Ohio has taken another tangible step toward the development of intercity passenger rail corridor service.
Gov. Mike DeWine has authorized the Ohio Rail Development Commission to seek a federal grant to be used to pay for a study of the development of corridor passenger service.
The grant being sought would come from the Corridor Identification and Development program of the Federal Railroad Administration.
The FRA has said it will provide up to $500,000 per corridor to successful applicants. Applications are due by March 27.
ORDC said if it wins the grant it would study two routes: Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati and Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit.
The study would be conducted by a consultant hired by ORDC and would examine infrastructure needs of the routes in order to make them ready for intercity rail passenger service.
The study also would examine equipment needed to provide the service, stations and other facilities, operating costs, ridership estimates and how much funding the state would need to provide to launch the service
ORDC Executive Director Matthew Dietrich said his agency has been discussing some of those matters with Amtrak and wants to ensure that any new rail passenger service would not interrupt freight service on those routes.
Amtrak serves Ohio with three routes, two of them operating across the state’s northern tier via Toledo and Cleveland. The third route operates three times a week via Cincinnati.
All of those trains are scheduled to operate through Ohio between midnight and 6 a.m. because they are designed to run overnight between Chicago and the eastern terminals of Boston, New York and Washington.
“This is the first step of many in this process,” DeWine said in a statement. “We have a lot of questions that need to be answered before we make any commitments. The information we gather from this effort will help us make informed decisions about federal opportunities for passenger rail in Ohio.”
The Dayton Daily News reported that Amtrak estimated last May that developing the corridor between Cleveland and Cincinnati would cost $100 million for infrastructure improvements.
The corridor identification program was launched last year with $1.8 billion in funding.
Tags: 3C passenger corridor, 3C+D corridor, Amtrak, Federal Railroad Administration, FRA Corridor Identification Program, intercity rail passenger service, Mike DeWine, Ohio Rail Development Commission, Ohio's 3D+D route
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 
February 10, 2023 at 7:23 am |
I have been involved in efforts to get intrastate rail passenger service in Ohio for about 45 years. All that has been done in that time has been studies. It has been studied to death, and the money spent on those studies over the years would have paid to start conventional 79 mph service on the 3C corridor. Get on with it, run the trains!