Amtrak Ridership Picks Up Steam

By Brad Cooper, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Sep. 24–Planes are faster. Cars are more convenient. But the train is not a bad alternative for Colin McGrath.

“The train just seems kind of easy and laid-back. You get a nice view of the countryside,” McGrath said as he prepared to board an Amtrak train this week at Union Station. “I can fall asleep and not worry about crashing.”

Amtrak is winning back some of its popularity with Missouri passengers at a time when politicians want to cut its funding and the train is not always the most reliable way to travel.

But passengers such as McGrath say the train is less hassle than driving in traffic and roomier than aircraft cabins. Others say train fares, which range from $25 to $58 for a one-way trip to St. Louis, are an affordable alternative to driving when gasoline is so expensive.

Amtrak service from Kansas City to St. Louis is drawing more passengers than it has in three years.

In the year ending June 30, about 171,400 people boarded Amtrak’s four daily trains between Kansas City and St. Louis. That was a 5.5 percent increase from the previous year.

Amtrak has not had that many Missouri riders since 2002, when 188,800 rode the rails between St. Louis and Kansas City.

The trend is similar to one nationwide. Amtrak’s ridership has risen about 145,000 in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2005, which ends Sept. 30.

Some of the railroad’s biggest ridership increases have been on Illinois lines. The route from Chicago to St. Louis saw a 13.5 percent increase for the first 10 months of fiscal 2005.

Trains are taking on new relevance for passengers who say the fare is little more than what it costs to fill their cars with gasoline.”It’s a more economical and comfortable mode of transportation,” said Renae Smith of St. Louis. “You can walk around and move about. You’re not confined to sitting in your seat as you would be in a bus or a plane.”

Others take the train just for the experience and a leisurely trip across the state.

“This trip, we just wanted to see the countryside go by,” said Debra Sutton of Gladstone, who was traveling with her husband, Ralph.

Said Ralph Sutton: “It doesn’t really bother us if they stop in every town along the way.”

The state of Missouri pays Amtrak about $6.2 million a year to provide service from Kansas City to St. Louis. The state pays for the direct costs of the service, such as crew salaries and fuel, which amount to about 60 percent of the total cost. Brian Weiler, multimodal director for the state Department of Transportation, said the increase in passengers could be attributed to the fact that Amtrak funding appeared to be stable.

“There’s been a lot of uncertainty about passenger rail service. It’s been hotly debated within the state legislature,” Weiler said. “I think that uncertainty in the funding at both the state and the national level has driven people away.”

This year Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican, proposed cutting the subsidy for Amtrak’s Missouri service, but lawmakers kept it in the budget.

At the time, Blunt said he was following the lead of President Bush, who proposed eliminating Amtrak funding in fiscal year 2006.

The Bush administration has been pushing for reforms at Amtrak, saying it is an inefficient agency that has been draining the federal budget since it was created in the 1970s.

Congress has resisted. This year the House agreed to keep Amtrak at its current funding level of $1.2 billion for next year. A Senate committee has recommended about $1.4 billion.

At the state level, a spokesman said Blunt hoped that Missouri’s budget situation would allow continued funding of Amtrak.

Amtrak officials attribute the increase in passengers to a change in marketing. Spokesman Marc Magliari said the company had shifted from promoting a generic train experience to a campaign that focused more on fares and schedules.

Magliari said the company also had stepped up maintenance so that equipment such as air conditioning did not malfunction and that locomotives were not as likely to break down.

Magliari said Amtrak had been working with the Union Pacific Railroad to improve the reliability of the passenger trains. Amtrak pays to run its passenger trains, including the route from Kansas City to St. Louis, on Union Pacific tracks.

Amtrak has struggled with on-time performance in Missouri on a track that 50 to 60 freight trains use each day. The 280-mile trip from Kansas City to St. Louis is supposed to take about 5½ hours, but sometimes lasts eight or nine.

In the latest fiscal year, Amtrak’s trains on average arrived on schedule about 75 percent of the time. That was up from 66 percent the previous year.

Union Pacific is supposed to give passenger trains priority, but Missouri officials say that Amtrak trains frequently are delayed by freight traffic between Kansas City and St. Louis, two of the biggest rail hubs in the country.

“If you look at federal law, it says passenger trains will have priority on all freight-train lines,” said Rod Massman, railroad administrator for the state Transportation Department. “For whatever reason, we don’t always get that priority. Sometimes we do.”

Massman said circumstances sometimes caused Union Pacific to detour freight trains from other parts of the country through Missouri. That only exacerbates the problem, he said.

Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis said the railroad did give priority to Amtrak trains.

Davis said the delays stemmed from track maintenance and heavy traffic on the line. One stalled locomotive can tie up a lot of traffic, he said.”We do the best we can to operate those trains on time,” Davis said. “Passenger trains are dispatched with the highest priority.”

Davis said the problem was compounded when rail traffic was squeezed on to one set of tracks on bridges over the Gasconade and Osage rivers in eastern Missouri.

Union Pacific wants to alleviate the problem by adding tracks across both rivers, but one effort is mired in a court battle with Katy Trail enthusiasts. The company wants to use parts of a bridge that it owns on the Katy Trail to build a second railroad bridge over the Osage River.

The railroad said reusing the bridge could cut the cost of a new $20 million railroad bridge in half. But opponents say removing the bridge would threaten the trail’s future changing its status as a railbed preserved for future use.

Even with the bottlenecks, some passengers are undeterred. The Suttons, of Gladstone, knew about the potential for delay but boarded the train for St. Louis anyway. They had not ridden a train in 15 years.

“We’re just going to see how long it takes. I hope it doesn’t take nine hours,” Debra Sutton said. “We are prepared for the coal trains. We brought a lot to read.”

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