(The following editorial appeared on the Great Falls Tribune website on April 12.)
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — It’s been 28 years since a North Coast Hiawatha passenger train whistled across southern Montana. If a state rail passenger group gets its way, it could happen again.
The Montana Association of Railroad Passengers has obtained legislative and gubernatorial support for restoring passenger rail service from Missoula to Helena and southeastward to Billings.
Eventually, MARP would like to extend the route, possibly to Chicago and Spokane.
At a time when Americans are looking for conservation-oriented transportation alternatives, it’s hard not see the value of passenger rail.
Other parts of the world have made rail travel an art, with spectacular trains, high-speed trains, and utilitarian trains hauling hundreds of millions of people all over just about every continent but ours.
Just last week a French train set a world speed record, reaching 357 mph on a line that will be opening soon between Paris and Strasbourg.
In the U.S., meanwhile, Amtrak — the government-subsidized almost-a-monopoly passenger rail — limps along, fighting for its very life every year.
This year, apparently, is a good one because the company’s senior director of governmental affairs in Chicago says grant money may be available to explore adding routes.
A southern route across Montana probably would do well because it would pass through four of the state’s six biggest communities — all unserved by passenger rail at present.
MARP’s effort is not the first time revival of the Hiawatha route, or something like it, has been sought.
A year before 9/11 scared people off of airplanes and onto trains, Montana’s congressional delegation introduced legislation to create a passenger rail route from Denver to Spokane, passing through southern Montana.
The 2001 session of the state Legislature voted overwhelmingly to endorse the route, but the federal legislation didn’t pass.
For conservation and convenience reasons, we would support a south route across Montana, but with a major caveat.
The cities it would serve are larger and might fill passenger trains more easily than communities on the Hi-Line, where the Empire Builder continues to run full.
But the south route cities all have many public transportation alternatives; the far-flung Hi-Line has virtually none.
If it looks even for a moment as if reopening a south route would jeopardize the Hi-Line, we and many others would vigorously oppose it.
If there are assurances that the Empire Builder is in no danger, then all aboard!