TOPEKA, Kan. — The Kansas Department of Transportation presented a tentative operating schedule for an extension of Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kan. — where it would connect with the Southwest Chief — as part of an online informational meeting Wednesday to seek public comment. The 20-minute presentation included in the meeting is available here via a recording; those viewing it have the option of registering for further updates.
Cory Davis, Kansas DOT’s director of multimodal transportation, says, “We are well underway with a technical analysis.” This is the first step in creating a service development plan that will cover operational and financial analyses, capital investment needs, and an implementation plan. He says the working group that meets monthly includes officials from BNSF Railway, Amtrak, and department officials.
The state is moving ahead with planning, confident that the route will be included in the Federal Railroad Administration’s Corridor ID Program. Inclusion in that list, expected to be announced by the end of November, would give projects preference in competing for Federal-State Partnership planning and construction grants. Even if selected, a timeline of all the necessary steps required to launch the service shows trains are not expected to run until 2029.
The scope of the service development plan only considers extending the Texas and Oklahoma-supported Heartland Flyer to Newton, with Kansas joining the existing partnership. The tentative schedule calls for a 3-hour layover at Newton between a 1:22 a.m. arrival and 4:20 a.m. departure, a window in which both the eastbound and westbound Chicago-Los Angeles Chiefs stop.
The connection to Wichita and Oklahoma City has been served by an Amtrak Thruway bus. A participant asked what would happen if one of the Chief’s was late and arrived after the Flyer’s scheduled departure. John Ireland, the consultant from DB E.C.O. leading the service development team, says the operating plan assumes the train would leave on time. He says Amtrak would likely handle passengers with missed connections as they do now. Currently, that means putting them up in a hotel if the bus can’t make the connection at Oklahoma City [see “Heartland Flyer’s challenging connections …,” Trains News Wire, July 31, 2023].
Davis says the state would have discussions with Amtrak and BNSF about a further extension to Kansas City “if we are awarded the Corridor ID program grant.” For now, consideration of a separate through round trip on a daytime schedule between Fort Worth or Oklahoma City and Kansas City is not being studied. That would likely involve analyzing a passenger train’s impact on BNSF freight traffic and a possible need for additional capacity improvements.
Would it not make more sense to extend it to Tulsa?
Another thought regarding connecting at Newton with #3. I rode the Lone Star in 77 from FTW to CHI and there were a number of people making the connection to 3 at Newton in the wee hours in the morning.
No one was making a connection to #4 because the Lone Star of the Era ran from Houston to Chicago with through cars from Dallas added at FTW.
Amtrak had much better service in the 70’s than the present.
After the massacres if 79 and 97 what has improved? Extending the Sunset to Florida in 93 and that was cut back.
All this expansion talk of the present, how many of us will live to see them. I’m 68 and doubt I’ll see them.
Some have used the argument of “public service”, and it helps those that can’t afford a car or plane ticket, etc. If that’s the case, then I fully agree with Mr. Ray, why not set up a bus? It could be running in time to get folks home for the holidays this year, and at a fraction of the cost. And no interruption to the RR’s real job, moving freight.
And even then, I would safely wager that bus wouldn’t be very full…
It takes time for the RR’s to put together their wish list to shakedown Amtrak for upgrades they didn’t do because they had to divert the $$ to raise the pay of the top mgmt & the profits for the stockholders. Some on this site are always claiming it quicker/cheaper to drive or that there are numerous flights between these proposed or existing corridors, well what’s the point of any of it then? Of course they are typical of most Americans the “it’s all about me” syndrome failing to consider those who live between point A & point B, those who don’t have a vehicle or a reliable one, don’t have the money, the tech access, the physical ability, etc. Those same people are financing your personal choice yet you see their option as a waste of your tax dollars.
Wow, 5 or 6 years to prepare the track/stations/etc. If they estimate this long I’m sure Amtrak will screw up something and it will be nine years.
From President Kennedy’s speech in 1961 to July 1969 it took NASA 8 years to get a man to the moon.
The proposed schedule shows 3 and a half hours northbound and 4 southbound yet the flyer says 5′. The gone but not forgotten Lone Star mand the run each way in just over 4 hours.
I’d like to see the train run to/from KCY.
6 years to a start up is stupid. BNSF could upgrade the line for passenger service faster than that.
Back in the 70’s when Amtrak added a service it didn’t take 6 years to start up. Where have all the railroaders gone?
Replaced by accountants and professional ladder climbers who know nothing but the Washington DC Two-Step…
Six years to plan to restore something that will be of dubious value at best. What an absolute joke. Refresh my memory…how long did it take to build the first transcontinental railroad? Enough said.
Wake up. Daytime train OK City to Kansas City. Stops Wichita, Topeka, Lawrence. Which train is more viable this or the planned “Red Eye”? Forget the middle of the night connections. That’s for the bus riders.
The 2029 start date is ludicrous. Get to work!!!!
If people are just going to cross a platform in the middle of the night, then this should be able to happen within a year.
I envisioned the whole train from Ft. Worth getting tacked on to the SW Chief. Then they have the extra coach capacity between KC and Chicago which is often sold out.
A bus would save everybody a lot of money. There can’t be many passengers at that hour of the night but it’s a matter of grabbing some of that federal money at a time when the federal government is almost bankrupt.
This is all being planned by people who don’t ride trains. The goal seems to be to get money. Five years to start a service like this is nuts.
Here’s another thing I think is really really really negative. To get this train running (six years from now) Amtrak, BNSF, and the states need to get together. The states and Amtrak need to fork up money. Senators and mayors and congressmen and governors and state DOT secretaries and numerous consultants have to have long meetings.
In 1971 to get Santa Fe to run a much better service than this, all that was needed was for Amtrak and Santa Fe to talk to each other.
Amtrak at its inception was supposed to be a national railroad. And compared to now, it was. And in many respects it was a better railroad. On a couple of trips, 1972 and 1973 I befriended the Santa Fe station agent at Lamy (New Mexico). Within a few years, there were no station agents. Now, you can barely find station personnel in a city the size of Detroit.
So it will take six years to implement an inferior service. Six years to bring the service back to less than where it was half a century ago.
When Amtrak started, Amtrak ran two (and briefly three) trains on the Santa Fe out of Chicago. Not even KCMO, I said Chicago. The Texas Chief, Chicago to Texas, the Super Chief El Capitan, Chicago to Los Angeles.
Really who wants to change trains in Newton in the middle of the night. Or for that matter, hope for trains to be on time to make the connection.