For the past two years, Indiana has contributed $3 million
annually to support Amtrak’s Hoosier State service, which runs between the
cities four days a week. But that financing ends June 30, and Gov. Eric Holcomb
did not include Hoosier State funding in his proposed budget for the two years
beginning July 1.
The governor’s spending plan isn’t binding—House lawmakers
will introduce their own version of the budget in weeks to come—so supporters
of the Hoosier State line aren’t panicking yet. But they are working to advance
their views.
Tod Bassler of Indianapolis, a board member of the
not-for-profit Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance, said the route is an important
part of Indiana’s transportation infrastructure, serving business people to
college students.
“Killing it is not a good idea for Indiana,” Bassler said.
“We’ve already talked to our lawmakers. We’re promoting a letter to write to
lawmakers to ask them to continue to support funding the train.”
The Hoosier State is one of Amtrak’s 29 state-supported
routes around the country. Indiana began subsidizing the Hoosier State in 2013,
after Congress ended federal funding for Amtrak passenger routes shorter than
750 miles.
In addition to state funding, the Hoosier State also
receives a combined $500,000 annually from five local communities along the
route: Crawfordsville, Lafayette, West Lafayette, Tippecanoe County and
Rensselaer.
The Hoosier State line has a bit of a rocky history. Iowa
Pacific Holdings, which operated the service beginning in 2015, pulled out two
years later after the state denied the railroad’s request for additional
funding. Amtrak, which had run the service when it was federally supported,
came back to run it again.
Until Hoosier State funding became a line item in the
current state budget, state funding came from a variety of sources, including a
2015 tax amnesty program that supported the service for the 2015-2017 budget
cycle.
The line’s ridership is the smallest of Amtrak’s state-supported
routes, and its ridership has declined over the past five years.
During Amtrak’s 2014 fiscal year, which began in October
2013, the Hoosier State carried 33,930 passengers. That number dropped to
27,876 in the 2018 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Ridership was up 4.3
percent during the first three months of the current fiscal year.
For the 2018 fiscal year, gross ticket revenue totaled
$902,000.
Low ridership numbers mean government support subsidizes
about 75 percent of the cost of each Hoosier State ticket sold, said Indiana
Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Manning.
Put another way: For every ticket sold, Amtrak receives
$32.85 from passengers (including train fare and on-train food and beverage
sales) and $100.89 in state and local funding.
Ridership woes
The state’s contract with Amtrak doesn’t specify ridership
targets, Manning said, but INDOT entered into the contract looking for growth.
“The state’s desire has been for ridership to increase to a
level that would reduce the need for such a large percentage of financial
support coming from the taxpayers. To date, those increases in ridership have
not materialized,”
For their part, Amtrak officials said there’s only so much
they can do to boost ridership. The Hoosier State takes nearly five hours to travel from
Indianapolis to Chicago, two hours longer than it takes to drive between the
two cities’ train stations.
Reducing the length of that trip is critical, said Amtrak
spokesman Marc Magliari. “We’ve said for a long time that the route needs investment
for it to be competitive for drive times,” Magliari said. “Ridership isn’t
going to change significantly without a change in the product.”
But Amtrak doesn’t own the rails between here and Chicago;
it pays freight-rail companies for the right to run on their tracks. So even
though Amtrak wants improvements on the Hoosier State, it doesn’t control the
infrastructure.
For most of its 196-mile route, the Hoosier State runs on
CSX-owned tracks.
In February 2018, Patrick Engineering did a study for INDOT
that analyzed the capacity for passenger and freight traffic along the Hoosier
State line. That study looked at the infrastructure improvements that would
need to be completed to preserve freight rail capacity if the Hoosier State
line were to increase to two round trips daily.
One of the assumptions of the study was that INDOT and other
financial supporters would pay for upgrades to existing CSX tracks, allowing
the Hoosier State to achieve operating speeds of up to 79 miles per hour. But so far those plans have not advanced. And INDOT has not
included any Hoosier State capital improvements in its state budget request,
Manning said.
Nor is CSX eyeing big outlays on its end.
“At this time, other than routine maintenance, there are no
plans for larger-scale infrastructure improvements along this area of track,” a
CSX spokesperson told IBJ.
“I think probably the most viable option, should there be
long-term investments, is a federal grant,” Manning said. Federal grants
typically require a local match that could be shared by INDOT, Amtrak and CSX,
Manning said.
Amtrak has partnered successfully with Illinois, Michigan,
Missouri and Wisconsin to pursue federal funding to upgrade passenger service
in those states, Magliari said. “We’re willing and have offered to work with
the state of Indiana, as we have with other states, to go after federal dollars
to improve this route.”
But in Indiana, Manning said, “I’m not aware that we’ve had
formal discussions with Amtrak or CSX about pursuing a grant at this point.”
If public funding for the Hoosier State were to evaporate,
Indiana would still have a rail connection to Chicago. Amtrak’s Cardinal line,
which links Chicago with New York City, departs Indianapolis for Chicago on
Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Still, Hoosier State supporters say Indiana can’t afford to
lose what they see as a vital link in the state’s transportation
infrastructure.
“If they increase the frequency and the speeds, they’ll see
a significant increase in utilization,” the Indiana Passenger Rail Alliance’s
Bassler said. “If you kill it, it’s going to be very hard and very expensive to
bring back.” Amtrak’s Magliari echoed that sentiment. If Amtrak drops the
Hoosier State, he said, the freight railroads will fill that capacity with
their own trains. “If we stop running as often as we’re running, it becomes
difficult to run again.”
A reduced frequency between Indianapolis and Chicago would
also hurt operations at Amtrak’s Beech Grove heavy maintenance facility, which
employs about 500 people. The facility is one of three such operations in
Amtrak’s system, and it does work for Amtrak and other rail companies.
If service drops to three days a week, Magliari said, the
Beech Grove facility would lose flexibility to ship equipment back and forth on
the line.
Investing in passenger train service is also beneficial for
other reasons, Bassler said, especially as surrounding states improve their own
service. “Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan are doing great with their
passenger rail services. Indiana, we’re on the fence—but we could go either
way,” he said.
Rail service is especially important to international
students at Purdue University, who fly into Chicago and need a way to get to
campus, Bassler said.
Purdue was unable to provide someone to talk about the
Hoosier State by IBJ’s print deadline. But a 2017 study from the school’s Joint
Transportation Research Program suggests the Hoosier State’s importance to the
school. That study, which was based on passenger surveys, showed
that 35 percent of Hoosier State passengers in 2016 were 18 to 24 years old.
And about a third of passengers identified themselves as students.
Among passengers who started their train trip in Chicago, 40
percent were bound for Lafayette. Another 45 percent traveled all the way to
Indianapolis, and the remaining 15 percent exited at either Dyer, Rensselaer or
Crawfordsville. Bassler said when he rides the Hoosier State, he sees a mix
of students, business and leisure travelers, along with Amish passengers.
Sen. Michael Crider, R-Greenfield, who chairs the Senate
Homeland Security and Transportation Committee, said he was unaware that the
governor’s proposed budget does not include Hoosier State funding. Likewise, Crider said he hasn’t heard of any Amtrak or
rail-service bills making their way through the Senate.
But Crider, who is also a member of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, said he expects the issue to come up during the
legislative session. “I’m sure we’ll have some discussions about it.” Speaking of rail service more generally, he said,
legislators are aware of its importance to the state, especially as freight
volumes increase. “It’s a growing concern that we support the rail industry.”
SOURCE: Indianapolis Business Journal