Eastern Flyer may start as early as summer

Comments TRN
1

Join the discussion on the following article:

Eastern Flyer may start as early as summer

2

Tulsa World Herald?? Maybe the World, but not so sure about the “Herald” part…
Oh yeah, exciting about the okc trip. Sounds like a good excuse to go to Cattlemens.

3

I question why the train is stopping in Midwest city as Watco, which owns the rail road “Stillwater Central”, continues thru Midwest City to Oklahoma City and Lawton, OK. It would make more sense to stop in Bricktown or a similar location.

4

I hope this works out for them. Maybe Iowa Pacific could save the states some money by operating the Heartland Flyer too. I am sure they are watching Indiana.

5

One thought this morning: this is another case where critics will insist that the service is being subsidized, when actually it’s largely been made to look that way but isn’t at all.

I say this because, as I understand it, while the rest of the costs will be covered by fares, the state government is paying track access fees (ie the Flyer’s share of the track maintenance costs.) So the Flyer gets to ride for free on the State’s dime!! (IMPEACH!)

Except… do cars and buses pay “road access fees”? No. Well, technically they pay tag fees once a year. But railroads also pay property taxes on each coach they run.

OK, but cars and buses pay fuel taxes. Railroads don’t, so… but again, two problems with this:

  • First, those fuel taxes are only spent on some roads, they don’t cover the full costs of the roads they are spent on, and they only cover the direct costs associated with them (ie paying a contractor to relay the tarmac, or whatever.)
  • Second, railroads also have taxes that aren’t paid for by road users, the most obvious being railroad property taxes on the rails and rights-of-way themselves.

In practice, the State almost certainly will recover every penny it supposedly spends on “track access fees” in property taxes from the railroad, and then some.

It’ll be profitable. Anti-train people will insist, long after its proven itself, that passenger trains never make money.

6

(Hmmm, now I’ve searched for it, I can’t find the story I thought told me the state was paying track access costs, and found one article that contradicts it, so I guess that undermines my entire comment. Sorry.)

7

It’s unclear why it’s necessary to run shuttles from outlying cities into Tulsa and OKC There are surely logistical or other unexplained impediments causing this, otherwise the whole thing sounds a bit silly. In a perfect world I could witness boarding the Heartland Flyer in Ft. Worth for connections in Kansas City or St. Louis via OKC and Tulsa. Without shuttles yet. But it isn’t a perfect world…

8

I will be surprised (truly) if this ever happens. ODOT sold this line back to the private sector after buying it when it was going to be abandoned after the BN&SF merger. We all thought it would go back to BNSF but WATCO won.

I’ve never heard that the state was paying anything towards the service. Certainly Mr Ellis of IPac was all pleased that it wasn’t going to be subsidized when we first started hearing about the train. The original two round-trips per day is gone, too (presumably because they wouldn’t both fit in a 12-hour FRA day).

Interesting about the Tulsa end. The original sales agreement when ODOT bought the line cleverly included trackage rights over the BNSF from Salpulpa to Tulsa Union Depot. As far as anyone knows, those are intact and went to the new owners along with the passenger train easement over the rest of the line.

As for the Oklahoma City end, I don’t see the UP allowing the SLWC/IPac train onto their track to get to a station in Bricktown (an area east of the AT&SF Depot and OKC’s CBD) and I don’t see BNSF allowing the train to make a backup move from CP RIVER to the AT&SF depot either.

So, a train bridge between bus segments.

Not really sure what this train is supposed to do. At three hours (vs half that driving) it doesn’t work as a commuter train and it doesn’t connect with the existing train (which may go away because Amtrak is doubling the price for the second time) so it only sort-of exists as an intercity train.

Hey, but if they can make it work, great!