It’s 12:30 p.m. The Heartland Flyer has just pulled into the station at Fort Worth, Texas. This is the final destination for some travelers. Others are making connections to Dallas or San Antonio. Some, like me, will catch the evening train back to Oklahoma City.
Passenger rail advocates imagine a future where travelers can take the Heartland Flyer even further. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the Heartland Flyer is a key component in plans to expand commuter rail north to Kansas.
“What the Flyer doesn't have is a northern connection,” he said. “Oklahoma City is kind of a cul-de-sac for it. And we think the train would perform even better and be an even better service if we continue the train up to Wichita, which has not had Amtrak service since 1979, and connect to our train, the Southwest Chief, up at Newton.”
Magliari said Amtrak is working with the Departments of Transportation of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas on a process with the federal government called corridor identification to explore the feasibility of a northward expansion.
He said expanding the Heartland Flyer would not only improve the service for passengers but reduce the financial burden on Oklahoma and Texas.
“It's a challenge but it's one we're up to. And one we've been able to negotiate successfully. And of course, having Kansas in the picture for the Flyer could reduce the amount that Oklahoma and Texas would have to pay for the Flyer because there'd be three states to split it instead of two,” he said.
Texas Rail Advocates president Peter LeCody said the success of Amtrak’s 2025 launch of a route called the Mardi Gras Service, which connects Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, points to potential success for a Heartland Flyer expansion.
“They have two round trips a day, and they stop at some of the beautiful little cities along the Gulf Coast there in Mississippi and Alabama. And they broke all records. Just in the first six months, they broke their year-long record for ridership. So if you build a train, people will come,” he said.
Additionally, LeCody said there is support for expansion from state and local government leaders.
“Everyone's looking ahead including the Oklahoma legislature, and we thank them for their forward-looking effort on this,” he said. “There has been support from Texas. I know that our Fort Worth Mayor, Mattie Parker, has been very supportive of this move to go north out of Oklahoma City. We had our TxDOT executive director issue a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration a couple years ago that helped support it as well.”
But the experts expect this expansion would only be possible if the Heartland Flyer still exists. And furthermore, Jared Schwennesen, the manager of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation's multi-modal division, said if funding for the Heartland Flyer is not secured and the service goes away, it would be very difficult to ever bring back.
“If the Heartland Flyer dies, it might be 20 years before some type of intercity passenger rail ever comes back, if that's even an option in the future,” he said. “Once it goes away, it's very hard to bring it back and we'd have to find another solution because then it would be more money, more costly and then you've lost all your ridership so who knows what will happen then.”
For Oklahoma’s part, Schwennesen said ODOT has asked the state legislature for additional money in the budget to address inflation.
“The state provides us with $2.85 million for passenger rail. Our contract this last year is about $5 million. We can’t solve what Texas is doing, but we can make sure that Oklahoma is not the problem,” he said.
The Texas legislature had been allocating about $3.5 million annually to the Heartland Flyer, but that ended last summer. The North Central Texas Council of Governments was able to secure a year’s worth of funding following that loss. Michael Morris, the organization’s director of transportation said their approach to securing money for the future has two steps. Step one — ask the government to pay up.
“Step one is to go back to the government of Texas and then the Texas Department of Transportation,” he said. “Hey, you have an agreement. Is there some reason you couldn't pay the second year?”
Step two — reduce the deficit. Since Oklahoma and Texas are responsible for paying the Heartland Flyer’s deficit, or what it doesn’t make in ticket sales, increasing ridership means decreasing subsidies.
“We're working with Amtrak to get advertising dollars that Amtrak has to advertise the service. I'm hoping there's lots of utilization this summer, reducing the magnitude of the subsidy,” Morris said.
Morris said as things stand, funding for the Heartland Flyer will run out in September of this year. Whether plans for expanding passenger rail in the region stay on track or if it’s the end of the line for the service is yet to be determined. In the meantime, the Heartland Flyer will continue on as it has for the better part of three decades.
RELATED:
Part 1: The Heartland Flyer: How passenger rail came back to Oklahoma
Part 2: The Heartland Flyer: The value of passenger rail in Oklahoma
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