KS: OPINION: Trump train could derail Amtrak expansion plan for Wichita, Kansas City

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Next week, the Kansas Department of Transportation will be hosting an online update on the effort to close the missing link in Amtrak service through the Sunflower State.

KDOT's Passenger Rail Service Development Plan would finally bring rail service back to Wichita, by linking Amtrak's Heartland Flyer to the Southwest Chief, via our city and several other communities in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma.

It's a big deal.

Currently, the Heartland Flyer route ends at Oklahoma City. You can get from Newton to OKC and vice versa via Amtrak, but it requires a long ride on a chartered bus.

Extending the rail route 180-some miles north to Newton would bring uninterrupted service linking Wichita and Kansas City to Amtrak's rail hub in Fort Worth.

That would open Kansas passenger rail service to large stretches of Oklahoma and Texas. In addition to the state's two major metro areas, also benefiting would be Topeka, Lawrence, Hutchinson and Garden City, where the Southwest Chief currently stops on its Chicago-to- Los Angeles route.

It seems like a no-brainer to fix this. But nothing is ever that simple where politics is involved.

In the press release announcing next weeks' Zoom meeting, which is open to the public and starts at 1 p.m. on Dec. 11, KDOT wrote this:

"The project builds upon efforts in 2011 when KDOT completed a rail feasibility study and established a Passenger Rail Service Development Plan (SDP), which outlined Amtrak Heartland Flyer rail service expansion into south central Kansas. Due to a growing federal interest in passenger rail services and potential funding sources, the project is now being re-evaluated."

Sadly, the phrase "whistling past the graveyard" comes to mind.

The election of Donald Trump to another term as president and majority Republican control of the House and Senate will more than likely mean Kansas will be left waiting at the station for a train that will never arrive.

In July, Republicans in the House (where spending bills originate) proposed a budget including deep cuts for Amtrak operations nationwide and zero dollars for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Grant Program, a Transportation Department fund for improving and expanding passenger service.

The Senate pushed back on partnership defunding, proposing an allocation of $100 million, an increase of $25 million over 2024. Congress ultimately decided to pass a temporary spending resolution that kept the government running, but put off contentious decisions — including the future of Amtrak — until after the November election.

This week, I spoke to Deborah Fischer Stout, president of the Northern Flyer Alliance — an organization of 49 cities, six counties and 19 chambers of commerce advocating for closing Amtrak's Oklahoma City-Newton gap.

Here's her frank assessment after the changes in Washington: "Historically, Congress has not voted for passenger rail (expansion) funding under Donald Trump. Maybe we'll be surprised. I hope we'll be surprised."

There's a big obstruction at the state level as well. His name is Dan Hawkins. He's a Wichita Republican and speaker of the Kansas House.

Stout said KDOT is prepared to pay the cost for planning and track upgrades that would be necessary to bring the OKC-Newton rail link into service. But the agency doesn't have operational funding.

In 2010, the Kansas Legislature created a revolving fund for passenger rail service, but never put any money in it.

In this year's session, a bill to put as much as $5 million a year into the fund for 10 years sailed through the state Senate on a bipartisan vote of 34-6.

But when it got to the House, Hawkins derailed the bill by pulling it out of the Transportation Committee and sending it to Judiciary.

The Judiciary Committee stripped rail funding out and the original bill became an empty shell for unrelated legislation extending exceptions to the Kansas Open Records Act involving hemp producers and scrap metal dealers.

Beyond Hawkins, a companion problem is that Wichita has been Wishy-Washita in advocating for restoration of rail service.

Only one local official, Sedgwick County Commissioner Pete Meitzner, has really been active in the campaign. Letters of support are nice but inadequate, and getting action would require a full-court press from city and county elected officials, lobbyists and business leaders. If we could get our act together and allocate some operating money to get started, Kansas would be at the top of the list for whatever funding Amtrak does receive, Stout said.

Expanding Amtrak service to the south would be a boon to Wichita, Kansas City and Kansas in general, and this could be our last chance.

But realistically, there's a steep grade up ahead and right now we're looking a lot like The Little Engine That Can't.

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