(The following article by Joseph Deinlein was posted on the Port Huron Times Herald website on March 12.)
PORT HURON, Mich. — Cecile Shoulders remembers when Amtrak tried to get rid of the International line through Port Huron in 2002.
The 53-year-old city resident joined a group of about a dozen to save the Chicago-to-Toronto rail line — and did.
Now the group, Save Our Trains Michigan, is planning a rally at 3 p.m. April 4 at the 16th Street Amtrak station to save the International again. Only this time, things are different.
Starting April 25, a train will start in Port Huron instead of Canada. It will leave at 5:15 a.m. for Chicago and arrive back at 10:50 p.m. Now, a Chicago-bound train from Canada stops in Port Huron at 12:20 p.m. and another arrives at 4:50 p.m. from Chicago.
“Look at the senior citizens, the physically challenged,” Shoulders said. “They’d have to get up in the middle of the night to catch the train.”
Amtrak officials decided to ax the International because it was losing riders. The line went from a high of 121,000 riders in fiscal year 1997, to a low of about 81,000 riders in fiscal 2003, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. Plus, delays at the border crossing made the train consistently late, he said.
As part of the state’s annual agreement to back the rail company, lawmakers, including Rep. Lauren Hager, R-Port Huron Township, demanded improvement in service.
The Blue Water line, which will run only between Port Huron and Chicago, was the answer, Magliari said. The line cuts out Canada and goes to and from Chicago in one day. Plus riders can catch connections to other westbound trains because the Blue Water line will arrive at 11:10 a.m. in Chicago.
The new line will have been running for six months when the state considers renewing Amtrak’s funding for 2004-05, said Wes Thorp, a Hager spokesman.
Shoulders and other riders said the new line will drop ridership further from Port Huron, leading to the line’s demise.
“If the train doesn’t stop in Port Huron, there’s a whole lot to lose,” she said. “There’s no other public transportation out of here.”
Power of Canada
In 2003, the number of people riding Amtrak trains nationally went up 2% from 23.5 million to 24 million. During the same time, riders on the Chicago-to-Toronto line dropped 11.8%, from 91,714 in 2002 to 80,890 in 2003. Some point to problems such as no marketing of the line or the use of buses during track replacement as recent causes.
Even still, the decline during several years suggests it’s time to pull the plug, Magliari said.
“We’ve been hearing a lot of folks wanted a more convenient schedule to travel to points west,” he said. “And most of them are people who stay in the United States.”
Shoulders questions whether cutting Canada out won’t lower ridership further.
Magliari said about 24,000 people, about 30% of all International riders, crossed the border in fiscal year 2003.
“How is the Blue Water going to make that up?” Shoulders asked, noting the pool of potential customers would be smaller.
Freight causes delays
As for delays, most riders blame freight trains and not the border crossing.
“Anyone who says the train is late because of the people coming from Toronto is wrong, based on my experience,” said Mary Berdan, who rides to Chicago every few months to visit her daughter’s family.
“If there’s freight coming through, (Amtrak) has to yield to them.”
That’s true, Magliari said. Amtrak owns only a small portion of the rail line. The rest is owned by Canadian National or Norfolk Southern, which use the lines to ship freight.
He said the Blue Water line will fix that.
“The new departure was designed working with CN and Norfolk Southern to juggle the trains through the Flint area with their delivery of auto parts at plants there,” he said.
Old habits die hard
Legislators and state Department of Transportation officials, who helped Amtrak hammer out the new plan, believe it will work.
“The fundamental reason behind this was to improve service between Chicago and Port Huron,” MDOT spokesman Ben Kohrman said. “We believe the schedule change will do that.”
The rail company has set aside $100,000 to market the line and has money to make improvements to the Port Huron station, Magliari said. It even plans to restore staff at the station starting the week of April 19. Ticket agents haven’t been there since January 2003.
But old habits are hard to break.
Mary Regan, 76, of Marysville takes the train to Chicago at 12:20 p.m. to visit her granddaughter. Lately, she’s had more reason to visit because of a new great-granddaughter.
She doesn’t want to be at the station by 5:15 a.m.
“If I go to Chicago, I’ll consider flying out of Bishop (International) Airport in Flint,” she said.