The Outlook for the Amtrak Pioneer in Oregon for 2025
What Needs to Happen to Keep the Passenger Rail in North East Oregon Possible
Well it's been a while since my last letter out to you all and a lot has happened, aside from a new year and a new president. In the world of public transit service in and around northeastern Oregon, there have been several events that I'll summarize briefly below before diving deeper into where efforts to restore the Amtrak Pioneer line sit. After that I’ll mention what actions you can take right now to continue to move the needle on this effort. If you don't have time to read the whole thing (or just aren't that interested😅) but still want to support this, skip to the bottom section, “What can I do right now?”, and there's instructions on how to help that should take about 3-5 mins.
Where NE Oregon Is At With Public Transit
Okay, there are a few things I wanna call out as significant to this effort.
First, Elaine Clegg was officially nominated to the Amtrak board of directors as one of Biden's last presidential actions. Clegg was on the Boise city council for over twenty years, started a regional public transit service in Treasure Valley and most importantly has been a huge proponent for Pioneer restoration for a long time. She is now 1 of 3 people on the board that lives west of the Rockies and is the only 1 of those three outside of California. Needless to say her appointment means there is a staunch ally of the Pioneer on the Amtrak Board of Directors, which can only be a good thing.
Next, as many of you may have heard by now, Flixbus (a.k.a. Greyhound) cancelled their Boise-Portland route service earlier this month. This route had already eliminated it's stop in Baker City last year and now they are removing the route entirely. There is now no public transportation option to get in or out of northeastern Oregon. This is obviously unfortunate for our area, hopefully this degradation can be a signal to legislators as to the systemic problems that need to be addressed out here.
Regarding the Pioneer, The Federal Rail Administration (FRA) finally submitted their final report from the long-distance rail study to Congress. I have covered this study extensively in previous newsletters so I won't go into it here. If you want a refresher and good background info here's two great recent articles on the report; OPB, Baker City Herald. I will say however, that I have seen nothing surprising or unexpected in the final report. The Pioneer is still very much defined on there as the Seattle-Denver route.
And most importantly to the Pioneer effort, ODOT finally delivered the report on their "cooperative efforts with the State of Idaho to obtain assistance from the FRA to restore service on the Amtrak Pioneer Line" as directed in House Bill 4109 passed last spring. There is some unpacking to do to understand what happened with this and what it all means. So let’s dive deeper into that now.
The impact of HB4109 and ODOT's report to the JCT
As just mentioned above, ODOT delivered it's report to the Oregon Joint Committee on Transportation (JCT) in December and I got it earlier this month. As part of the legislation in HB4109, ODOT was directed by the JCT to deliver a report on their "cooperative efforts with the State of Idaho to obtain assistance from the FRA to restore service on the Amtrak Pioneer Line". HB4109 was created and passed last year, in very large part, due to the actions of the community here in NE Oregon signing and delivering a widely popular petition to the Oregon legislature this time last year. However, HB4109 was written with an expiration date Jan 2nd, 2025, which largely confused many of us rail advocates. Sunset clauses are important and valuable but that one was clearly too early.
The direction to work with Idaho was made for a few reasons. First, is that Idaho had already attempted to apply for the Corridor Identification (CID) grant program to restore the Pioneer line and through a clerical error the grant application never made it to the correct place by the necessary deadlines. Second, is that any effort to restore a passenger rail route that runs Seattle to Denver, via Oregon, Idaho and Utah, will inherently need multi-state cooperation. Getting Oregon to be a co-applicant on the CID grant would send a clear signal that the citizens of the inland NW clearly want this and are serious about its development. Finally, Idaho has indicated that they might only be interested in restoring the route from Salt Lake City to Boise and excluding Oregon and Washington. Oregon getting involved would ensure that this route is restored all the way to the coast.
According to the FRA, the CID grant pipeline is THE way you create new long-distance passenger rail service in the US. It is essential that the Pioneer route (acknowledged as the Seattle-Denver route in the FRA's long-distance study) get approved for that grant, and into that pipeline, if it is to have any chance as restoration/creation.
So to bring it back to that ODOT report, here's my impressions of what the report really says. First, it mostly just summarizes the FRA's long-distance rail study and its results concerning the Pioneer. As for the actions that ODOT took, they appear to have had "email exchanges" with Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), wherein they acknowledge that Idaho was withholding further action until the FRA submits its final report to Congress. That seems to be the summary of their actions to this effect. They do call out that to start another study while the FRA was already doing one would be redundant and that there was no option to apply for the CID during HB4109's lifespan. Both fair and true points. However, I would have loved to have seen some indication of a plan to co-apply with Idaho when another CID notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) appears.
Most concerning is what appears to be an understanding that Idaho plans to apply on it's own again, should another NOFO happen, but only plans on applying for a Salt Lake City to Boise route application. If this is true (I have reached out to both the city of Boise as well as Elaine Clegg to confirm this and have had no response), then it is vital that Oregon be involved in an application to the CID to champion the route making it all the way to Portland.
If the Pioneer does not make it into the CID pipeline when/if another NOFO comes up this year, there is no indication that there will be another one. The CID program was created out of the IIJA and that bill is about at the end of its life. There has been no indication from the Trump administration that they have any interest in furthering this program or project, so this will be the Pioneer's last best short for a long time.
What can I do right now?
As I have talked about before, there is a large transportation package that must be defined in the 2025 legislative session this year that will dictate transportation policy in Oregon for the next eight years. Policies are currently being written and prepared for this legislative session. Oregon citizens' ability to affect their transportation system will never be as great as it is now for another eight years, so now is the time to make your voices heard if you care. Rail, and particularly passenger rail, is on the minds of legislators in the JCT. Senators Khanh Pham and Chris Gorsek have proven to be major advocates for passenger rail service in Oregon and currently have three bills drafted and ready for this session regarding passenger rail (including one about creating a Oregon Department of Rail, but that’s for another article), but none of them relate to the Pioneer.
We need to speak up and convey that we are still paying attention and that this is still something eastern Oregonians expect their elected representatives to pursue. And as frustrating as it is to say, the best way for people out here in eastern Oregon to communicate to our legislature is to write or phone in to our representatives and senators and especially those on the JCT. If you find yourself heading over to Salem and want to advocate in person but don't know how, get in touch with me and we can figure out how best to do that. For everyone else I encourage each of you to at least do a quick email or send a letter. If you would like to go further the phone numbers of each member of the JCT can be found here.
The email template I have below is directed to the JCT specifically, but intended to have our eastern Oregon representatives CC’d on to the email so that they are aware of this as well. It is important that we all have the same format to our subject line in the email. The format that I’ve outlined is “{{YOUR NAME HERE}} - Demanding that passenger rail in eastern Oregon be explored and prioritized in the 2025 transportation package”.
Email Addresses of the Joint Committee on Transportation:
copy and paste these into the email’s “to:” section.
Email Address of northeastern Oregon representatives:
copy and paste these into the “CC” section of the email.
Congressman Cliff Bentz has no public email address I can find, however you can submit a message to him through his website if you wish.
Template Email:
Subject:
{{YOUR NAME HERE}} - Demanding that passenger rail in eastern Oregon be explored and prioritized in the 2025 transportation package
Body:
To Co-Chairs Senator Chris Gorsek and Representative Susan McLain, and to the members of the Oregon Joint Commission on Transportation,
My name is {{ YOUR NAME HERE }} I am a resident of {{ YOUR CITY NAME }} in northeastern Oregon and am emailing you today to express my great interest in the creation of passenger rail service through northern and eastern Oregon in the form of the restoration of the old Amtrak Pioneer line. This line has been identified as the “Seattle-Denver route” by the Federal Rail Administration as a potential candidate for creation in their recent long-distance rail study, delivered to Congress earlier this year. Its creation would provide resilient, sustainable and equitable transit options for a large portion of eastern Oregon’s residents which would result in economic growth and social cohesion between eastern and western Oregon. Especially considering that we just lost our only public transit option in or out of NE Oregon on the I-84 corridor with the cancellation of the Greyhound bus route between Boise and Portland.
For me personally, it would {{ DESCRIBE IN 2-3 SENTENCES HOW THE EXISTENCE OF THIS ROUTE WOULD AFFECT YOUR LIFE. WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO VISIT FAMILY MEMBERS, OR THEY YOU? WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO ADVERTISE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH IT? WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO ACCESS HEALTHCARE OR OTHER LARGE CITY AMENITIES THROUGH IT? }}.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I am eagerly watching the development of the 2025 transportation package and am excited to see a reinvestment in a multi-modal transit system that is resilient, accessible, sustainable and works for all Oregonians.
With regards,
{{ YOUR NAME HERE }}
{{ YOUR CITY HERE }}
And that’s it. Hit send, pat yourself on the back and accept my heartfelt thank you.
Looking Forward
This is a vital time for the current effort to restore the Pioneer line. I think that within six months we will know one way or another if this effort will continue to be a possibility. The major events I'm watching for are how the Trump administration's roll back of the IIJA(a.k.a. BIL) and IRA funding opportunities, which contains the CID grant program, impacts the FRA and its grant programs. Frankly, I'm not expecting positive things there, but we'll see. Losing those grant programs is tantamount to losing all passenger rail expansion efforts nationwide.
And just as importantly, but more under our direct democratic influence, is watching how the 2025 Transportation package evolves and develops over the Oregon legislative session this year. This will determine how much funding and effort we can expect from the Oregon government to address public transit needs in northeast OR and statewide.
Also, for those of you paying attention I’m using a different format to send out this email. I have created a Substack for myself so that I can just post things on the internet and people can read them at their leisure, instead of having them just disappear in an overwhelming inbox. It’s pretty empty right now, but I plan on posting all my old newsletters up there soon, and potentially a little more content if the need arises. You can find that Substack here; neoregonpassengerrail.substack.com.
Finally, a thank you to all of you who have read this far and are interested in supporting the restoration of passenger rail service (and now sadly, just public transportation in general) to our area. Working to build a strong and more resilient community through public transit infrastructure is my whole goal with this and the support and energy I've received from our community is why I've kept it up.
Until next time,
Matt for passenger rail in northeast Oregon.
Thank you, Matt!!!