(The following article by Gordon Dickson was posted on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website on December 8.)
FORT WORTH, Texas — Rail supporters are hoping that soon North Texans will be spending less time behind the steering wheel, and more time in front of the roulette wheel.
Louisiana leaders are reviving a 15-year-old effort to connect by rail Fort Worth and Shreveport-Bossier City, La., home of several popular casinos.
A four-day test using Amtrak equipment may be conducted as early as April, officials with the city and Amtrak said.
Bossier City officials requested the test run, and are searching for ways to cover Amtrak’s costs.
“If it’s as good as I think it’s going to be, we may need to run two trains a day,” Bossier City Mayor George Dement said.
Dement, 82, has pursued the idea since 1989, and his goal is to get the rail line running before he retires next year.
“We have five casinos, the Louisiana Downs race track, a brand new hotel center with [acts such as] Elton John, Cher … but transportation is so important to the life of any city,” Dement said.
He and other Bossier City officials met this week with Amtrak representatives to discuss options.
“Clearly, there’s interest in those cities, but there are many obstacles to restoring train service,” Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari cautioned.
Among the problems:
o Shreveport-Bossier City, which hasn’t been served by passenger rail since the ’60s, has no station. Bossier City officials have pledged to build one.
o The federal government won’t allow financially troubled Amtrak to start a new line unless an outside party agrees to underwrite the costs. Bossier City officials are trying to raise public or private dollars to guarantee it would operate in the black. A similar-size route from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City is subsidized by about $800,000 a year in Oklahoma state funds.
o Amtrak doesn’t have much spare equipment. The best time to conduct the test run may be in April, May, October or November, when extra passenger railcars are more likely to be available.
o Amtrak runs on freight rail lines, so passenger service has to be coordinated with Union Pacific and Kansas City Southern. Their tracks are about as congested as Interstate 20.
Fares likely would be about $50 round trip from Fort Worth to Bossier City, officials said.
Three coach railcars with a combined capacity of about 200 passengers would be used in the test run, Bossier City businessman Joe Littlejohn, who attended the meeting with Amtrak officials, said.
The route would follow roughly the same corridor as the Texas Eagle, a daily train from Fort Worth to Chicago. The Texas Eagle stops at Longview, and passengers heading to Shreveport-Bossier City must make the last 65 miles of their trip on a bus.
Because of that inconvenience, traditional bus and train service isn’t an option for most travelers.
However, several charter companies offer tour bus service directly from Tarrant County to the casinos, and many of those riders might try rail, Littlejohn said.
About 55 charter buses pull into the casinos each day, bringing nearly 3,000 people to the casinos. At least half of them, Littlejohn said, are from Dallas-Fort Worth.