Ohio towns lobby for stops on Amtrak plan

COLUMBUS (AP) — As Amtrak studies a proposed passenger-rail line linking Ohio’s major cities, small towns along the 250-mile route are lobbying hard not to be left behind.

A train station is just the sort of hub that can spark new economic development, said Dave Oles, city manager in Galion, a small city about 50 miles north of Columbus that hosted a statewide meeting last month for rail advocates.

In Riverside, city officials already have identified a 44-acre site for a train station that would feed travelers to the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and serve as a centerpiece for a new commercial district.

“This rail project is a good slice of pie that everybody is after,” city manager Bryan Chodkowski said.

Amtrak is studying what it would take to run 79-mph trains along existing freight tracks connecting Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati — a project that Gov. Ted Strickland wants to be funded with at least $250 million in federal stimulus money.

President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic recovery package, signed in February, sets aside $8 billion for passenger-rail projects in the U.S., something Obama sees as a down payment for a future high-speed network. The first round of funding is expected to be announced this summer.

Fourteen states already have contracts with Amtrak to operate passenger routes, and for some small towns, the economic benefits of having a train station stretch beyond jobs created by coffee shops and newsstands.

In Saco, Maine, a developer is spending $110 million to turn an old mill into condos and an office park next to a new Amtrak station that picks up travelers along a rail corridor that runs to Boston.

“There’s a new economic energy once these small towns become part of a larger transportation network,” said Patricia Quinn, executive director of Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, which manages Amtrak’s Downeaster route.

An Amtrak depot that opened in 1995 in Lafayette, Ind., led to a neighboring $36 million development project 10 years later that included condos and an office park.

City Planner Thomas Van Horn said the depot deserves some credit, but much of the development probably would have happened anyway. The city is across the Wabash River from Purdue University, and developers were looking for new residential areas for students and faculty, he said.

If Ohio gets federal stimulus money to start passenger-rail service, Amtrak likely would select a few intermediate stops outside the state’s major cities, said Stu Nicholson, spokesman for the Ohio Rail Development Commission, a state agency that hired Amtrak to conduct the study.

But too many stops would drag down travel times. Smaller towns would need to have enough ridership potential to justify a train station, he said.

An early estimate by Amtrak puts the entire Cleveland-to-Cincinnati trip at six hours.