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Is it worth $3 million to get Amtrak service to Iowa City?
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An Acela Express car is seen in Washington, D.C., July 11, 2011. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT)
The Iowa Interstate Railroad remains willing to host new passenger rail service across Iowa if the state and Amtrak can reach an agreement to develop and fund it, a top executive of the Cedar Rapids-based railroad says.
“The railroad is more than willing to work with Amtrak, the states, or anybody else that’s involved in passenger service,” said Henry Posner III, chairman of the Iowa Interstate’s board and of its parent company Railroad Development Corp. “Our main business is freight, but one of the benefits of being a railroad is you can do more than one thing at once.”
A feasibility study on new rail service between Chicago and Omaha picked the Iowa Interstate’s route across the state from Davenport through Iowa City and Des Moines. Public meetings on the study will be held next month in cities along the line.
Iowa Interstate is already working with Amtrak and Illinois to restore passenger service between Chicago and Moline by 2015. Former Gov. Chet Culver was an enthusiastic supporter of extending that service to Iowa City, but current Gov. Terry Branstad and state House Republicans oppose the $3 million annual subsidy that would require. “We’re back to, does Iowa want to be a part of it?” said Posner. “If Iowa’s interested, we can work it out.”
Do you think it’s worth $3 million a year in state taxpayer-funded subsidies to get Amtrak service from Chicago to Iowa City?
Once you arrive at the terminal in Chicago, you can transfer to trains going to virtually the entire country. We travel by train quite a bit and really enjoy it but currently we are driving to Mount Pleasant, Fort Madison and even Minneapolis to catch a train. A connector from Iowa City to Chicago would open up the world of train travel to many more people.
Is it worth $3 million? It’s hard to say without more data. It would ultimately depend on how much usage it gets. I would hope people would try train travel and, like us, come to really enjoy it.
No. Amtrak is slow and offers poor service. As far as making it easier to get to Iowa City, plenty of people seem to manage to do that now.
Iowa just gave the Lake Delhi project 5 million to beifit a very chosen few. Why not spend 3 million to help thousands travel easily from Iowa City instead of Mt. Pleasant or Fort Madison?
yes very true,It would benifit many.I have also waited longer for air delays and as a senior with health
poblems left on my own. I travel Amtrak 3 or 4 times a year
out of Galesburg and always had great service.
Iowa City would be grrreat.
Yes. It’s convenient, affordable, comfortable and can help relieve congested interstates. People going to Chicago wouldn’t have to worry about tolls or parking once they got there. And Rich is right, once at the station in Chicago, you can pretty much go anywhere in the country.
And as far as being fast, no it isn’t. It’s about the same speed or slightly faster than car traffic, but hopefully with an investment in infrastructure, we could potentially see speeds that rival those of other industrialized countries.
As for Lake Delhi, two wrongs don’t make a right.
A new Amtrak route will just increase Amtrak’s annual deficit. Amtrak charges $9.50 for a hamburger it costs them $16 to make. See http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/08/12/amtrak-governmental-inertia-sesame-seed-bun/4bpbUOQSjqqOnPmWgxvl1O/story.html
The common refrain is ‘why is the govt picking winners and losers?’
With Solydra, A123 systems, Fiskar-Karman, etc, and trains in general,http://www.dividedstates.com/list-of-failed-obama-green-energy-solar-companies/
the question has become “why is the govt picking ONLY losers?”
Now that you mention it, government subsidizes all other forms of transportation too. They have the FAA, and TSA in the airports. They fund airport construction, including hangars, terminals, and runways. Our government funds highways, interstates, country roads, bridges for vehicular traffic. For boat traffic, they again are the ones that control and maintain the locks and dams on our rivers. Additionally, bridges have to be designed in specific ways so that they don’t hinder boat traffic. Government used to be the sole provider of space travel and it always ran a deficit. Why should passenger rail be different?
So, why are we talking about raising gasoline taxes to maintain highways? As for subsidies in general, just as with the $5 million for Lake Delhi, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Where are gasoline taxes being talked about on this subject? Furthermore, funds or no funds for Amtrack have nothing to do with highway maintenance — the sentence makes no sense. As far as “two wrongs”, firstly is has not been established that funds for lake Delhi is necessarily a “wrong” — that’s a matter of opinion. Secondly it can hardly be “wrong” to raise money to maintain roads. What is going to maintain the roads — the road fairy ? Your post is meaningless.
I don’t want to see a penny of federal or state tax money spent on adding any passenger rail service anywhere. Amtrak has been a miserable failure and I don’t want to see more money thrown away on it.
Traveling Amtrak, assuming passenger service had priority, it would be on time and more would ride. I have traveled on the Empire builder across the northern states where there is less freight traffic and found the service very adequate. Infrastructure is needed that will outlast the highway system and carry more people efficiently along with saving thousands of gallons of fuel.
tax dollars should not be used for this. it would be one thing if Amtrack turned a profit ANYWHERE, but it never has, never will.
as for Lake Delhi, tax money should not go there either. If you want a lake to add to your tax base, then the county should sell bonds, and pay for it themselves. And oh – require the county take part in the flood insurance programs…the taxpayers can’t afford to keep bailing people out (to include counties and cities) that choose not to buy insurance.
Sooner or later we’re going to run out of cheap gas, air space, hiway space. And then there’s that annoying problem called climate change.
Rail is the most fuel efficient way to transport stuff and people that we have. It works for both long distance travel and short commutes. It makes living and working in cities like New York and Chicago possible. And while it may be no faster than traveling by car, it’s a whole lot more comfortable than bus, car, or air. It’s also very safe.