The train keeps rolling forward. Laura Kelly announced that the Heartland Flyer project, which would connect Amtrak service from Oklahoma City to Newton, has been awarded a $500,000 federal grant aimed at developing passenger rail lines. The grant pays for the development of a service plan for the connection of the Southwest Chief and Heartland Flyer lines.
More importantly, however, it represents an important selection hurdle cleared in a larger competitive grant process for federal infrastructure funds to develop passenger rail service lines. “It is a very big deal,” State Senator Carolyn McGinn said. McGinn has long advocated for passenger rail and helped craft state transportation plans supporting the funding of passenger rail. “I’ve been working on this for over 12 years,” she said. “I was very delighted. What it says is we’re going to have forward movement. Now we’re being looked at even closer.” The funding pays for the development of a service plan for the route, something that Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas have already begun work on. Following service and engineering plans, participating states in this project—Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas—would provide a 20 percent match to federal funds to pay for upgrades to extend the route. The funding for a possible extension was made possible by a 2021 $1 trillion infrastructure upgrade package. “I don’t think it’s a done deal,” Newton City Commissioner Rod Kreie said of the possibility of the Heartland Flier project, “But certainly when they’re going to give us money to do the studies we need to do, we know we were pretty high on the list, because we were part of the first groups to get funded with this pre-project money to do the studies that they’re wanting done.” He said that the project would allow residents to ride the train through various southern routes in the United States.
Source: Harvey County Now
