At 8:25 every morning, the Heartland Flyer rolls away from the Santa Fe Depot in Oklahoma City for a day trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
With Oklahoma’s souring budget outlook, just about everything is on the chopping block, including Oklahoma's Amtrak rail service.
Lawmakers and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation have set aside more than $3 million each year, and Texas also contributes a multi-million dollar subsidy, The Journal Record’s Dale Denwalt reports:
“It may be trimmed a little bit,” House Appropriations Chairman Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville, said Tuesday. “We’ve talked about it, but there’s no hard language in that funding.” Oklahoma pays for its share from income tax and motor fuel tax allocations. . . . State Sen. Dan Newberry, R-Tulsa, said that with such a large budget shortfall, the state should reconsider whether to subsidize the train. “It may have been a meritorious project at one time,” said Newberry. “We’re just not in a world where we can afford it today. If you can’t afford the car you’re driving, you’ve got to sell the car you’re driving and get one you can afford.”
About 77,000 people ride the Heartland Flyer each year. ODOT’s Craig Moody oversees rail programs, and says that number fluctuates depending on the price of gas. It’s been as high as 80,000 when gas was above $3 per gallon, according to Denwalt:
“Obviously, if gas prices are $1.56 a gallon, people are more apt to take their vehicle than to jump on a train,” Moody said. The state is negotiating with Amtrak and trying to secure another train to run in the opposite direction each day. “If (state support of) passenger rail service was discontinued, this would be the beginning of the end for the Heartland Flyer,” Moody said. “If this service was to go away, I really honestly don’t know what it would take to get it back in.”
Whatever the Legislature decides about the Heartland Flyer, it likely won’t affect plans for the Eastern Flyer between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. That project is being designed to run without state support. A six-month trial of that line is expected to begin before 2019.
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