Passenger trains could roll next year
Friday, January 30, 2009 3:17 AM
By James Nash
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCHIt’s been so long since people could catch a train in Columbus and debark in Cleveland a couple of hours later that most Ohioans probably regard the notion as a Cold War memory, like TV dinners in metal trays.
Now it’s time to thaw out the idea, advocates say.
State leaders are determined to connect Ohio’s three largest cities by passenger rail as early as next year, an idea that Gov. Ted Strickland endorsed in his State of the State address Wednesday.
The so-called 3-C corridor was abandoned in 1971, a consequence of falling ridership and the breakdown of the national rail network. Columbus, which lost all passenger rail service in 1979, now is the second-largest city in the country without rail service. (Phoenix is first, although light rail reaches a suburb.)
“Our goal is to link Ohio’s three largest cities by passenger rail for the first time in 40 years,” Strickland said during his State of the State speech. “This will be the first step toward a rail system that links neighborhoods within a city, and cities within our state.”
There’s already movement toward the goal of having trains rolling next year:
• On Jan. 5, Amtrak launched a $45,000 study for the Ohio Rail Development Commission into potential ridership, revenue and any obstacles toward reactivating the route. Results of the study are expected by the end of the summer.
• The chairwoman of the Ohio Rail Development Commission, Jolene Molitoris, takes over as director of the Ohio Department of Transportation on Monday. Molitoris, a former federal railroad administrator, has been Ohio’s highest-profile champion of rail service.
• Rail in Ohio could get as much as $100 million from the federal economic-stimulus plan passed by the House on Wednesday. The stimulus bill currently is being debated in the Senate.
• Ohio also could qualify for rail funding under the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, which former President George W. Bush signed into law in October. The bill significantly expands Amtrak’s capital budget and provides for 80 percent federal funding for approved major projects with a 20 percent state match.
“We have an opportunity here to build up a culture throughout the state of building rail if that fits your needs,” Molitoris said yesterday. “It’s about building a menu of options for Ohioans.”
Molitoris is stepping down as chairwoman of the rail commission in order to become Ohio’s top transportation planner. Her last meeting was yesterday, during which fellow members of the commission said they plan to keep pushing for expanded passenger rail in Ohio.
Amtrak already runs trains daily across the Lake Erie corridor on routes connecting Chicago with New York and Washington. Cincinnati is served three days a week on a different route linking New York to Chicago via Washington.
Columbus no longer has a passenger rail station, but city officials are eyeing several potential sites Downtown and in the Arena District, said Stu Nicholson, spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission.
No specifics have been rolled out on potential schedules or fares.
jnash@dispatch.com
Closing my eyes and clicking my heels…
2010? Now we’re talking! Any talk on rolling stock?
“No specifics have been rolled out on potential schedules or fares.”
Wait, don’t they have at least a projection of fares and potential schedules on the Ohio Hub website?
http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Rail/Programs/passenger/Ohio%20Hub%20Plan/Appendix06.pdf
I love the journalism in this city.
Rolling stock for the 3-C would likely consist of a push-pull type of train: four cars, plus a locomotive and cab car at either end. This would eliminate the need (costly in both time and $$) for turning the train around at the end points of Cleveland and Cincinnati.
I love that the 3C and Columbus light rail proposals have become the effigy for the villagers to burn.
A very good story that ran on Cleveland’s WKYC-TV: video link
http://www.wkyc.com/video/default.aspx?maven_playerId=articleplayer&maven_referralPlaylistId=playlist&maven_referralObject=1021905152
From All Aboard Ohio
I need you to call Senator Voinovich’s office NOW! It’s not too late to
call! The U.S. Senate may pull an all-nighter….
According to the Washington Post, a group of so-called “moderates” is
proposing to reduce the amount for transit/rail in the stimulus package by
$3.4 billion!!! At the moment a vote on this proposal and/or the stimulus
package is scheduled for THIS EVENING (FRIDAY FEBRUARY 6).
Senator Voinovich, being on the Senate Environment and Infrastructure
Committee, is obviously very influential on transportation issues and needs
to know how much this would hurt. Tell his staff:
“PLEASE DO NOT CUT ANY FUNDING FOR RAIL & TRANSIT IN THE STIMULUS”
Sen. Voinovich’s D.C office contact info is:
(202) 224-3353
Thanks for your help! Have a nice quiet weekend.
Ken Prendergast
All Aboard Ohio
Just for fun, google ‘regionova’ and take a couple of rides on you tube through a region nearly identical to Ohio in area and population. Don’t miss the idiot.
[...] into action however, as state policy makers become determined to implement the project by 2010. Xing Columbus highlights the the actions underway and what the route may look like as the project moves [...]
Why can’t the corridor run through Akron to Cleveland? Why aren’t Akron politicians lobbying for that.
Because the existing freight tracks between Columbus and Cleveland don’t go through Akron.
The 3C also addresses some of the connection issues with the thought of utilizing buses.
EDITORIAL
Ohio: hub of it all?
Restoring passenger-train service on 3-C corridor seen as one step in a bigger plan
Columbus Dispatch
Monday, February 16, 2009 2:57 AM
The economics and politics of transportation form a Gordian knot. Not only to do cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships compete with each other, but each mode of transport receives some degree of state and federal subsidies, obscuring and altering the effect of market forces that normally would signal appropriate transportation investment.
But to the extent that market forces can be foreseen, railroads might be looking at their best chance at resurgence in decades.
Global politics, environmental needs, gasoline prices and increasing population might force Ohio and the nation to reduce dependence on oil and, thus, reliance on trucks, cars and highways to move freight and passengers.
Trains are more efficient than trucks and cars. According to officials of CSX Corp., a freight-rail company, trains can carry 1 ton of goods 423 miles on a gallon of fuel, and one train can replace more than 280 trucks.
Two projects, CSX’s National Gateway and Norfolk Southern Corp.’s Heartland Corridor, are putting Ohio at the center of upgraded rail systems that include intermodal terminals in Columbus, where shipments can be transferred between and among trucks, trains and planes.
The revival of freight trains is improving transportation of goods across the nation. A similar resurgence in passenger trains appears likely to do the same for moving people, and Gov. Ted Strickland wants to ensure that, as with freight, Ohio and Columbus are in the center of the action.
That’s why, in his State of the State address on Jan. 28, he included restoration of passenger-train service linking Columbus with Cleveland and Cincinnati as a priority. As Stu Nicholson, public information officer of the Ohio Rail Development Commission, explained it, a conventional train on the 3-C corridor “sets the table” for the bigger, better and faster system envisioned in the Ohio Hub plan, a regional network of freight and passenger trains.
The Ohio Hub plan, based on a 2004 study that was updated in 2007, calls for the eventual use of passenger trains that can travel 110 mph and would link key Ohio cities to the neighboring Midwest Regional Rail System, with its Chicago hub, and rail lines to Toronto and into Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania.
The Ohio Hub would become part of a network serving 140 million people in the Midwest, Northeast and Canada. According to the study, by 2025, when the system might be fully developed, Ohio Hub trains would be able to compete in travel time and cost for business travelers who currently rely on airlines and cars between major cities in Ohio and surrounding states.
The study also projects that, by that time, operating revenues would exceed operating costs. That scenario might be too rosy, considering that passenger trains all over the world require some help from taxpayers.
In September, the Federal Railroad Administration announced a $62,500 grant to Ohio’s rail commission for planning of the 3-C route and stations for the short-term new conventional service and the long-term Ohio Hub high-speed line.
Nicholson said Amtrak sees the 3-C route, which could serve nearly 60 percent of Ohio’s people, as one of the most promising “unserved corridors” in the nation. Amtrak is under contract with the state to complete a study of 3-C service, including projections of ridership and operating costs for twice-daily round trips from each city.
The analysis is expected to be complete by the end of the summer. Some officials believe passenger trains could be on the 3-C tracks by next year.
Sitting at the crossroads of the nation, Ohio is poised to play a key role in a regional rail network. The populous 3-C corridor, where trains have not run since 1971, could be an important component.
http://dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2009/02/16/RAILed.ART_ART_02-16-09_A8_6NCSVC3.html?sid=101
[...] Columbus. Nevertheless, it’s too bad to see the project getting pushed back a year from the original hope of 2010. Better late than never [...]