What is happening to the SWC route?

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Hard deadline for making the switch is Dec. 31, 2015, which gives us about one more year of trying to get Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico on board to provide funding for the current route. Apparently Kansas has allocated some funds, Colorado has approved funding, but that involves a silly out and back reroute to Pueblo and New Mexico is up in the air with the governor opposed to the funding. So look for another year of political games before a final decision is reached.
 
Via Facebook, the Kansas Congressional delegation seems to be united in their opposition to Amtrak. But the decision may well be made on the state rather than the federal level, so I'm not sure how far to take this.

The US House rejected cuts to Amtrak! Here is how your reps voted:...

Bad Guys who voted to cut Amtrak:
Tim Hullskamp KS
Lynn Jenkins KS
Kevin Yoder KS
Mike Pompeo KS

If it was up to Kansas, Amtrak would have lost support.
 
60 Minutes had a show on the "/Conservative" Stare Government in Kansas and how they are cutting funding to Education and other vital services!

It doesn't look good for any funding from Kansas for the Chief and since the Cantor Earthquake hit it probably means that the other states involved may back out on any funding also!

The obvious thing is to re+route the Chief via the Southern Transcona from Witchita via Amarillo since BNSF and Texas and Oklahoma politicians support it! Amtrak can't afford their share of maintaining the current route let alone fund it all! Its nice to see Raton Pass from the train but not at the price involved!
 
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Hard deadline for making the switch is Dec. 31, 2015, which gives us about one more year of trying to get Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico on board to provide funding for the current route. Apparently Kansas has allocated some funds, Colorado has approved funding, but that involves a silly out and back reroute to Pueblo and New Mexico is up in the air with the governor opposed to the funding. So look for another year of political games before a final decision is reached.
The hard deadline for a decision is December 31, 2014. Not 2015.

The train would move when Amtrak's contract with BNSF is up for renewal in 2016. Amtrak has said it needs two years lead time to do the switch to the new route. So unless the money is committed for the old route by the end of 2014, Amtrak will start working on the switch to the new route, so as to make sure it happens in 2016 rather than the train getting cancelled entirely. Amtrak has said that after December 31, 2014, they will start talking to the communities along the new route -- implying that those communities will have to put in money for the new route to work (probably for stations).

For what it's worth, in Kansas, Garden City and Dodge City support the current route, but (much bigger) Wichita supports the reroute. Think about that for a minute. There's also a pro-Amtrak Congressman in the panhandle of Oklahoma (!!!) and local support from Amarillo and Clovis (unsurprisingly). I feel that the reroute has a lot of potential politically. I really hope it can be pulled off successfully, as I think it would be a major improvement for the train service. (It would also make the Heartland Flyer extension into a significantly easier project.)
 
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Thanks for the info!

I will be taking the SWC to L.A. in December. Glad it will still be running through Raton.
 
Two fact corrections that may not make any difference.

1. The bill Colorado passed does not require the train to detour thru Pueblo. It requires a detour to Pueblo be considered five years from the bills passage with the money to do that not the responsibility of Amtrak, BNSF, Kansas or New Mexico but from Colorado. The big selling point of the bill was a probable contract for new rail from steel mill in Pueblo (they are the biggest domestic producer of rail now). Labor Unions were a major factor in getting the bill passed.

2. The drop dead date is not the end of this year but 2015. The New Mexico legislature passed and Gov. Martinez signed a bill to do an economic study of the current route and to have it ready for the 2015 legislative secession.
 
Sorry, the drop dead date was specifically stated as 2014 several times by Amtrak. NOT 2015. I can get you citations.

http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_25504604/southwest-chief-could-be-rerouted-from-rural-colorado

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2013-05-25/amtrak-mulls-amarillo-route

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/21/small-western-towns-to-lose-amtrak-service-if-states-cant-pay-up/

If Amtrak is reneging on this, dang them. It's not going to give Amarillo and Wichita much time to get ready and may kill the route entirely.

But I don't think they are:

"We'll need a way forward by the end of this year, or else in the calendar year 2015 we'll need to spend time working on rerouting the train," said Marc Magliari, a spokesman for Amtrak,
(From April 2014).

"By the end of 2014 if it's not very clear that there's a way forward, we'll spend 2015 looking at rerouting the train between Kansas and Albuquerque,"
(Also from April 2014, same spokesman)

The New Mexico bill for consideration in 2015 is useless. Call it a sop: it's deliberately scheduled after Amtrak has to commit to the new route.
 
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What if...

NO ONE puts in money for Amtrak to move OR to stay? Then what happens? Will they move to the transcon with no additional stops? Will they move at all? Will they kill off the SWC?
 
I have read rumors elsewhere that Amtrak may be giving the states additional time during 2015 to preserve the existing route. This is just such an awful idea, as it makes it more likely that the train will blow past Amarillo and Wichita without stopping. Cities need lead time to build platforms.
 
It borders on criminal that this rich country of ours has such a skeletal rail system. As a result, important cities are forced to play a zero-sum game with each other to fight for service. Why can't we get everyone in the southwest to band together and lobby for trains on both routes?

I know, I'm dreaming. But really, we need to start thinking about ways to serve more places, not fewer.
 
I have read rumors elsewhere that Amtrak may be giving the states additional time during 2015 to preserve the existing route. This is just such an awful idea, as it makes it more likely that the train will blow past Amarillo and Wichita without stopping. Cities need lead time to build platforms.
Pfft, Palmdale and Lancaster did it in three days. Amarillo and Wichita just need to want it bad enough.
 
I have read rumors elsewhere that Amtrak may be giving the states additional time during 2015 to preserve the existing route. This is just such an awful idea, as it makes it more likely that the train will blow past Amarillo and Wichita without stopping. Cities need lead time to build platforms.
Pfft, Palmdale and Lancaster did it in three days. Amarillo and Wichita just need to want it bad enough.
Not with required EISes they didn't. :-(

....though actually I don't know Texas and Kansas law. If there's a state equivalent of NEPA (there is in most states), practically any municipal action now has to go through the EIS process or some equivalent, with a short list of exceptions. There are sometimes appropriate exceptions.
 
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One of the reasons that the current Chicago to Los Angeles route was chosen in 1971 was because the smaller cities along the route had less alternative transportation than Wichita and Amarillo. Both routes had train service prior to Amtrak. That's is also why the highline and Empire Builder were chosen over the more southerly North Coast Limited route. The North Coast Hiawatha was a political train that came back for 7 years.
 
The Lake Shore Limited was also a political train that came back in spite of being not chose initially, funded variously by New York and Ohio. It somehow managed to outlast the chosen Broadway Limited, mostly thanks to choices made by Conrail. So one can never quite tell what might happen. Of course changing the route of the Southwest Chief, won't cause it to change its name to the old train whose route it will follow.
 
One of the reasons that the current Chicago to Los Angeles route was chosen in 1971 was because the smaller cities along the route had less alternative transportation than Wichita and Amarillo. Both routes had train service prior to Amtrak. That's is also why the highline and Empire Builder were chosen over the more southerly North Coast Limited route. The North Coast Hiawatha was a political train that came back for 7 years.
Your history is correct, but I don't believe Amtrak currently considers that reason for route selection....they are looking for the best, fastest, cheapest route with the best market potential for profitability, just like any business would. They leave it up to the states to support any 'essential services', if they want it.....
 
At this point, Amtrak's best political move is generally to run the trains with the most riders per dollar of subsidy; or to put it another way, the lowest subsidy per passenger.

Running trains through areas with few alternative forms of transportation *may* help in getting more riders and more revenue (as with the Empire Builder vs. the North Coast Hiawatha).... or it may not help. In the case of the Empire Builder vs. the North Coast Hiawatha, none of the cities along either route has much population, so preferring the route with fewer alternatives makes sense. In the case of Raton vs. Amarillo, the Amarillo route has far, far more population, which should more than compensate for the lower percentage of the population using the trains.
 
New Mexico is prohibited by its state Constitution, and is so stated in its State Rail Plan in chapter 5 from giving monies directly or indirectly to private railroads. Also New Mexico has put in its budget and is so stated money in the state Rail Plan to rework the wye near Albq.. This reroute train has left the station and it is just a matter of time This idea of New Mexico doing a study is a sham/ A bridge or track washout tor track goes exempted the reroute happens because the Transcon is already designated an alternate route for SWC. In reality the reroute has already happened--just a matter of time
 
Checking the ontime status of the Chief it has not been doing very well. The last two month it has been losing from ten minutes to three hours late. The track in western Kansas has a lot to two with it. Also I noticed that the station stops are longer now. Number 4 has the worse record.
 
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New Mexico is prohibited by its state Constitution, and is so stated in its State Rail Plan in chapter 5 from giving monies directly or indirectly to private railroads. Also New Mexico has put in its budget and is so stated money in the state Rail Plan to rework the wye near Albq.. This reroute train has left the station and it is just a matter of time This idea of New Mexico doing a study is a sham/ A bridge or track washout tor track goes exempted the reroute happens because the Transcon is already designated an alternate route for SWC. In reality the reroute has already happened--just a matter of time
The reroute is not a bad thing. The scenery is just as good going through Abo Canyon and it's all double track and the population of the online cities is much greater. And a thru way bus from Lubbock is a possibility. All they will have to do is turn the train on the wye in Albuquerque each trip. And BNSF is already to do this. The Raton line will just be banked until a need is determined for it's use. It's not going to go away. And the line across Kansas is still in use for freights so It will stay around also.
 
I have read rumors elsewhere that Amtrak may be giving the states additional time during 2015 to preserve the existing route. This is just such an awful idea, as it makes it more likely that the train will blow past Amarillo and Wichita without stopping. Cities need lead time to build platforms.
Pfft, Palmdale and Lancaster did it in three days. Amarillo and Wichita just need to want it bad enough.
That was a post-earthquake emergency measure. The work was done without any of the usual delay mechanisms having a chance to function.
 
I would agree with Charlie that we should all be supporting more routes instead of trading one for another. But the trackage situation on the current SWC-Raton Pass route is one that may not be solvable without the support of BNSF to keep the track in operational condition. If the states will not support paying for the line, then it seems inevitable that the Transcom route will take precedence.

We just returned from a trip CHI-ABQ and back and always enjoy the nice scenery in Colorado and New Mexico. But we will also look forward to riding the new route if and when it comes.

With Railrunner providing transportation between Belen -ABQ- Santa Fe, the people of New Mexico have a viable rail line between some of its major cities and connections to Amtrak in ABQ. I doubt the current governor or legislature will provide funding for the Raton Pass route.

My advice is to ride the Chief ASAP if you want to see Raton one more time. :(
 
Put it this way: I'd much rather ride the train on the Transcon than have the route severed or cancelled. And if ridership and revenue can be improved by the change, why then, that means more funds to try to expand the system somewhere else.... and goodness knows I can think of a dozen more valuable places to put money in to improve and expand the national rail system (South of the Lake exclusive tracks from Chicago to Porter, standalone train from MSP to CHI, corridor train across Iowa, New Orleans to Mobile, Bethelehem/Allentown PA, daily Cardinal, just off the top of my head...)
 
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