If Amtrak’s SW Chief is to be saved it will start in the state of New Mexico. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, legislators took the first step Tuesday toward partnering with two other states and railroad interests to keep the Chief route running through the state’s northern corridor beyond 2015. This as both Colorado and Kansas try to put together similar funding. But Gov. Susana Martinez’s transportation secretary-designate said New Mexico should put the brakes on funding the project until a thorough cost-benefit analysis has been conducted and possible constitutional snags are reconciled. That study was approved in committee and will be done by New Mexico State University at a cost of 150-thousand dollars.
Officials along the route say the matter needs to be put on the fast track as Amtrak and BNSF say they need to make a decision on the future of the train by the end of this year.
Elected officials from communities on the line’s current route urged the House Transportation and Public Works Committee to support a cost-sharing agreement between New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Amtrak and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. It carries an estimated cost of about $4 million annually over the next decade from each entity beginning next year.
According to media reports, Ray Lang, chief of state government relations at Amtrak, said he is optimistic about the prospects of a five-way partnership to keep the Southwest Chief’s existing route through those states. Legislation authorizing the cooperative agreement is working its way through statehouses in New Mexico and Colorado, and committee hearings were held in Topeka last week. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway owns the tracks along the Southwest Chief route. Its current contract with Amtrak expires in January 2016, at which point BNSF has said it no longer will be willing to shoulder the expense of maintaining the aging tracks sufficiently to allow travel up to 80 mph along the line.
According to Lang and BNSF, all of the track between Hutchinson, and Lamy, just outside Santa Fe, needs to be replaced. Attempts to secure federal funding to ensure the continued operation of the Southwest Chief along its current route have failed to gather support..