Northern Flyer Alliance seeks to expand passenger rail service to connect Kansas City to Dallas/Fort Worth

Dan Wancura, the Kansas City area organizer for the Northern Flyer Alliance, presented to MARC’s Total Transportation Policy Committee about the organization’s effort to close the passenger rail gap between Kansas City and Oklahoma City. The group is rallying support for the existing rail route between Oklahoma City and Newton, Kansas, to be designated as a passenger rail corridor. This would allow Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer service that runs between Dallas/Fort Worth and Oklahoma City to extend to Newton, Kansas, where passengers can connect to the Southwest Chief that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles through Kansas City. This designation would allow the corridor to potentially qualify for funding from the Federal Railroad Administration.

The proposal has already received bipartisan support from the Kansas government, and the Northern Flyer Alliance is proposing two trains per day for operational support. The corridor is home to more than 14 million people and the Amtrak Feasibility Study projects ridership between Kansas City and Fort Worth to be at least 174,000 a year. Construction of a separate two-frequency train directly connecting Kansas City to Fort Worth would be approximately $312 million (2011 dollars), which would be split between the federal government (80%) and the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas (20% split).

The Northern Flyer Alliance is an organization of 49 cities, six counties and 19 chambers of commerce along the I-35 corridor working to extend the Heartland Flyer passenger rail service. Their mission is to “advocate for the reinstatement of passenger rail and to link, unify and connect civic minded organizations and individuals who desire economic development opportunities and alternative transportation sources for their communities.”