CHICAGO — Amtrak will restore a second day round trip of the Missouri River Runner between St. Louis and Kansas City as of Monday, July 18, reflecting additional funding by the state of Missouri.
The additional round trip will see train No. 311 depart St. Louis at 8:15 a.m. and arrive in Kansas City at 2:20 p.m., with train No. 316 departing Kansas City at 4 p.m. and arriving in St. Louis at 9:40 p.m.
This joins an existing round trip of trains which continue to or from Chicago — No. 318, which departs Kansas City at 8:40 a.m. and arrives in St. Louis at 2:20 p.m., and No. 319, which departs St. Louis at 3:05 p.m. and arrives in Kansas City at 8:45 p.m.
Service was cut to just one daily trip as of Jan. 3, 2022, when federal coronavirus funding ended. It had covered the state’s failure to provide sufficient funding for two round trips in the fiscal 2022 budget, which left the service facing a $2.5 million shortfall [see “ ‘Missouri River Runner’ service cut …,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 3, 2021].
Missouri’s fiscal 2022 budget had allotted $10.85 million for Amtrak service; the budget for fiscal 2023 includes $13.25 million for “daily rail passenger service … provided the Department [of Transportation] operate the service without incurring any further arrears or otherwise commit itself or the state to any form of debt payments to operate the service.”
IMO do not start this service unless Amtrak can use cars for axel count that cannot be used for revenue cars ever. That does not mean using cars awaiting for repair to make them passenger worthy.
This train dose not operate on Canadian National so it doesn’t have axel count restrictions
It runs on Union Pacific which also requires a minimum axle count
Not sure how it would work out but it seems that extension of River Runner or adding a third river runner to go across IL into Carbondale would provide some great connectivity from KC, St. Louis, and Jeff City metro areas for those who would want to take train service to Memphis and onto New Orleans at fraction of cost of some of the proposed expansions being put out there
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I think Amtrak and IL pushing another a single train service to another IL city on a different rail line from Chicago. Just as Amtrak and MN was trying to push for a Twin Cities to Duluth singe train single daily service before MN statehouse killed it by putting brakes on funding. I get the wanting to expand service but believe Amtrak can find some better approaches to connect, expand frequency while incorporating metro areas that could actually add meaningful passenger counts and therefore long term revenue on the forthcoming taxpayers capital expenditures (infrastructure funds). But of course, that would require Amtrak and IL to think beyond what is best for Chicago