Meeting on Tulsa Amtrak

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by marc


Isn't the plan to eventually connect OKC and Kansas City? If so, it makes so much more sense to route through Tulsa than through Perry.

Yes, OKC-Tulsa-Joplin-KC makes much more sense, IMO.

[TheArtist]

quote:Originally posted by nathanm

quote:Originally posted by marc


Isn't the plan to eventually connect OKC and Kansas City? If so, it makes so much more sense to route through Tulsa than through Perry.

Yes, OKC-Tulsa-Joplin-KC makes much more sense, IMO.

I agree completely. But with the cost difference,,, will OKC and MO go for it? Especially if Kansas is willing to pay for their section from Newton on up. Its simple and practically free one way, its quite another story the other.

Anyone have any idea of what the sentiment is for MO or Kansas to the "Tulsa" line? Wont do us much good to dream up lines going to Joplin and KC if they dont want to do it right now, "its not just the people in OKC we are having to convince here" and the Oklahoma legislators arent going to spend money on rail going north only to have it stop at the border.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

the Oklahoma legislators arent going to spend money on rail going north only to have it stop at the border.

Certainly, but even if it doesn't go beyond Tulsa, getting passenger rail in Tulsa is a reasonable goal. You are right that we need to consider whether the money would be more beneficial for commuter rail.

On that point, though, we need to consider who we're really helping. The proposed BA line really only helps BA. Tulsa benefits only by reduced pollution and congestion along one particular highway, and may in fact be harmed by making it difficult or impossible for commuters from BA to stop and patronize businesses in Tulsa on their way home.

We might get lucky and make downtown a more attractive location to locate an office, which is a goal in and of itself.

The biggest benefit I see is just in getting people used to the idea of traveling by rail.

[TheArtist]

Ok, just got back from the meeting and going to throw out some thoughts and notes.

First off there doesnt seem to be any concrete plan or political consensus to do any rail from OKC to Tulsa or from Tulsa to anywhere. Even the OKC to Newton and Kansas thing seems to be just an idea with little likelihood to happen unless support somehow grows for it. There are however a good number of people, and a few politicians, who think that rail could be of some benefit to the Tulsa area. So part of what the meeting was about was looking at the various options, get conversations going, and figuring out ways to drum up more political will and support to get some sort of passenger rail going. If thats what we agree we want, that it is a worthwhile thing to spend our money on.


Here are a few tidbits and various options to consider weighing...

1.  Tulsa to KC, tricky to do because of the politics in KC. KC doesnt want to spend the money on it and would rather spend money to connect to cities like Wichita. Basically, unlikely to happen.

2.  Tulsa to St Louis. More doable, more political will to do it in MO, and would be relatively inexpensive for Oklahoma to do, costing about 12 mill from Tulsa to the border. Negative, would be an 8-10 hr trip, positive,,, is inexpensive and would connect Tulsa to the rest of the Amtrak network. Also, to consider, not as likely to get federal matching funds as an OKC to Tulsa line.

3a.  Tulsa to OKC. About 2.5 hours and the feeling seems to be that when Amtrak comes out soon with their new study for the corridor, the price could be 200-250 millionish. But... if Obama does the "infrastructure as investment/economic stimulus" thing, the feds. could pay a good chunk of that. But...Inhofe et al, likely to shoot down any federal spending, even if the only place they can stop it for sure is in our state.

3b.  Tulsa to OKC. About 50 minutes. 1 billion dollars for new high speed rail. Can possibly be done since Tulsa to OKC is already designated as a high speed corridor option. Fed gov could pay up to 80%. But... how likely would Inhofe go for that one? lol NOT! Even IF we could get the state legislators on board.

4. Passenger rail, and doesnt have to be Amtrak, from Tulsa to wherever, doesnt have to be solely for that purpose, for we can piggyback some Tulsa commuter line infrastructure on top of that. Or another way of seeing it is that we could start commuter rail here in Tulsa and have Amtrak piggyback on top of that. I believe someone said that if you add BA and make it a BA-Tulsa-OKC line, you increase ridership by 25%.  

Basically whatever we choose to do, those options or something completely different. We are going to have to put some effort into lobbying in OKC, write letters, organize, etc. and push for it to happen. Do we want to do that? Is it worth it? How do we "show its worth it", whatever "it" is? What project would we want to push for? Which idea is best? Which is most likely to be politically doable?

[TURobY]

Thanks for the information. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to attend, but I got some work piled on me at the last minute. Very interesting ideas...

[PonderInc]

Here's something to think about.  The Turner, Kirkpatrick Turnpike and Creek Turnpikes are being studied to consider adding lanes...at a cost of $400 million.  

http://newsok.com/toll-roads-some-may-widen-in-years-to-come/article/3315905
http://newsok.com/turnpike-expansion-sought-despite-sagging-revenue/article/3313861

Here are some other thoughts:  

The Turner Turnpike was built between 1947-1953.  It cost $100 million at the time.  (What would that be in today's dollars?)  How many billions have gone into maintenance since then?

In 2000, between 20,000 and 28,000 vehicles traveled the Turner Turnpike each day.  It's currently an 1 1/2 hour drive.  What would be the value of time saved to millions of people each year, if a high speed train could connect Tulsa to OKC with a 30 minute ride?

Every semi-truck causes as much damage to the road as 300 cars.  How much could be saved, if more trains could carry not just passengers but freight as well?

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by PonderInc

Here's something to think about.  The Turner, Kirkpatrick Turnpike and Creek Turnpikes are being studied to consider adding lanes...at a cost of $400 million.  

http://newsok.com/toll-roads-some-may-widen-in-years-to-come/article/3315905
http://newsok.com/turnpike-expansion-sought-despite-sagging-revenue/article/3313861

Here are some other thoughts:  

The Turner Turnpike was built between 1947-1953.  It cost $100 million at the time.  (What would that be in today's dollars?)  How many billions have gone into maintenance since then?

In 2000, between 20,000 and 28,000 vehicles traveled the Turner Turnpike each day.  It's currently an 1 1/2 hour drive.  What would be the value of time saved to millions of people each year, if a high speed train could connect Tulsa to OKC with a 30 minute ride?

Every semi-truck causes as much damage to the road as 300 cars.  How much could be saved, if more trains could carry not just passengers but freight as well?

30 min to OKC from Tulsa would be a really high speed train. It's approximately 100 miles. That would be an average of 200 MPH.

The recent extention to the Gilcrease cost $55 Million for about 3 mi.  100 mi at that rate would be $1.8 Billion.  

[Chicken Little]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

Ok, just got back from the meeting and going to throw out some thoughts and notes.

First off there doesnt seem to be any concrete plan or political consensus to do any rail from OKC to Tulsa or from Tulsa to anywhere. Even the OKC to Newton and Kansas thing seems to be just an idea with little likelihood to happen unless support somehow grows for it. There are however a good number of people, and a few politicians, who think that rail could be of some benefit to the Tulsa area. So part of what the meeting was about was looking at the various options, get conversations going, and figuring out ways to drum up more political will and support to get some sort of passenger rail going. If thats what we agree we want, that it is a worthwhile thing to spend our money on.


Here are a few tidbits and various options to consider weighing...

1.  Tulsa to KC, tricky to do because of the politics in KC. KC doesnt want to spend the money on it and would rather spend money to connect to cities like Wichita. Basically, unlikely to happen.

2.  Tulsa to St Louis. More doable, more political will to do it in MO, and would be relatively inexpensive for Oklahoma to do, costing about 12 mill from Tulsa to the border. Negative, would be an 8-10 hr trip, positive,,, is inexpensive and would connect Tulsa to the rest of the Amtrak network. Also, to consider, not as likely to get federal matching funds as an OKC to Tulsa line.

3a.  Tulsa to OKC. About 2.5 hours and the feeling seems to be that when Amtrak comes out soon with their new study for the corridor, the price could be 200-250 millionish. But... if Obama does the "infrastructure as investment/economic stimulus" thing, the feds. could pay a good chunk of that. But...Inhofe et al, likely to shoot down any federal spending, even if the only place they can stop it for sure is in our state.

3b.  Tulsa to OKC. About 50 minutes. 1 billion dollars for new high speed rail. Can possibly be done since Tulsa to OKC is already designated as a high speed corridor option. Fed gov could pay up to 80%. But... how likely would Inhofe go for that one? lol NOT! Even IF we could get the state legislators on board.

4. Passenger rail, and doesnt have to be Amtrak, from Tulsa to wherever, doesnt have to be solely for that purpose, for we can piggyback some Tulsa commuter line infrastructure on top of that. Or another way of seeing it is that we could start commuter rail here in Tulsa and have Amtrak piggyback on top of that. I believe someone said that if you add BA and make it a BA-Tulsa-OKC line, you increase ridership by 25%.  

Basically whatever we choose to do, those options or something completely different. We are going to have to put some effort into lobbying in OKC, write letters, organize, etc. and push for it to happen. Do we want to do that? Is it worth it? How do we "show its worth it", whatever "it" is? What project would we want to push for? Which idea is best? Which is most likely to be politically doable?

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful report, artist.

Setting aside the rail discussion for a moment, I think you succinctly describe the problems Tulsa has in getting attention and also how to overcome them.

The main problem is that we NEVER ask.  Hey, Transport_OK, is this group worthy of participation?  http://ontracok.org/index.htm
?

They're active and seem to understand grassroots machinery (action alerts, legislator as member, etc.) What are they trying to accomplish and are they supportive of AmTrak from Tulsa to St. Louis?  There may be no need to reinvent the wheel.

It looks like they are single issue, but maybe not.

[Chicken Little]

Anybody seen this study?MODOT talking about Amtrak STL/Springfield

On STL/SPG Here we go...kinda not too encouraging:

quote: The report requested by MoDOT found strategic merit to the proposed route,
including serving the state's third largest metropolitan area, tourism potential, and
connections to Amtrak's national rail service. However, it would also require an initial
significant capital investment and ongoing state operating support. The lack of a
competitive trip time versus that of automobiles and a lower than expected ridership
projection were also cited as concerns.

Complete Study

[Chicken Little]

Okay, I'm confused.  Why does Amtrak from OKC to Tulsa cost $200+ million while the proposed Amtrak route from Springfield to St. Louis has an initial cost of Jack Squat?

They are both on BNSF; both have about 12 trains a day, which is relatively low; and the SPG/STL route is actually 150 miles longer than OKC/TUL and much less straight.

I thought excessive freight volume might have something to do with it, but according to the study, the STL/MCI route runs on a UP track with 60 coal trains a day.  So, that can't be an excuse, at least, not an acceptable one.

Can someone explain this to us?  Why is it so expensive to get TUL/OKC?

[Hometown]

It's not clear from posts in this thread how the meeting turned out or what the follow up plan is.  I hope this is successful and I would like to help.

Nothing is doing more to doom Tulsa to "no count" status that the fact we are falling further and further behind in basic infrastructure issues like better connections to money center cities.

A couple of weeks ago I had to get down to Dallas in a hurry and I ended up spending a lot of time sitting at traffic lights in Glenpool and Ada and slowing down for numerous other speed zones.  It was extremely irritating to me that we don't have uninterrupted interstate freeway from Tulsa to Dallas.  That extra 40 minutes or so of travel is the kind of difference that costs money and makes a business decide to locate in OKC instead of Tulsa.

I don't understand why Tulsa isn't doing everything possible to foster these basic infrastructure upgrades.  But in the absence of that it is important for citizens to recognize our future as a viable city depends on infrastructure improvements and demand that our leaders get something done.

[TheArtist]

quote:Originally posted by Chicken Little

Okay, I'm confused.  Why does Amtrak from OKC to Tulsa cost $200+ million while the proposed Amtrak route from Springfield to St. Louis has an initial cost of Jack Squat?

They are both on BNSF; both have about 12 trains a day, which is relatively low; and the SPG/STL route is actually 150 miles longer than OKC/TUL and much less straight.

I thought excessive freight volume might have something to do with it, but according to the study, the STL/MCI route runs on a UP track with 60 coal trains a day.  So, that can't be an excuse, at least, not an acceptable one.

Can someone explain this to us?  Why is it so expensive to get TUL/OKC?

I think part of the difference is that the Tulsa to St Louis route isnt being upgraded as much, if at all. The consequence of that is it would take a lot longer to ride the rail to St Louis than it would to drive. In other words, yes indeed we would be connected to Amtrak,,, But who would ride it? The current bus would be quicker and cheaper. Plus the 12mill I gave was only the cost for doing Tulsa to the border, not from the border to St Louis, and again, not doing any real upgrades. I also have a feeling that the 8-10hour time given would have included that the St Louis side of things have the more expensive improvements which is not likely to happen as has been shown, so it would actually take even longer to get from Tulsa to St Louis.

From what I understand, the Tulsa OKC route needs lots of improvements in order to get it to the 2.5 hour time scale. We could possibly get Amtrak from OKC to Tulsa and it not cost as much. But who is going to take the train to OKC if it takes 5 hours or more to get there?

For that matter, how many are going to want to
take 2.5 hours to get to OKC when a bus trip would be quicker? You could probably buy some snazzy buses and pay for 5 or so dedicated round trips a day between OKC and Tulsa, for less than the cost of the yearly maintenance of the Amtrak line.  
 

Basically you may be comparing apples to oranges. One route may include more improvements, the other not, in their estimates. The cost is related to speed. You could get to either city for "Jack Squat" if your willing to take forever doing it. The faster you want to go, the more improvements it takes, and thus more cost.

[Matthew.Dowty]

There have been several posts about the possibility of Tulsa-Kansas City and we discussed it briefly at the meeting.

This one is down the road a bit unless Oklahoma pays all/most of the bill or the route is part of a new national system route (say MSP-KCY-TUL-DFE-HOU) that is fully or mostly federally funded.

That is because Kansas, when they do begin funding an intercity passenger rail program, is going to naturally focus on linking their biggest population centers, i.e. Kansas City-Topeka-Wichita.

It will be down their priority list a ways to address service down the eastern tier of their state.

There are a couple of routing options on this one.  The tracks are in reasonably good shape for a couple of them.  The most direct route though through Bartlesville and Chanute has about 70 miles of track missing though they did have the forethought to preserve the right-way.

[Matthew.Dowty]

This post will try and address all Oklahoma train issues related to Missouri.

Missouri already has a formal relationship with Amtrak as it has funded service on 1 of their 3 routes for 29 years.  It is generally easier to get a state that already has an Amtrak program going to the table, than one that doesn't.

Unlike other states, the Missouri program has struggled because of on time performance problems on the traffic-clogged KCY-STL crosss-Missouri route.

After barely funding the operating grant for years, the Missouri General Assembly recently appropriated $5 nillion, which was later matched with $3 million in federal to address capacity issues on that line.

Springfield is the state's third largest city and the Branson entertainment resort area is one of the biggest draws in the nation.  Springfield does not have low fare air service and somee leaders are concerned that Branson will suffer if the energy crisis re-asserts itself.  So interest in rail passenger service continues.  

The Saint Louis-Tulsa route (which really would be an extension of the Chicago-Saint Louis Lioncln Service soon-to-be 120 mph high speed corridor) has excellent demographics, the track is in good condition but the alignment, partiularly in Missouri, has lots of curves which will probably result in a TUL-STL travel time of 8-10 hours with improvements.

The 2006-2007 Saint Louis-Springfield study:

In 2006 Missouri asked Amtrak to evaluate AGAIN, a low-cost start-up of service from Saint Louis to Springfield.  Planners were to assume only capital expenditures absolutely essential to starting service would be made.  Therefore the study did not identify grade crossing equipment or signal improvements necessary to get the 6.5 hour freight travel time down.

IMO the only thing useful from that study is the STL-Springfield operating grant requirement estimate of $3.4 million/year.  This won't change a great deal even if the train is faster.   For comparison the "Heartland Flyer" operating grant is $4.3 and the two other "Missouri Service" trains average $3.5/each. My guess is extending the train to Tulsa (423 miles) would result in an operating grant requirement for the full route of $5.5 million split by some formula between the two states.

[Matthew.Dowty]

This reply will address federal funding.

The situation with federal funds has changed dramatically in just the last few weeks impacted by:

1. THe creation of a  new federal rail law
2. The election
3. Economic changes

HR 2095 was signed into law by President Bush on October 16th.  Among many other things, this bill authorizes up to 80% federal funding of capital expenses that meet certain criteria in the new law.  Capital expenses are things like track, signal, stations, and rolling stock.  The secretary of transportation selects the winning proposals and those with a higher state percentage have a greater chance of being awarded.

There are several categories but the main two are:

1. Capital assistance for intercity passenger rail service
2. High Speed rail corridor program funds

The latter is intended for projects that will allow trains to reach at least 110 m.p.h. and are designated.  

The election matters because both senators Biden and Obama have strong pro-rail voting records, included pro-rail messages in their campaign platforms, and of course Joe Biden commutes on Amtrak every weekday.  The real test comes with who they pick for transportation secretary and what their first federal budget looks like.  Will they recommend actually appropriating the authorized funds discussed above?

The economy matters for at least two reasons.  

Tax revenues are no doubt declining.  Where will the money come from?  California voters just approved nearly $10 billion in general obligation bonds for high speed rail, but I doubt they could sell those right now.  

On the other hand, there is talk of a new New Deal where the federal government would launch a program of public works spending to create jobs for the unemployed and give manufacturers orders for something to build.  Rail projects are frequently menmtioned as a good use of such a program.