The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission’s 2018 annual meeting convened in Milwaukee on October 3-5 to review developments since the 2017 annual meeting and lay the groundwork for what promises to be a busy 2019.

There is more to Amtrak than the Northeast Corridor, and good things are happening in the Midwest thanks to sustained federal investment in regional passenger rail. That was the message delivered last month when MIPRC commissioners and partners visited Washington, D.C., to meet with Midwestern members of Congress and federal officials.

Ridership on both state-supported and long-distance routes in the Midwest grew on almost every route in the 10 years from Fiscal Year 2007 to FY 2017.

The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission last month endorsed the Missouri Department of Transportation’s application for a $73.1 million federal INFRA (Infrastructure For Rebuilding America) grant to help replace the 127-year-old Merchants Bridge spanning the Mississippi River between Venice, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri.

Siemens will build 137 new, single-level passenger cars for California and some of the Midwest’s state-supported routes, replacing a bi-level design that failed federally-mandated crash tests, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) announced on November 8.

On Nov. 2, 2017, the Illinois Department of Transportation – along with the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways, and the region’s freight railroads – applied on behalf of CREATE for a $160 million Infrastructure For Rebuilding America (INFRA) discretionary grant to help unplug one of the nation’s most frustrating rail bottlenecks: the 75th Street Corridor on Chicago’s south side.

The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission’s annual meeting came to Wichita, Kansas, for 2017; perhaps an odd choice if you consider only that the city – 50th largest in the country, 10th largest in the Midwest, whose population exceeds Cleveland, Ohio – doesn’t currently have passenger rail service. But MIPRC’s presence there on Oct. 9-11, and its emphasis on the importance of the regional passenger rail network and regional connectivity, may help change that.

UPDATE (Sept. 15, 2017): The second paragraph of this post has been updated to reflect more accurate information about the Chargers' rollout.

Your eyes are not deceiving you, those are the long-anticipated Siemens Charger locomotives zipping along Amtrak’s Midwest state-supported routes.

MIPRC commissioners met with 49 Midwestern Members of Congress and/or their staff during individual office visits in Washington, D.C. on May 23 to stress the importance of maintaining a strong federal/state partnership for passenger rail development. Commissioners also illuminated the growing demand for regional passenger rail in the Midwest, along with recent developments in track and equipment upgrades.

(UPDATE, April 24, 2017): The Missouri Department of Transportation will give the Charger a test run along the state-supported Missouri River Runner route between St. Louis and Kansas City on April 25-26. The new locomotives are expected to go into revenue service on the route later this year.

When the Trump Administration released its budget outline last month, it proposed eliminating funding for all of Amtrak’s long-distance trains for Fiscal Year 2018, and cutting $499 million for the popular TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant program immediately as part of the budget deal being negotiated now for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

The Federal Railroad Administration has formally launched an 18-month Midwest Regional Rail Planning Study of how to develop a 40-year framework for high-performance, intercity passenger rail service in our region.

A new survey of college and university students in Winona, Minnesota, finds that four in 10 respondents say they have taken Amtrak, more than half say they would ride more frequently if more frequent service was available, and almost two-thirds say they consider passenger rail service important to the nation’s transportation future.

One of the nation’s most frustrating rail bottlenecks lies on Chicago’s south side: the 75th Street Corridor, encompassing six of the nation’s seven Class I freight railroads, two of Chicago’s Metra commuter rail lines, and Amtrak’s intercity service.

Ridership on seven of nine state-supported Amtrak routes in the Midwest grew by leaps and bounds over the last 10 fiscal years, but has dropped during the last five — a situation that state officials attribute at least in part to construction projects that aim to increase ridership and improve travel times over the long term.

While total ridership on the region’s routes grew 42 percent from fiscal years 2006 to 2016 (up to a total of 2,705,848 passengers), it dropped 8 percent from FY 2011 to FY 2016. Corridor improvement projects got underway after 2011, when federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 began flowing to state departments of transportation.

However, ridership figures for October 2016, released just before Thanksgiving, show that shorter-term regional trend may be starting to reverse – the Midwest’s state-supported routes carried 224,043 passengers in October, an increase of more than three percent (7,115 passengers) over October 2015.

Charles Wilson “Wick” Moormon will take over as president and CEO of Amtrak on Sept. 1, replacing Joseph Boardman, who has held the post since November 2008, Amtrak announced today. 

MIPRC Chair Tim Hoeffner was in Pueblo, Colorado, last week to witness the testing of the new Siemens Charger locomotive, which is being built for the Midwestern states, California and Washington, as well as other states and localities.

Good news! Last week, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) withdrew a proposal that MIPRC had filed opposition to during the docket’s public comments period, and issued another ruling that MIPRC favors.

MIPRC sent a letter to all U.S. Senators representing Midwestern states, asking them to strongly support and protect passenger rail-related appropriations when the FY 2017 transportation appropriations bill (S. 2844) is considered on the Senate floor.

MIPRC has submitted outside witness testimony (OWT) to the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) for FY 2017, asking for adequate funding to continue strengthening and expanding passenger rail service in our region.