Kansas is taking a significant step toward expanding Amtrak service, officially submitting a proposal to get in line for funding for a proposed rail route from Oklahoma City to Newton.
The state – along with Oklahoma – recently applied to the Federal Railroad Administration to get the Heartland Flyer extension added to a pipeline of national rail projects.
It would bring passenger rail service north into Kansas from Oklahoma City, where it already runs to Forth Worth with connections to Dallas and San Antonio.
The 206-mile project is now estimated – in 2020 dollars – at about $124.4 million. It was originally estimated at about $400 million.
The reduced cost reflects that some of the improvements that need to be made to existing track in the freight corridor will be bankrolled by BNSF Railway.
The estimate includes $15.8 million in capital expenditures in Kansas and $79.8 million in Oklahoma, according to the application submitted to the federal railroad agency.
There is another $28.8 million planned for safety measures in the corridor to prevent train collisions and derailments.
If added to the federal government’s corridor program, the state could receive about $450,000 that would help for pay for planning the service.
It also would open the door for the state to qualify for other federal money that would pay for the project in different stages, including environmental, engineering and design work as well as the early years of operating costs.
“Our goal is to get in that pipeline to be able to access the federal funds,” said Cory Davis, director of multimodal transportation and Innovation for the state Transportation Department.
“We’re in a very favorable position to be selected,” Davis told the Passenger Rail Caucus late last month. “In the meantime, we’re not slowing down.”
Any money for operating costs, which were estimated in 2011 to be $7.4 million a year, would likely start with 100% federal funding.
But that money would be ratcheted down until the state would assume those costs after five years, Davis recently told lawmakers.
The federal government has $1.8 billion allocated for new rail corridor planning in the next five years.
It is part of the $550 billion in new infrastructure spending that Congress approved two years ago and that the president signed into law.
The infrastructure bill provided $66 billion for capital investment and passenger rail over five years.
The proposed extension of the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kansas is part of Amtrak’s 15-year, $75 billion plan to add 39 new rail routes and expand service on 25 others across the country.
Passenger rail service from Newton to Oklahoma City was ended in 1979 when Amtrak’s Chicago-Dallas-Houston service was discontinued.
The existing Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth was revived in 1999.
An extension from Oklahoma City to Newton would link to the Southwest Chief, a cross-country route that connects to Topeka, Lawrence, Kansas City and Chicago to the east and Los Angeles to the west.
The Federal Railroad Administration won’t disclose how many applicants are seeking to get into the rail corridor pipeline.
However, last year when the agency announced the establishment of the corridor pipeline, it received multiple so-called “expressions of interests” from states, regional passenger rail agencies, Amtrak and local governments.
At that time, there were “expressions of interest” for 111 projects from various agencies.
While those do not necessarily reflect projects that have been submitted for federal grant funding, they do provide some sense of demand for the money.
They included:
- Twenty-eight existing rail corridor projects, which reduce trip time or increase frequency of an existing service. These projects maintain existing routes and don’t add stops.
- Thirteen rail extensions, which lengthen existing routes and serve additional destinations.
- Seventy new corridors, which establish intercity passenger rail service where it does not currently exist and would need a new rail line or use existing track.
The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority revealed last week that it planned to seek money from the same program for adding 107 miles of passenger train service within the Kansas City area from Leavenworth to Lee’s Summit.
The KCATA project proposes to create intercity connections between existing Amtrak-served routes from Topeka in the west and on new lines running west from De Soto to Kansas City, Missouri, and from Fort Leavenworth south to the Kansas City International Airport.
Meanwhile, the state of Missouri is seeking money for four rail projects as well.
Missouri wants to add a third round trip and more stops to its Missouri River Runner route from Kansas City to St. Louis.
It also wants to extend Amtrak service that runs from Chicago to Quincy, Illinois to Hannibal, Missouri.
And it wants to establish new rail corridors from Kansas City to Joplin, Springfield and Branson, Missouri, and from Kansas City to St. Joseph, Missouri.
Missouri rail officials said any improvements to service in Kansas City would spill over into Kansas.
In a meeting with the Kansas Passenger Rail Caucus last month, they also were receptive to the idea of opening talks with Kansas about the possibility of extending its Missouri River Runner service west to Lawrence or Topeka.
Republican state Rep. Carolyn McGinn, chair of the rail caucus, was optimistic about getting the Heartland Flyer into the federal pipeline.
McGinn said the project has a lot of support from communities across the state, including resolutions passed by the House and the Senate backing the rail service extension.
“There are a lot of pieces that need to come together, but I think we’re doing our due diligence,” McGinn said. “I feel very good about it.”
The extension proposal, which has been on the drawing board for at least a decade, calls for one daily round trip from Oklahoma City to Newton.
Trains would stop in Wichita and Arkansas City in Kansas and in Ponca City, Perry, Guthrie and Edmond in Oklahoma.
Amtrak estimates that the 404-mile route from Fort Worth to Newton would take about nine hours, which would include about five hours from Oklahoma City to Newton.
The corridor will require station upgrades or establishment of new stations.
Newton and Oklahoma City have existing, active Amtrak stations. Wichita has an existing Union Station that served riders from 1914 to 1979 and recently underwent $54 million in redevelopment investments.
Guthrie, Oklahoma, has a platform that will require upgrades to accommodate passenger rail service. Edmond and Perry, Oklahoma, do not have existing stations or platforms and will require investment to establish service.
