leg on about half its trips between Kansas City and St. Louis in June, according to the Missouri Department of Transportation. Buses were used on about a fourth of Amtrak’s trips in May.
“In some cases we’ve already accepted these people as passengers and it would be wrong to announce the night before they are taking our train that the train won’t exist,” said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari.
Most trips that require bus rides occur in the morning, when Union Pacific crews are replacing ties, spreading rock under the tracks or improving the surfaces at road crossings.
Amtrak believes that the Union Pacific projects will eventually be a benefit, by providing its rail passengers with a smoother ride and faster travel times.
“In this case, there’s going to be some pain and we’re hoping for some gain,” Magliari said.
Passengers sometimes start their trip on a train and are switched to buses in Jefferson City. Or, they may board the bus first and be moved to a train sometime during the route. And sometimes, passengers take a bus for the whole route, as they will for morning trains through Wednesday of this week.
Through Oct. 14, the morning train out of Kansas City will be a train only as far as Jefferson City, where it becomes a bus ride to St. Louis.
Missouri transportation officials warn that more delays can be expected as construction continues through October.
“We’re not happy with the situation,” said Brian Weiler, multimodal director for the Missouri Department of Transportation. “But we ask for the general public’s patience as we get through this.”
Amtrak passengers Brad and Kristy Watson, of Kansas City, said they arranged their trip for times when they were most likely to avoid the bus. They said they wanted their 2-year-old son, Evan, to enjoy the train ride.
“I don’t want to ruin his image of trains by having to get off and take a bus,” Kristy Watson said. “It’s such a historic thing – taking a train. I want to preserve that image.”
The railroad construction also caused trains to run later an average of 40 percent of the time in June, the highest for any month in at least a year.
But some passengers say they enjoy the bus.
“I loved it. I wish I could do it every time,” said Marge Porcelli, of Kirkwood. “It’s better than driving.”
Porcelli said the bus ride gave passengers a smooth ride through scenic parts of Missouri’s wine country and was faster than the customary train trip.
Amtrak and state officials said the bus service has caused a sharp drop in train ridership, which was down 20 percent this May, compared with May 2005.
Mostly because of soaring gas prices, Amtrak ridership in Missouri had been going up 7 percent before the construction season, Weiler said. Now, ridership is up about 4 percent.
“It’s a shame. We were really showing a rebound. This is going to set us back,” Weiler said.
And Magliari said the train service has had to limit the number of passengers it can take on a train to 40 or 50 because it might have to substitute a bus on short notice.