U.S. Senator Jerry Moran visited the Amtrak station in Garden City Friday. Moran visited with city officials from Garden City and Dodge City to brief on the latest with his amendment to maintain Amtrak train services along the established, long-distance passenger rail route of the Southwest Chief.
“It’s important to Kansans and particularly in southwest Kansas and it has become a cause for cities in our state Newton, Hutchinson, Dodge City, Garden City, who have put a lot of effort and their own taxpayer dollars into a project that’s beginning to work and we didn’t want the rug pulled out from under that effort. For people with disabilities this is a method that they can get places,” said Moran.
The amendment came about when Amtrak announced it was ending rail service from Dodge City to Albuquerque and replacing it with buses.
“In my mind that meant the end of the Southwest Chief, it was just like nonchalant it wasn’t like we’ll work with you to solve it was just like this is where we’re headed, so the policy we still have to face is we do not have a friendly Amtrak management passenger rail service”, said Moran, “you can have an argument about what the role of federal government is in providing passenger rail service across the country, you can have the debate as to whether or not the American taxpayers should be subsidizing a rail that doesn’t pay for itself, but that decision has been made and it’s Amtrak’s responsibility to provide that service.”
(Read more: Western Kansas News)