I am not sure if you or your readers have heard, but Iowa’s passenger train services are about to be cut in half.
Unless the U.S. Senate can pass the needed funding, Amtrak will cut both the Southwest Chief and the California Zephyr to 3-times-a-week service. Growing up in Donnellson and using both trains regularly – makes this a big issue for me and hopefully others in the area who may not know this is even happening.
Amtrak has tried this in the past, and with horrible results. In 1995, Amtrak made similar cuts to their western services and, when Amtrak found service cuts cost the company more money than continuing daily operations, two long distance trains had to be discontinued to return the rest of the national network to daily service. Will the California Zephyr or Southwest Chief be discontinued in this round of service cuts?
What’s even more upsetting is how these service cuts will affect Southern Iowa and all rural America. Amtrak’s long-distance trains bring $4.7 billion in economic benefits throughout the towns served by these daily trains, according to a study done by Rail Passengers Alliance. Even if these service cuts last for 9 months, rural America will see $2.3 Billion of the above economic benefits vanish. This compacting the economic hardship rural America is already seeing because of the pandemic.
These cuts do not need to happen. The U.S. Senate has a Transportation-Housing and Urban Development budget that would provide Amtrak the money to continue daily service and to stop furloughing 3,000 rural Americans. THUD legislation would stop these unnecessary cuts by providing $2.05 billion for Amtrak –a drop in the bucket when compared to the Federal Highway Admin’s $50 billion budget for 2021.
We must preserve our Amtrak service so we can emerge stronger from this pandemic. We need to save rural jobs from being cut. We need the Senate to pass the THUD budget to do this. We cannot afford to lose the California Zephyr or Southwest Chief to restore daily service to the rest of the network. We need and deserve more service— not less — from America’s least funded form of transit.
Please consider raising your voice to save our trains by calling your mayor, senators, and representatives.