PIERRE, S.D. — South Dakota’s transportation secretary has injected a note of reality into discussion of possible Amtrak service in the state.
That discussion gained life in February with the inclusion of two routes serving South Dakota among the 15 in a Federal Railroad Administration report on its ongoing Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study [see “FRA releases long-distance study interim report …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 19, 2024]. A Denver-Minneapolis/St. Paul route would cover most of the middle of the state, passing through Rapid City, Pierre, and Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls would also see service via a Phoenix-Twin Cities route via Kansas City and Omaha.
But the South Dakota Searchlight reports that transportation secretary Joel Jundt last week told an April 17 meeting of the state’s Railroad Authority Board that the project would be “over a billion dollars and more than that,” and that the state’s population — about 919,000 in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, ranking it 46th — is likely to keep it from “risking to the top from a high priority standpoint.”
Conceptionally, passenger service “would be a great thing,” Jundt said. “But I think once they truly get into understanding the dynamics and the cost to do this, it might not look as favorable as just the concept.”
Jundt joined the meeting to address the FRA report as an informational item for the board, which oversees South Dakota’s state-owned rail lines. No action was planned or taken
The FRA process will ultimately result in a final report with recommendations to Congress. No funding for development of those routes is currently attached to the process.
Thanks Mr. Meyer for that SW MN/SDak railroad geography lesson. That route is so windy [long i], it’s not practical for AMTK even with a major upgrading.
Whenever the Northeast Railroad Passenger Corporation is giving exponential attention to the Nothing Else Counts to the detriment of the rest of the country they ostensibly serve they sprinkle carrots to some or all of the nation to promote the illusion of due diligence. Ultimately, as always, we get the stick.
South Dakota other pats of the proposed route have been off my radar. So someone walk me through the route. What kind of tracks are these?
It’s been brought up (comment on this article) that North Dakota also is rural. North Dakoata has two E-W routes to main line standards. Does South Dakota?
An east-to-west scenario:
The best route from the Twin Cities to Sioux Falls is BNSF via Willmar, Marshall and Garretson. It is CTC and 60 MPH for freight trains from Minneapolis to Willmar, then dark territory and 49 MPH for freight trains from Willmar to Garretson. This line has remote-control switches controlled by the dispatcher which enhance meet/pass. Under current FRA rules, the route would be good for 59 MPH for passenger trains and there are no permanent speed restrictions between Willmar and Garretson. Garretson to Sioux Falls is also dark territory, good for 40 MPH. I should add at this point that the route from Willmar, Minnesota to Crawford, Nebraska is all dark (unsignaled) territory.
It should be noted that the UP line from St. Paul through Mankato to Worthington would be a good alternative and has block signals, but the line from Worthington (actually Agate) to Sioux Falls via Luverne ranges from out of service to 10 MPH. Currently, the Ellis and Eastern Railroad based in Sioux Falls is attempting to revive the route from Agate to Sioux Falls to achieve an interchange point with Union Pacific, but that’s a ways off, and it will still be 10 MPH or 25 MPH track if accomplished.
From Sioux Falls, the ex-MILW BNSF route to Canton is 40 MPH. In downtown Canton, trains need to negotiate a 10 MPH wye before heading west to Mitchell. Current track speed to Mitchell is 25 MPH. There is no meet/pass capability between Canton and Mitchell. The line has a lot of industry, including shuttle grain train facilities and Ethanol plants. Marion is especially busy.
At Mitchell, the route heads north on BNSF to Wolsey (maximum speed 40 MPH). Wolsey is the busiest interchange location in South Dakota (between BNSF and RCP&E), and here the route turns west on the Rapid City, Pierre, and Eastern Railroad (ex-C&NW). Track speed is 40 MPH to Pierre with limited meet/pass capability because traffic of two or three trains per day doesn’t warrant any better infrastructure.
The route crosses the Missouri River between Pierre and Fort Pierre (remember, Pierre is pronounced like a PIER – a platform out into water) and follows the Bad River until Philip. I can’t say specifically what the track speed is, but the 169 miles from Pierre to Rapid City requires a crew change in Philip. Along the Bad River, the track has subgrade issues (slippage) restricting trains to 10 MPH in many locations. Because South Dakota has no Amtrak service, it receives annual Special Transportation Circumstances grants from the Federal Government that amount to millions each year. The RCP&E always uses some of the money to stabilize the route between Fort Pierre and Philip. But the immediate goal is getting track speed to 25 MPH. “Passenger train speed” would require significant expenditure IF it could be achieved at all.
West of Philip, the line is generally good for 40 MPH to Rapid City, and a bit south toward Hermosa. But from there to Crawford, it’s 10 MPH with grades up to 1.5%. The RCP&E track actually ends at Dakota Jct. west of Chadron, and then it’s the Nebraska Northwestern from there to Crawford, Nebraska (still ex-C&NW).
From Crawford to Sidney, Nebraska the route is all CTC (with some two main track) main line coal-route railroad through Alliance. At Sidney, the route changes to UP’s Central Corridor main line route (the original transcontinental line), but not before a westward passenger train would need to make a reverse movement on a seldom-used connecting track. Sidney to Cheyenne, Wyoming is all multiple main track CTC. From Cheyenne to Denver, the route is said to be BNSF to tap population centers at Fort Collins, Longmont, and Boulder. If the UP route was used, it’s a straight shot to Denver via Greeley. Accessing BNSF at Cheyenne would require rebuilding an east leg of the wye or a long reverse movement into the BNSF yard. BNSF to Denver is dark territory / 49 MPH and features some exotic street-running in Longmont.
So, is your head spinning yet? This is SO not going to happen.
Thank you sincerely Mark Meyer fr the super-informative post and for all the time it took you to write it.
Your post confirms my suspicion (though I didn’t know for sure) that some total idiot who doesn’t know the first thing about railroading selected that route. More scary, even more frightening, is that no one else reviewed the work and deleted that proposal.
How hard is it for the authors of this study to pass it around for a couple of people to check out the recommendations.
It seems that Mark Meyer has more railroading knowledge in his fingernail clippings than whoever wrote this study.
I spent a good part of my career working on the PRC and the Black Hills Sub. Things have got a lot better since I started, and they probably have improved further since I wrapped up my regular involvement with those lines a decade or so ago. But, both lines are far from higher speed passenger ready. My guess is that a $1Billion is on the low end just for those two subs. The root cause almost all problems on these lines can be summed up in two words: Pierre Shale.
Hello Charles and everyone, “Cheyenne to Denver to Colorado Springs is one of the few north-south corridors in the western states. Even with coal declining, it’s congested and slow.”
Yet it’s that very idea in the original recent Trains article that CO and WY wanted to initiate that short distance, heavily traveled service. And the Twin Cities to Denver is another relatively short service. So what I’m trying to suggest is to tie all these proposed short route links into one continuous and meaningful Amtrak route from Chicago, Milwaukee, to the Twin Cities, Cheyenne, Denver, Albq. Las Cruces, NM, El Paso, and maybe someday beyond to Mexico City, where the “ends could justify the means.”
For example, look at the Amtrak route that passes through rural North Dakota and wilderness Montana. That would never have been done if it wasn’t for the big picture of the Chicago to Seattle connections. And I might add, on existing RoWs, especially on a much needed north-south corridor improvement.
BTW, there is some coal traffic on BNSF from WY to and through CO Springs south to the Hatch, NM, BNSF interchange with the South West RR 40+ mile shortline/trunkline connection (formerly ATSF and BNSF) to the Deming, NM UPRR interchange, for the unit coal trains supplying both the Cochise County and Tucson, AZ coal fired power plants.
I forgot to mention that Amtrak is already traveling on a section of the BNSF Rio Grande River route between Trinidad, CO and Vaughn, NM, (just south of Albq.), part of the Chicago to Los Angeles route.
All very good points Jeff.
Jeffrey said, “I forgot to mention that Amtrak is already traveling on a section of the BNSF Rio Grande River route between Trinidad, CO and Vaughn, NM, (just south of Albq.), part of the Chicago to Los Angeles route.”
I don’t know what constitutes the “Rio Grande River route” but Amtrak’s Southwest Chief is aside the Rio Grande from west of Lamy (Santa Fe) to south of Albuquerque (Isleta). No Amtrak trains at Vaughn.
The proposed El Paso-Billings route is also a non-starter. A full two-thirds of its trackage is dark territory and would require huge capital to upgrade. Best to put this money to add frequencies on existing routes such as Chicago-New York and New York-Florida.
Mark Meyer, “…to south of Albuquerque (Isleta). No Amtrak trains at Vaughn.”
Thanks for that correction Mark, my bad. I had Vaughn confused with Isleta.
Yet South Dakota will continue to pay for everyone else’s rail service through the federal government.
No. South Dakota (and Wyoming and Alaska, but South Dakota is by far the biggest recipient) receives millions of dollars annually in Special Transportation Circumstances grants in lieu of not having any Amtrak service. These grants are vital to upgrading South Dakota’s poor railroad infrastructure, and would end the minute the first regularly-scheduled Amtrak train enters the state. The STC grants benefit the state much more than a single passenger train route across the state ever would.
I can’t wait to see RPA’s write up on this in their next Hotline News email blast. This FRA “study” is a lie, and a sham, and a charade. If FRA wants to really do something constructive for the LD services it should push for at least doubling the frequencies on the existing routes with a solid plans to add two more frequencies within 5 years after accomplishing that. And the central part of that effort needs to be significant expansions of mainline track capacity and upgrades to operational flexibility out on the freight railroads that host these trains. First show what passenger trains can do with added service and better reliability on well-established routes before going after route expansion.
Spot on.
There were several routes that were eye-rolling (such as San Francisco to Dallas via the Arizona and California Railroad and Tehachapi Pass and El Paso to Billings on a route that’s two-thirds dark territory), but the Twin Cities-Denver train across South Dakota would seem to be the ultimate in ridiculousness. But not necessarily.
In a March 8, 2024 ZOOM presentation, the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority’s Dan Bucks touted the organization’s support for a “16th long-distance train” (in addition to the 15 in the FRA study). It’s a train from Tucson to Seattle via Phoenix, Flagstaff, Barstow, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Idaho Falls, Butte, Helena, Great Falls, and Shelby, then west along the existing Empire Builder route. About 40% of this route isn’t signaled, and 95 miles of it has been out of service for over 20 years and would require complete rebuilding. The train would need to reverse direction six times, including in places were it couldn’t be turned if not using push-pull equipment.
https://www.msuaf.org/s/1584/index.aspx?sid=1584&gid=1&pgid=6640&crid=0&calpgid=371&calcid=8335
Not to be outdone, we have a proposal from “Alberta Regional Rail” for a passenger service in the “corridor” between Calgary, Alberta, and Livingston, Montana. Again, the reality of hundreds of miles of dark territory, the seasonal nature of any usage, and that same 95 miles of out-of-service track is part of the route is not an impediment to their fantasy:
https://www.facebook.com/albertaregionalrail
In the mean time here the reality zone, both Amtrak and VIA long-distance services are in a race against the clock to determine whether old, deteriorating equipment on existing services will last until new stuff arrives – and no one really knows when that is going to be, except that it’s a long time from now.
Such fantasies distract from the Clear-And-Present-Danger, and ignore the fact that the better “bang for the buck” would be to add frequencies on existing routes to make passenger trains relevant to the communities they serve, because to most of the them, the trains don’t matter now due to the infrequent nature of the service. Then and only then once that has been established should we fantasize about routes that don’t currently have service. And in the case of South Dakota, we never would fantasize about a route whose infrastructure wouldn’t even support additional rail freight usage.
https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/railroad-veteran-building-railroad-to-nowhere-through-south-dakota-makes-absolutely-no-sense-and-should-not-be-considered
To be fair to South Dakota, all of those proposed routes are UNLIKELY.
When I saw the map on these pages a few weeks ago, this route jumped off the page into my eyeballs and from there into my brain. In my mind, the inclusion of this dodgy route proposal cheapened the entire study.
It made me think back to 1970, when NARP sketched out its version of possible routes for the coming “Railpax”, or Amtrak. If there’s a rail line somewhere, put a passenger train on it. To be fair to NARP (now RPA), their 1970 sketch was a whole lot more realistic than this new set of proposals from 53 more years of mixed success in new routes.
Amtrak has long since given up on second frequencies for the LDs, or obvious corridors like Detroit-Toledo-Cleveland, or Pittisburg-Columbus-St. Louis. If Columbus, one of the most populous, prosperous and fastest growing cities in the region, doesn’t have a train and hasn’t for a very long time, why would anyone think there would be a train in South Dakota.
This is very interesting. Recently it was discussed here on the Trains’ News Wire articles and forum of the possible high speed passenger service from Cheyenne to and through Denver, on mainly existing BNSF RoW where I suggested the possibility of eventually extending high speed passenger service to and through Albuquerque along the lightly used BNSF Rio Grande River RoW to Las Cuces , NM, El Paso, and who knows, maybe even eventually beyond to Mexico City.
That said, looking at the above article map, it could be a possibility for Amtrak to extend all that on the north/east end from Minneapolis/ St. Paul including Chicago, to the described Cheyenne connection and beyond south. I can’t imagine that not being useful, convenient, and profitable. Perhaps this could be an opportunity for efficient private sector Brightline to explore???
I need to add that I believe the South Dakota Railroad Authority Board needs to take another look at all this with a bigger picture in mind.
Jeffrey,
It would be nice to reinvent the 1950’s passenger rail network. However, it sure wouldn’t be profitable in today’s world [where the US Mail does not go by passenger train], one train a day in each direction is not what I consider convenient, and the major cities are all served by discount airlines.
Jeffrey, you write in your last paragraph that you can’t imagine a train not be profitable”.
Well, find me a train that IS profitable. Those are few and far between, if even any at all.
Cheyenne to Denever to Colorado Springs is one of the few north-south corridors in the western states. Even with coal declining, it’s congested and slow.