(The following column by Robert t. Stevens Jr. appeared on the Billings Gazette website on January 23.)
BILLINGS, Mont. — In Montana, over-highway, passenger rail and airline services should be interfaced where and how most feasible. This interface would facilitate the smooth exchange of passengers between the three modes to provide both our citizens and visitors much increased mobility.
The current fracas over renewal of Essential Air Service, which is mostly for Eastern Montana, is merely an extension of a partial misadventure which has been running for years. There are only two cities in Eastern Montana that boarded more than 10 passengers per day in November 2007. They were Sidney (No. 1) with 19 boardings per day and Glasgow (No. 2) with 12 boardings per day. Wolf Point came in No. 3 with eight, then Glendive (No. 4) with seven and Miles City (No. 5) with six boardings per day. These facts reveal that all of the three cities furthest from Billings have the most boardings and each of the two cities nearest Billings have the fewest boardings.
Amtrak connections
What signals does that send? Able, fearless transportation planners would most likely urge Montana to quickly opt out of air service to both Glendive and Miles City and arrange to transfer their subsidies to multiple, fast, daily motor coach frequencies directly to/from the city of Billings and its immensely strategic airport. And not that alone. Two over-highway extensions would continue beyond Glendive to the north to make direct contact with Amtrak, an important, available resource that is being inexcusably ignored. Platitudes about how glad we are it’s there are talk, just talk.
One of the suggested extensions would operate to both Glasgow and Wolf Point, which two cities are less than one hour apart, but both have air service. That service is not defendable for Wolf Point, much the weaker of the two, so Glasgow retains the air service. Nevertheless, Wolf Point is the most strategic city in Eastern Montana for service westbound on Amtrak to/from Western Montana and the Pacific Northwest. Wolf Point’s air subsidy should therefore also go into the mitigation of the over-highway extension costs.
The second extension would operate north of Glendive via Sidney (which, as No. 1, retains its air service) to Williston, N.D., for direct interface there with Amtrak service to/from the Twin Cities and Chicago. In addition, one glaring omission in Eastern Montana still remains, namely to points south of I-90. This can be partially corrected by a single new route between Billings, Hardin, Sheridan and Gillette, Wyo., Broadus and Miles City, making connection there back to Billings or to points north. In this scenario the participation of the state of Wyoming would be a prerequisite.
Motor coach-city bus link
With over-highway enhancements so important, there certainly should be collaborative effort by both the public and private sectors to work together. Fortunately there are capable, well-established private motor coach operators in the region, but it will not be a motor coach project alone.
In the interest of expedited scheduling throughout the network, an entirely new alliance must be forged – the marriage of city transit with the highways operation. Transit would receive and deliver passengers to/from most en route stops, which therefore can be where the least time is expended, such as at or near I-90 interchanges or favorable points on connector roads. Indeed, outside of Billings and the major interface at Glendive, few if any terminals would be required at all, assuming of course the wide availability of transit services.
And, now one final necessary addition to the network, on which the success or failure of the whole venture probably depends: Amtrak’s Empire Builder is a 100 percent reserved accommodation train and therefore the over-highway connecting passengers to it must have guaranteed passage, specifically seat reservations, not just for transfer to Amtrak but also for passengers with airline connections at Billings. That reservation capability would require a computing facility which would also become the command center for all other operations, including dispatching, fiscal controls, etc.
All of the foregoing has been but an introduction to the future possibility of connecting the entire state of Montana with itself and nearby outside jurisdictions. No such admirable quest can emerge all at once. Eastern Montana can become the birthing exercise by which all the know-how necessary to a statewide network can be acquired.
Of course, we could be told by the politicians that you can’t transfer air service subsidies to ground operations. If so, that needs to be promptly put right.
(Robert T. Stevens Jr. of Helena is retired after a long career in the travel and tourism business in Bozeman.)