Map from Amtrak report shows the route options being studied for resumption of Pioneer service, including Denver to Seattle.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

Ten senators from seven western states, including both of Colorado’s senators, have asked President Obama to name a westerner to the Amtrak board of directors – someone who could represent the west’s passenger rail needs as Amtrak looks skeptically at restoring a second daily train through Denver.

While recent Amtrak legislation calls for the five-member board to reflect the regions served by the national passenger rail, the senators noted that two current members are from New York, two from Illinois and one from Washington, D.C.

Obama has nominated three new directors, from New York, Delaware and Texas.

“While the South is well served by the addition of a member from Texas, western states remain unrepresented,” they wrote in the letter sent last week. Eight Democratic senators and two Republicans signed the letter.

Those signing the letter were Mark Udall, D-Colorado, Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, James Risch, R-Idaho, Dianne Feinstein, D-California, Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, and Jon Tester, D-Montana.

“This lack of geographical diversity is contrary to Amtrak’s authorizing language under the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, which states that in nominating the board, the President shall ‘…try to provide adequate and balanced representation of the major geographic regions of the United States served by Amtrak,’” the letter reads. “With no members from the West, the board does not currently provide ‘adequate and balanced’ representation.”

You can read their letter in full here.

Amtrak's Pioneer and Zephyr passenger trains line up at the station in Salt Lake City in this undated photo.

Several of the senators have been involved with efforts to have Amtrak revive the Pioneer train, a daily service between Denver and Seattle that was ended 12 years ago. The recent Amtrak legislation required the rail provider to study resumption of the Pioneer, at the request of Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican, and others. It looked at routes originating either in Denver or Salt Lake City and ending in either Portland or Seattle.

Amtrak figured the ridership on the longest option, Denver to Seattle, would be the highest of all four routings, at 111,000 passengers a year. It would also bring the highest revenue, at $13.1 million.

But it also had the highest annual operating costs, second-highest annual net loss and the highest capital cost to bring the route up to passenger standards, reactivate stations, and other work.

This YouTube video shows an Amtrak Pioneer train coming down Old Emigrant Hill about 20 miles outside of La Grande, Ore., on Aug. 14, 1996, a year before the train was discontinued.

But the study’s draft in September concluded that the capital and operating costs would be significantly high and the service could only be resumed with subsidies from the states. Amtrak said the farebox recovery ratio of the new Pioneer would be the lowest of all 15 current Amtrak long-distance routes for the route options that have the western end of line in Portland. And the ratio would be the second-lowest of all if service were extended up into Seattle.

Rail advocates objected and asked for more study, but the later report didn’t budge on the numbers. You can get information about the efforts to restore Pioneer service at the web site of the Pioneer Restoration Organization

You can read the report here.

The Pioneer service started daily service between Salt Lake City and Seattle in 1977. Denver passengers connected in Ogden, Utah, via the San Francisco Zephyr between Chicago and the Bay Area, which passed through Denver. At the time, the Zephyr used the Wyoming Overland route between Denver and San Francisco.

In 1983, Amtrak rerouted the Zephyr through Colorado’s Denver and Rio Grande Western route in the heart of the central Rockies, including Glenwood Canyon, and christened it the California Zephyr. Eventually, in 1991, Amtrak extended the Pioneer all the way into Denver via the Overland route because of scheduling difficulties with the Zephyr.

But by 1997, with declining federal support to subsidize the service, the Pioneer was discontinued. This ended passenger rail service through southern Idaho and western Oregon.

If the Pioneer is reinstated all the way into Denver via the Wyoming Overland route, it would also restore passenger service in the southern Wyoming cities of Evanston, Rock Springs, Rawlins, Laramie and Cheyenne.