NORMAL, Ill. — Passenger rail has been absent from central Ohio cities and towns since the 1970s, but the 2023 announcement from the Federal Railroad Administration offers some hope that it could return.
The last passenger train pulled out of Columbus in October 1979. It departed a small building, locally called the “Amshack.” This was as Amtrak canceled the “National Limited” route from New York to Kansas City due to budget cuts from the Carter administration. The train wasn’t creating enough money and was dropped from the Amtrak system.
Columbus’ Union Station met the wrecking ball in 1977 even though it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Greater Columbus Convention Center now stands in its place.
Amtrak was formed in 1971 to take over the privately-ran routes from the nation’s railroad companies. Prior to the inception of Amtrak, freight rail companies like the Pennsylvania Railroad and Illinois Central were required to provide passenger service. As rail travel dipped in the post-World War II era, this created a large financial burden for these railroads. Amtrak initially inherited all the remaining passenger lines and subsequently pared them down in the following years.
Today, the only services still running through Ohio exist in the north and south and run infrequent and inconvenient schedules. These are solely nationally operated routes.
Other states, such as Illinois, have state-sponsored routes in addition to the national lines to boost rail service. Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, a metro of about 135,000, has 10 daily trains linking it to Chicago and St. Louis.
“In Illinois, litigation took place and lots of noise took place when Amtrak service started in ‘71 from places that were left off the list,” Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. “They went to their legislature and said there’s a program, let’s get into that program. Illinois and Wisconsin and Missouri since ‘79 and Michigan have all had a head start over Ohio because they’ve been in the program.”
In the early days of the program Magliari referenced, states could chip in about 15% of the total cost to add a passenger service and grow it. Illinois operates several such trains, including the “Lincoln Service,” the “Illini” and the “Saluki.”
Magliari attributes the success of these routes to their frequency. The state-sponsored trains run daily and several times per day alongside the national routes.
“Run frequent trains, run them reliably, run them on schedules that people will find attractive and we'll have business. That's what happens here, what happens in all sorts of places across the country. It can happen in Ohio too,” he said.
Mayor of Normal, Illinois, Chris Koos, was recently appointed to the Amtrak Board of Directors. He said the service they have in Normal has helped grow the two communities of Normal and Bloomington.
“With hybrid working going on, there are people who are living here their office may be in Chicago but it's so much more affordable and it's a great community anyway, so we see a lot of use,” Koos said. “We've got students traveling back and forth, we have people that are going to Chicago for the day to catch a Cubs game or going for the weekend, something like that, and we’re seeing more business use on our train system because we’ve got faster connections.”
Kati Ledbetter is a hybrid worker who lives in central Illinois. She relies on Amtrak service in Normal to get to her Chicago office when she needs to work in person.
“A lot of times we'll just do an up and back,” Ledbetter said. “It saves time. Lots of time. I'm actually going to be able to sit down and get a little work done. Log a couple of hours and then get up there and I don't have the stress.”
Bloomington-Normal is also home to Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University and major headquarters like State Farm Insurance.
“It’s been very impactful. We're the second busiest stop in the state of Illinois in terms of ridership,” Koos said. “I've found out the most important thing for people’s decision to use a train is on-time performance. They want to know if their train is getting into Chicago at 10 o’clock, they’re getting in at 10 o’clock.”
The city of Normal built its new train station next to its downtown so that is the first thing people see when they step off a train.
“You can tell any time after a holiday or a long weekend here you just get an influx of kids coming from the station and I'm like ‘hi welcome back,’” said Clementine Hess, the manager of a record store in downtown Normal.
Hess said every time a train pulls into Normal during her open hours, she sees an influx of people stopping in on their way into downtown.
“It's not even kids, it’s people who are coming from Chicago running errands or something and they have a little bit of a layover so they’re like, 'oh a record store, I'm just going to pop in,'” she said.
Amtrak service isn’t foolproof. It can be affected by the weather. The week 10TV went to Bloomington-Normal, temperatures were below zero. Several trains were canceled due to the cold.
“We're not going to put people in unsafe conditions. We're not going to put our crew, our passengers or our equipment in bad conditions,” Magliari said. “We take care of people. If a train gets canceled and people are going across the country from the east coast to the west coast, you’re our passenger. You’ve arrived in Chicago, you’re expecting to leave that afternoon, we’re housing people at Amtrak expense.”
Magliari said Amtrak will eat the cost of housing people until they can get them on another train. In the case of the canceled trains from Normal, Amtrak chartered buses to run the routes between stops.
Proposals to bring rail service back to central Ohio in the past have fallen flat. Former Governor John Kasich was staunchly opposed to passenger rail and returned the $400 million grant from the federal government. Governor Mike DeWine is open to the idea but said the FRA study needs to prove it is worth the investment.
“Look, I like trains, I hope we could have good passenger service in the state of Ohio, but it's got to make sense economically and no one is going to ride a train unless it approximates the same time as traveling by car,” DeWine told 10TV in December.
Magliari said that the study will give the state leadership a better understanding of what service will look like, the schedule and the cost. He doubts the study will be done in 2024; it would likely be finished in 2025.
A private study from All Aboard Ohio found the initial investment in passenger rail would bring a $36 to $48 million economic impact to the greater Columbus region.
The line that is currently being studied and in the planning phase by the FRA is the “3C+D” route that would connect Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton. This phase is fully funded by the FRA. Subsequent grant rounds will have to be matched by state funds to the tune of about 10% and 20%.