An improvement in mid-Missouri has greatly improved Amtrak service across the state. Now, the Department of Transportation wants to go farther and faster with passenger rail service.

A new 9,000-foot rail siding at California allows Union Pacific freight trains to get out of the way of Amtrak traveling between Kansas City and Jefferson City.

“This is the first step toward hopefully getting faster trains,” Brian Weiler, Missouri Department of Transportation Multimodal Operations Director, tells the Missourinet.

Weiler says the $8 million project allows transportation officials to dream.

“But in the past, the bottlenecks were still there and the on-time performance was so bad the idea of increasing the speed wasn’t realistic,” according to Weiler.

Vast improvement of Amtrak service in Missouri, once considerable laughable, could now be within reach. MoDOT has its eye on $201.3 million in track improvements and other improvements between Kansas City and St. Louis. The Missouri Transportation Commission has applied for federal economic recovery funds. The Federal Railroad Administration announced earlier this year that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has made billions available through High-Speed/intercity Passenger Rail grants. Weiler says that so far, 40 states have requested $103 billion, nearly 12 times the amount available.

Weiler says the spur at California cleared one bottleneck.

“So, having this in place, we will see direct benefits to on-time performance,” says Weiler, “and it will also improve the flow of freight traffic. And freight traffic is good. That means our economy is moving.”

Weiler acknowledges that some of the improvement in Amtrak service, particularly its on-time performance can be attributed to a decrease in freight traffic due the economic downturn. Freight will pick-up as the economy does, making it more difficult to keep up the current impressive on-time performances.

MoDOT hopes it succeeds in securing the federal funds to eliminate bottlenecks and allow passenger trains to move faster. In its application for federal money, the state has listed 11 projects it asserts will improve the flow of passenger trains between Kansas City and St. Louis and allow those trains to move faster. The costliest project totals $56.6 million. It would complete double track and signal upgrades between Lee’s Summit and Pleasant Hill, which would allow Amtrak trains to run from 79 to 90 miles per hour. The state is also asking for $50 million to buy two new sets of locomotives and passenger equipment for use on the St. Louis to Kansas City route, an application made along with Wisconsin. A $33.8 million project would eliminate one of the biggest bottlenecks on the route, the single track bridge that spans the Osage River east of Jefferson City, by constructing a second bridge and adding crossovers.

Brent Martin reports [Dowload/listen Mp3 60 seconds]

It’s only 9,000 feet long, but it is making a huge difference for passenger rail service between Kansas City and St. Louis.

State Sen. John Griesheimer (R-Washington) tied an event in mid-Missouri to the holiday season.

“This is a Christmas present to the state of Missouri; it’s an early Christmas present to the state of Missouri and all Amtrak riders,” Griesheimer told those gathered in the California City Hall for the dedication ceremony of the rail siding completed just prior to Thanksgiving.

Griesheimer referred to the 9,000 foot spur laid down just West of California, built under a cooperative agreement between the state, Union Pacific and Amtrak at a cost of $8.1 million. That 9,000 feet of side rail allows freight trains to get over and let Amtrak passenger trains pass through. The difference it makes is astounding. Amtrak on-time performance between Kansas City and St. Louis, once lagging between 55-and-79%, hit 100% during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

State Transportation Director Pete Rahn says the project would not have been completed without a $5 million appropriation from the legislature.

“And that was a first time in which the General Assembly had supported a proposal to take public monies and invest into a private rail system,” Rahn said.

The state funding allowed Missouri to secure $3.3 million from the federal government to complete financing of the project.

Poor on-time performance has long been a criticism of Amtrak. It has hurt its ability to sell passenger service to Missourians and has been a point of harsh criticism in the state legislature. MoDOT has applied for federal economic stimulus funding to make other such improvements to the central Missouri railway. Officials say additional rail sidings at Knob Noster and Strasburg would improve on-time service.

Brent Martin reports.

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State Transportation Director Pete Rahn warns that highway construction will come to an end and some road maintenance work will go unmet if Missourians don’t approve higher taxes for transportation. He just won’t endorse any particular tax. [Read more…]

A dramatic drop-off in transportation funding is looming, but as state lawmakers consider their options they are hesitant to mention one word.

The word is “tax”. It’s a word that state lawmakers have been loathe to utter before the recession, let alone now.

State Transportation Director Pete Rahn has warned lawmakers that transportation funding will soon drop from $1.5 billion dollars to $421 million, which would end the ramped up construction the past few years which has vastly improved Missouri roads and bridges.

“What we are doing, we believe doing our job well prepares the ground well for something in the future,” Rahn has told members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Transportation.

Perhaps, a tax increase?

Sen. Wes Shoemyer (D-Clarence) tries to coax Rahn into campaigning for a tax increase.

“We’re just trying to see if you will do our jobs for us,” Shoemyer jokes when responding to Rahn. “You know, we don’t want to have to go out and do that. It’s not very popular.”

Rep. Tom McDonald (D-Independence) picks up the theme, only he does mention the word and suggests our gas tax isn’t high enough.

“I know that’s an unpopular topic with almost everybody in the state, but as technology comes along, higher mileage (vehicles) or even to the point where gasoline is not going to be a necessity, it seems to me that the (fuel) tax should be at least comparable to surrounding states,” McDonald tells Rahn.

Missouri has one of the lowest fuel taxes in the country. Of Missouri’s neighboring states, only Oklahoma has as low a fuel tax as Missouri, at 17 cents a gallon. All of the other surrounding states have higher gas taxes, some considerably higher. Missouri has been using money leveraged from Amendment Three approved by voters in November of 2004 and, lately, money from the federal economic stimulus act approved by Congress to finance road and bridge construction. The money generated from bonds issued from Amendment Three has nearly been spent. Federal stimulus money will soon end and even traditional federal highway funding is being reduced.

No one on the Joint Transportation Committee, though, seems ready to suggest a tax increase to keep road construction going, leaving the question Rahn poses in his annual report, “Where do we go from here?”, unanswered.

Brent Martin reports.

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Missouri’s transportation director delivers an upbeat report to state lawmakers, tempered by a question.

State Transportation Director Pete Rahn tells the Joint Legislative Committee on Transportation Missouri’s highway system has been upgraded, state highway deaths have fallen sharply and public opinion of MoDOT has improved.

“I’m very pleased to say that there is a lot of progress for us to be talking about,” Rahn tells lawmakers gathered at the Capitol for his annual transportation report. “We have come a long way. But the question is where are we going to go from here?”

MoDOT has awarded a total of $1.5 billion in construction projects this fiscal year, actually generating $1.79 billion in economic activity. Missouri has leveraged bonds issued after voters approved Amendment Three in November of 2004 and has used federal economic stimulus money to pay for road and bridge repair.

The improvements have been noticed. Truckers once rated Missouri roads near the bottom among the states. Now, in an industry publication, they rank Missouri’s highway system near the top. Public opinion of MoDOT itself has risen sharply as construction has filled potholes, replaced aging bridges and built new highways.

The funding sources, though, are running dry. Federal stimulus money will soon be exhausted. The state has done all it can with the Amendment Three funds, transportation dollars once diverted from highway construction, now re-directed back to MoDOT. Nothing has been approved to replace them, dropping highway revenue to $421 million. Rahn says that’s not enough money to maintain the system now built.

Rahn likes what he sees now, but not was lies ahead.

“Our focus, as we move forward, will be to look at the number one issue, however, before transportation in this state of Missouri and that is funding for the continued improvement of our system,” Rahn says.

He doesn’t make any suggestions to lawmakers, insisting his job is to give lawmakers information from which to make decisions.

The stakes go well beyond just roads and bridges. Currently, road construction generates as many as 22,340 jobs and that doesn’t include the estimate 9,739 jobs created from the 123 projects awarded with $357 million in federal economic stimulus funds. Rahn projects that once Missouri loses both streams of funding, the highway construction jobs created in Missouri will plummet to 6,844 a year.

Download/listen Brent Martin reports (1:20 MP3)