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Posted By: Wondering Posted On: Jan 8, 2009 Views: 587	Rail travel Why thankyou for your kind comment realist, I have stacks of newspapers waiting to be finished.
Posted By: Not Now Posted On: Jan 7, 2009 Views: 628	Rail At this point in time this would be a poor use of funds. There are many other things that need to be taken care of that we already have. We just raised taxes to pay for road repair. Lets start there. This would be a fluff cost paid by the many for use by the few.
Posted By: Realist Posted On: Jan 6, 2009 Views: 616	Rail Travel Yes "Wondering" you missed something. Perhaps you should read the newspaper articles about rail travel before responding. It is "we" not "they" who want rail service to Ark City and other places. We've been asking them to bring it back for years. It was removed because without the kind of subsidies received by airlines and truckers, passenger rail service was no longer viable. Everyone wanted to drive their own car "we" guess. During the intervening years, the infrastructure needed to accomodate rail passenger service was allowed to deteriorate. Many miles of double tracks were removed and even freight traffic on the rails was badly hampered. It would not just be Ark City taxpayers who would pay for the rebuilding. It would be all taxpayers, at least in the wider areas effected, and it would be in partnership with government and BNSF and other companies involved in bringing rail passenger service back to our part of the country. If done, it would in fact connect to AMTRAK lines all over the US, where they now exist. Even though we're talking specifically about a train from Kansas City to Oklahoma City that travels through Ark City, one could get on the train at Ark City and make connections to travel from New England to Florida to California, etc. Perhaps the traveler needs to update "Wondering" and others what it was, what it is, what it could be and how it would happen, who it would benefit, why "we" should help pay for it. I'd like to ride the train again to and from Ark City. Wouldn't "Wondering?"
Posted By: Wondering Posted On: Jan 6, 2009 Views: 281	Rail service Maybe I missed something or didn't pay enough attention(guilty as charged), but why do we need to throw citizen tax dollars into bringing the service here? They are the ones wanting to be to bring the service(which I think would be great). We already have the tracks so why do we as citizens need to put out the money?
Posted By: Huey Lewis Posted On: Jan 1, 2009 Views: 483	Rail At a point when Greyhound service found it unprofitable to service Ark City, I wonder at the value of it. Maybe we should sell annual tickets as the financial incentive to the railroads. If the question is whether Ark City residents should pay increased property taxes on millions of dollars for rail service used by only a few people then the answer is no. Maybe we could trade them the value of the jogging track over by the burning dump as an incentive. It was worth a quarter million. I wonder if that would suffice.
Posted By: JimN Posted On: Dec 30, 2008 Views: 597	Greener Future As the country, and the world, continues to move toward a greener era, it is important for Middle-America to not be left in the dust. Arkansas City residence heavily travel the roads between OKC and KC, and all points in between. Allowing passenger rail to be an option would prove to engage Ark City residents in the green movement. While I can appreciate and completely support the nostalgia provided by the first comment herein, I must encourage this action because of the green benefits as a primary reason.
Posted By: Ray Gilstrap Posted On: Dec 28, 2008 Views: 676	AMTRAK I no longer live in Ark City, but growing up, my dad was a railroader. From an early age, I rode passenger trains to visit friends and relatives in Wichita, Kansas City, California, Arizona and New Hampshire. During college years at Emporia I rode home at night on the Texas Chief and back to Emporia on the Kansas City Chief. I ate on real dining cars, slept in Pullman berths or regular seats, even once in a sleeping room with my parents and younger brother. From 1962 through 1965 I worked for the Santa Fe myself summers and holidays and fulltime for awhile after college. When I was teaching in Ark City, we felt fortunate that our daughters 4th or 5th grade class got to ride the train to Ponca City before there were no passenger trains. My sons didn't have that privilege, but they have ridden Amtrak in more recent years. I honestly believe one of the best and ultimately least expensive solutions to the mass transportation of both freight and people would be an extensive upgrade of our rail transportation infrastructure to a point at least equivalent to what we had in 1960. A time when all the US Mail was either airmail or traveled across the country on trains, when trucking was more of a local industry and highways didn't have to be rebuilt every year or two, when there were fewer cars traveling long distances and more passenger trains and busses took people anyplace they wanted to go and picked them up or delivered them at depots instead of some truckstop 60 miles from their destination where someone has to meet them. Rail travel was fun, it was fascinating, you watched hundreds of miles of beautiful scenery and parents trusted their children to conductors, brakement and porters for cross country trips, even with train changes arranged ahead with station agents. I don't know if it can ever be that good again, but rebuilding rail transportation would be a step in the right direction and I certainly hope reopening AMTRAK service all the way from Chicago or St Louis or Los Angelos to Fort Worth via Arkansas City will happen again while I'm still young enough to ride that route.