(The following story by Brad Cooper appeared on The Kansas City Star website on January 10.)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Across the country, passengers are herding onto Amtrak trains in record numbers.
But not in Missouri, where poor on-time performance caused by heavy freight traffic between Kansas City and St. Louis is scaring riders away in escalating numbers.
Amtrak service between Kansas City and St. Louis has lost more than 20,000 passengers since 2005, second in the country among short-distance and state-supported routes. On a percentage basis, it suffered the highest loss.
“We need to change,” said Brian Weiler, who oversees Amtrak service for the state.
The Missouri Department of Transportation is trying to do just that with a $10.6 million plan for relieving congestion on the Union Pacific-owned tracks.
MoDOT plans to ask the General Assembly this year to finance its plan in addition to the $7.4 million that Missouri pays for Amtrak service.
Amtrak has becoming increasingly worried about its Missouri routes. A top railroad official told lawmakers last year that current rail service was “unsustainable as a practical business matter.”
Ridership on the Missouri route fell from about 180,000 in 2001 to 116,000 last year. It was one of only three short-distance lines where ridership declined since 2005.
“We have a corridor there that we’re struggling with and trying to make work,” Ray Lang, Amtrak’s senior director of government affairs, said this week.
“When we look at every other service we run nationwide, we’re enjoying record ridership,” he said. “It causes us concern to have a service that bucks this great trend that we have.”
From July through November, 38 percent of Amtrak’s trains between Kansas City and St. Louis ran at least 30 minutes late. It’s not unheard of for an Amtrak train to be more than two hours overdue.
At times, the service deteriorated to the point that Amtrak substituted buses for trains to ensure that passengers reached their destination on time.
Amtrak pays to share Union Pacific’s line, which is used by 50 to 60 freight trains a day. About half of Amtrak’s delays are caused by freight traffic, according to a recent study.
Critics blame Union Pacific for not giving passenger trains the required priority. Union Pacific says it gives Amtrak priority, but the corridor is packed.
“That line is at capacity,” Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said. “Right now, it could not handle additional traffic.”
A recent study commissioned by MoDOT concluded that it’s getting harder to give passenger trains priority because of the increasing number of freight trains, the need for continual maintenance and sections where the mainline consists of just a single track.
Two notable bottlenecks are single-track bridges across the Osage and Gasconade rivers between Jefferson City and St. Louis.
Union Pacific plans to install a second track this year across the Gasconade. A second track across the Osage is on hold until a lawsuit is resolved regarding an old railroad bridge near Boonville. Union Pacific wants to remove the bridge at Boonville and use part of it to construct the Osage bridge.
The MoDOT study recommended spending as much as $42.5 million to alleviate congestion along the route, but the agency has opted for a plan that’s less ambitious than that. It wants to speed up trains between Lee’s Summit and Jefferson City by adding longer sidings so freight trains can stop and wait for Amtrak trains to pass. Some sidings aren’t long enough for freight trains.
The agency also wants an extra $500,000 to equip unmanned stations with real-time electronic signs alerting passengers to train status.
Weiler concedes that securing the money will be a struggle. There have been attempts over the years — most recently last year — to strip Amtrak of funding, only to have it restored.
Republican Gov. Matt Blunt hasn’t been eager to get behind the plan.
“This is a significant amount of money and must be weighed carefully,” said Blunt’s spokeswoman, Jessica Robinson. “Amtrak has a long history of failing to meet the expectations of Missourians who continue to invest their tax dollars in hopes the service will improve.”
Citizens for Modern Transit, a nonprofit group based in St. Louis that promotes public transportation, has been circulating fliers on Amtrak trains promoting MoDOT’s plan for improving service.
“If we’re going to have passenger rail in Missouri … we need to get these trains across the state on time,” said Tom Shrout, the transit group’s executive director.
Missouri lawmakers say Amtrak service needs to be re-examined, but some expressed caution about pouring millions into Union Pacific’s tracks.
“I would not be very favorable to investing $10 million in Union Pacific to increase sidings if we didn’t have some type of assurance that on-time performance would improve,” said state Sen. Bill Stouffer, a Napton Republican and chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
There are other potential financing sources. The latest federal appropriation for Amtrak includes $30 million that can go to states for capital improvements similar to those proposed in Missouri.
A long-term plan for funding Amtrak over the next six years contains $1.4 billion for intercity passenger rail upgrades that would be available to states willing to match the money.
The bill is pending in the House. The Senate passed it last year.
Weiler said MoDOT would go after that money, but other states have more established routes where new rail projects are ready to go.
“Our biggest case (for federal money) is: We are one of the few corridors that’s experiencing a reduction in ridership. The main reason is because of our on-time performance, and this would address that.”