(The following story by Brent D. Wistrom appeared on The Wichita Eagle website on April 27.)
ABOARD THE HEARTLAND FLYER – For Tammy Knippel, the train that runs from her hometown to her mom’s is a bit of a blessing.
It’s not just that it’s convenient now that seizures have forced her to stop driving. She gets a mellow ride that her grandchildren love, a few woodsy Oklahoma views and easy conversations inside the gently rocking cars.
Knippel has taken the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth to see her ailing mother about once a month for five years.
She has seen the slow days when a couple of dozen travelers board the 210-seat train and the spring break crush when troops of Boy Scouts share the cabin with commuting college students. And she has warm memories, such as when she bought hot cocoa for an elderly woman who did not speak English just because she thought the woman might want some.
“You just never know who you’re going to meet on a train,” Knippel said.
Someday, the Heartland Flyer may stop in Wichita, too, with more stops along the way to Kansas City.
Amtrak is set to study several route variations at Kansas’ request. More than a dozen cities have endorsed the idea, and they’re quietly lobbying for stations.
Meanwhile, the Heartland Flyer’s track record, its riders and the government subsidies that support it offer Kansas perhaps its most detailed look at what it takes to bring Amtrak through town — and keep it alive.
Perks of the rails
Timothy McNeil, a 40-year-old pastor and consultant from Longview, Texas, is a first-time train rider — one of the many helping boost Amtrak’s ridership.
Sitting at the Santa Fe Depot in Oklahoma City at 8:15 a.m. on a Wednesday, McNeil explained between cell phone calls why he picked the train.
“The cost efficiency is remarkable,” he said. “It takes me $50 to fill my car.” The train ticket to Fort Worth is $24, one way.
After visiting in Oklahoma City, he planned to board the Flyer, switch trains in Fort Worth and return to Longview for a Bible study. Flying would have cost him more than $200, he said, and with flights being canceled for abrupt safety inspections, he didn’t want to risk it even though the train takes longer.
Under normal circumstances, the train ride from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth takes four hours and 15 minutes, about an hour and a half more than it takes by car.
For McNeil, who stands slightly over 6 feet, the train offers superior comfort. With leg rests up and the seat reclined, a 6-foot-3 passenger can lie semi-flat without touching the knees behind or kicking the seat ahead.
The trip is also relatively safe.
According to safety records and interviews, no Heartland Flyer passengers have been hurt as result of a collision or derailment since service began in 1999. There have been deadly collisions and derailments elsewhere.
Costs of train service
Amtrak is an economical and relaxing way to travel for people like McNeil, but it comes at a cost to taxpayers.
Created by Congress in 1970 with the idea of it becoming a self-sustaining service, Amtrak has never broken even. More than $1 billion federal tax dollars keep it going each year. And, increasingly, state and local governments are subsidizing regional service.
The Heartland Flyer took a $31 million blend of federal grants and state and local spending to fix old depots, modify boarding platforms to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and upgrade Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s tracks so the trains could go faster. And since 2005, the Oklahoma Legislature has had to spend about $2 million a year to keep the train running. Texas now pays an equal share.
Amtrak depends on lawmakers’ continued support to keep the Flyer going. But priorities can shift, especially in transportation budgets, which must also pay for repairs on roads and bridges that carry far more people.
“They can giveth and taketh away at their pleasure,” said John Dougherty, the assistant division manager of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation’s rail programs division. Lawmakers usually see the benefits of rail service, he said, but when budgets get tight there’s no sure bet.
So far, Oklahoma has approved funding each year.
“There’s always a little iffyness in all of that,” Dougherty said as the train rolled north of Ardmore, Okla. “But with gas prices the way they are, the state of Oklahoma and Texas and Kansas will be in the same boat of needing to give our citizens that option.”
Utility or novelty?
Proponents of Kansas rail service, including volunteers who run the Northern Flyer Alliance and everyday folks who like the idea, say the train is practical — not just a novelty. They say businesspeople need an easy way to travel regionally, and a train allows work space and, usually, cell phone service.
Whether more people are riding for business or pleasure is a matter of debate. Officials and advocates say they do not have surveys of rider characteristics.
But they have hunches.
Dougherty, the Oklahoma rail official, said there’s a diverse mix, including people who can’t drive, vacationers, businesspeople, college students and grade school students on field trips.
He has a bias, though. He met his wife, Carol, on the train.
She’s a friendly, tell-it-like-it-is woman who works at the snack stand on the lower level of the Flyer, where sandwiches, pop, beer, wine and snacks are served.
Among her regulars: A woman who frequently rode from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth for cancer treatment; two lawyers who commute between two Oklahoma cities; and men who travel from Oklahoma to Texas for oil and gas work.
Most folks are social, she said. But some cause trouble, such as a retired schoolteacher whom conductors had to kick off after she refused to quit smoking in the women’s restroom.
Until recently, the train had three coach cars, which seated about 210. Last year, it averaged 97 people each way. Traffic varies by the season, so 210 seats are needed, Doughtery said.
When an Eagle reporter and photographer rode April 16, the train left Oklahoma City with about 40 people. Only 17 boarded for the trip back.
“We have peaks and valleys,” Dougherty said. “We’re thinking that with the gas the way it is, the valleys won’t be quite as low.”
A modest bump
Bob Geurin, the second-term mayor of Ardmore, Okla., said the train has helped the city of 24,535.
“I don’t see a whole lot of cons,” he said. “You see a different part of the country riding the train than you do on the highway, even though they’re only two to three miles apart.”
Ardmore chipped in more than $1 million to match federal grants to fix up its depot, Geurin said.
Only a few tourists get off at the Ardmore stop, he said. But a new area bus system will pick people up if they call in advance and take them out as far as Lake Murray, about 15 minutes south.
Ardmore’s depot is in the heart of downtown. In Oklahoma City, the train leaves from the edge of Bricktown, the city’s marquee downtown nightlife district. It arrives in Fort Worth just a few blocks from Sundance Square, which is filled with restaurants, bars and shops.
The train netted $23.1 million in economic activity for Oklahoma between 1999 and 2005, according to a 2005 Carter-Burgess study conducted for the state’s Department of Transportation.
That includes money from out-of-state travelers who, the study estimates, would spend $45 a day. It also includes spending by Amtrak employees and public improvements paid for by federal grants.
Aboard the Flyer
In the early morning sun, Ashley Hall and Tyler Bradley, two exhausted 18-year-olds from Bixby, Okla., boarded the train and went straight to the back of the car.
The couple had just arrived on the bus from Bixby, 115 miles northeast of the station.
They slouched into their seats. “I’d rather be here than on that little bus,” Hall said.
They were bound for Temple, Texas, which required one more train connection out of Fort Worth. They planned to pick up a car from a relative’s house and drive it back to Bixby.
They curled up together on the roomy seats and quickly fell asleep.
At the front of the car, Bill Johnston sat staring out the window with a gentle grin. Across the aisle, his wife, Deb, looked on as their young son, Marcus, watched a DVD on a portable player.
The family drove an hour north from Lawton, Okla., to board the Flyer and ride it to their vacation destination, a water-park resort near Fort Worth.
The kid loved it, Johnston said, even though once the train got rolling, he grabbed the DVD player.
Assistant Conductor Mark Line, a burly man with a rosy smile who quit his job as a butcher nine years ago to ride trains for a living, said the Johnston family is about the norm for a weekday in mid-April.
“The folks on board always have a good time,” he said. “The kids are excited. They’re just beaming ear to ear. I never get tired of it.”
A minute earlier, Line posed for a photograph with a beaming older woman who had recently had a stroke and was celebrating her birthday with a trip to Texas to see some family.
That woman, Brenda Brown said it wasn’t easy getting on the train. She has trouble walking. But she had help from cross-country train veteran Lawrence Patterson, who took a seat nearby.
“Now I’ll be all right,” she said. “I can do this.”
The train rolled on, got delayed for track work, took a detour though a rail yard north of Fort Worth and came to the end of its line.
About five hours later, the sun rode low on the west side of the vast North Texas horizon, and a distant-sounding chooooo-chooooo-chooooo-choooooooo rolled off the front of the train.
Ten people sat quietly inside one car. Some read, some slept, some stared. Outside, abandoned electrical wires hung along the tracks like a calm seismograph reading.
The train passed piles of abandoned concrete, abandoned farm homes and sprawling subdivisions, empty fields, roaring rivers and blurs of trees. It crossed bridges and passed rusty industrial operations. It zipped alongside several other trains. Then there were whistle stops — just long enough for a few smokers to go out for a two-minute heater. The conductor warned them to jump back on quickly.
Then the train rumbled off again toward the next town.