Amtrak service in Kansas could be cut

Carl and Bea Kellar held hands as they awaited the eastbound Amtrak train in Newton at 2 a.m. Friday.

It was their first time riding the train, they said, waiting among the 10 people gathered in the sleepy hours of the morning.

Soon the station manager informed passengers waiting for the westbound train that because of flooding on the tracks, the train would be delayed for about six hours.

In about six months, if circumstances in Kansas City are not resolved, Amtrak could cancel the Southwest Chief line, effectively leaving the state of Kansas altogether.

“Amtrak is between a rock and a hard place on this,” said Barth Hague, who serves as the Southwest Chief’s representative on the Amtrak Customer Advisory Committee.

The line, which runs daily between Chicago and Los Angeles, serves 33 cities, six of which – Lawrence, Topeka, Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City and Garden City – are in Kansas.

Amtrak has a federal mandate to install positive train control, or PTC, systems across its tracks by Dec. 31, 2015, an endeavor that’s expected to cost up to $625 million, according to a 2012 Amtrak document.

Throughout most of the country, Amtrak operates on rails owned by other railroads – most notably, BNSF Railway.

The problem is with one section of track in the Kansas City area.

Those tracks are owned by the Kansas City Terminal, or KCT. According to testimony that D.J. Stadtler, Amtrak’s vice president for operations, gave to Congress last month, KCT isn’t willing to foot the roughly $30 million bill to install PTC on its rails, and Amtrak can’t afford to do so. It makes roughly $44 million in revenue for the entire 2,256-mile line.

As a result, Amtrak has said that if a solution does not come about by December, it will either terminate or re-route the Southwest Chief, Kansas’ only means of Amtrak transportation. Amtrak hasn’t given any specifics as to where it would reroute the Southwest Chief.

The cities along the route of the Southwest Chief “work pretty hard, and to work so hard to preserve passenger rail only to have it pulled away because we can’t satisfy some congressional mandate east of Kansas City is a tragedy for this community,” Hague said.

PTC technology

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Rail Safety Improvement Act, in response to a train crash in California that killed 25 people and injured 101 others.

That legislation included the mandate to install PTC systems on Class 1 tracks by the end of 2015. Class 1 tracks include “any railroad main lines over which regularly scheduled intercity passenger or commuter rail services are provided,” according to the Federal Railroad Administration.

PTC is a communications-based system designed to prevent train accidents based on human error – basically, processors and wireless signals relay information to prevent train-to-train collisions, overspeed derailments and various other scenarios.

Railroads have been working toward meeting that goal, but according to a December 2013 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, many are concerned they will not be able to meet the 2015 deadline.

This can be attributed partly to the cost of installing the technology – which has been estimated at $10 billion, according to Union Pacific.

The Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia this spring brought PTC technology once again to the forefront of public discussion on railroads, Hague said.

“The Philadelphia thing was a huge headline,” he said. “There’s probably kind of a public, or official, overreaction to that right now.”

Hague said the necessity of installing PTC technology is greater in areas like the Northeast Corridor, where commuters in places like New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., frequently travel by train.

In areas like western Kansas, where trains only reach speeds of 79 mph, the need is not as great, he said.

“My worry is that Congress is going to start playing hardball, and I don’t think it’s fair,” Hague said. “I think Amtrak in a lot of these cases, and the states who are reliant upon passenger rail, should be given more time, especially where there just is not, in my view, the safety risk that exists in the Northeast Corridor, where there are so many passenger trains a day.”

On the federal level, Hague said, there has been “political intrigue” regarding Amtrak funding for years.

“Congress would like the long-distance stuff to go away because it requires subsidy, and they don’t want to subsidize it,” he said. “My big worry is, given the sentiment in Washington and in Topeka these days, I worry that if this line gets pulled even under the guise of doing it temporarily, we’ll never see it again. We’ll never get it back, and that would worry me.”

In 2013, Amtrak published a news release saying funding for long-distance railroads is a federal responsibility. Its president and CEO Joe Boardman said, “Congress is clearly 100 percent in charge in directing how long-distance train service is provided in the United States and has been ever since it created Amtrak more than 40 years ago.”

In May, the House Appropriations Committee voted to cut $260 million from Amtrak’s budget, also voting down an amendment proposed by Democrats slated to provide $825 million to install PTC technology.

“Given that every year thousands of Kansans ride the Southwest Chief, I certainly hope that Amtrak and the Kansas City Terminal can come to an equitable agreement that guarantees continued service,” Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, said in an e-mailed statement. “Today’s uncertainty is directly caused by a massive unfunded federal mandate, and is yet another example of the unintended consequences of government intervention in private industry.”

Hague said he’s optimistic the federal deadline could be extended to give railroads more time to install PTC.

“I’d like to see them work something out, and I think the best thing would just be an extension of the deadline on these long-distance routes where there is simply not the same level of safety pressure that exists in the Northeast Corridor,” he said.

Impact of Amtrak’s potential departure

According to Amtrak figures, 352,162 people rode on the Southwest Chief line in 2014, which was down 1 percent from its total ridership in 2013.

In total, the line brought in $44,631,296 of ticket revenue last year.

That made it the sixth-most-popular long-distance route – out of 15 total – Amtrak ran in 2014.

Of those riding the Southwest Chief in 2014, 12,871 people boarded or deboarded at the Newton station, which makes $1,427,227 in annual revenue, according to Amtrak.

Hague said the economic impact the train has in Newton “is probably not great right now,” because people do not linger in town, waiting for connecting trains. The two passenger trains that come through also arrive in the overnight hours.

If the Southwest Chief line is pulled, Hague said, the stakes are a little lower for riders from Newton, because of the town’s proximity to Wichita and Eisenhower National Airport.

“But people out of Lamar, Colorado?” he said. “They’re driving to Denver. A lot of these little communities depend on Amtrak as their primary transportation system. It would be a big loss.”

Recently, the Newton City Commission voted to invest $12,500 in improvements to the Southwest Chief, “hoping that Amtrak would continue to go west out of Newton,” Mayor Glen Davis said.

“Newton is the railroad town,” he said, adding that Newton High School’s athletic teams are called the Railers. “It’s always been a part of Newton.”

Sand Creek Station Golf Course, in Newton, has a logo prominently featuring a locomotive. The city’s logo is a circle made up of train tracks.

At high school football games, Railer Man revs up the crowd by blowing a train whistle on occasion.

Students frequently sing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” at those games.

If Amtrak left town – and the state – “it would hurt,” Davis said.

This story was originally published July 4, 2015 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Amtrak service in Kansas could be cut."