Ogden may once again see regular intercity passenger rail service, but there’s still a long ways to go.

This month, the Utah Department of Transportation and other entities across three states applied for a grant to explore expanded passenger rail service between Boise, Idaho, and Las Vegas, via Salt Lake City.

“We’ve been involved in grant applications for what’s called the Corridor Identification and Development Program that’s under the Federal Railroad Administration,” John Gleason, public relations director with UDOT, told the Standard-Examiner. “It’s a study phase for potential passenger rail. UDOT’s the grant applicant for studying Las Vegas to Salt Lake City — this is in partnership with the UTA (Utah Transit Authority) and the Nevada Department of Transportation — and the portion also being requested for study is Salt Lake City to Boise. The Idaho Transportation Department is the grant applicant for studying Salt Lake City to Boise. That’s in partnership with us as well as UTA and the City of Boise.”

Gleason said it won’t be known until September whether the grant applications are successful, and even then, it’s not a guarantee that passenger rail service will return along these routes.

“They’re just exploratory study efforts and don’t mean that passenger rail necessarily is moving forward,” he said. “But we’re definitely supportive of exploring the possibilities and the feasibility of it and how it would all work.”

Gleason said he was unsure of how the study may be conducted, its timeline and what parameters it might measure, but it would allot $500,000.

He said it would be up to the states themselves to fund a service after the study is complete.

Ogden was last served by Amtrak in 1997 when the Seattle-to-Chicago Pioneer was discontinued. Efforts to restore the service in some shape or form have come and gone over the ensuing years. Amtrak’s California Zephyr is currently the only intercity passenger train to serve the state of Utah.

Gleason said there are some distinctions between past studies and this potential one.

“This program is looking at a slightly different type of service that’s potentially more frequent than previous services,” he said.

Steve Jones, administrator of Save/Visit Union Station, a grassroots public advocacy group, told the Standard-Examiner that he welcomes the news and wishes the city was more vocal about it.

“My initial response was, ‘Why isn’t Ogden more engaged and encouraging that to happen?'” he said.

Jones said he sees a great upside to expansion of passenger rail travel in the region.

“I think it can only be a good thing,” he said. “We keep putting more and more money into expanding highways whereas, if the long-distance rail passenger service were done correctly and in a way it could be relied on, that could take a lot of pressure off the increasing need for more roads.”

However, Jones said it needs to be done right.

“I don’t see any downside,” he said. “It needs to be done in a way that it’s reliable. That may mean they have to buy some of their own right-of-way. It may mean that there has to be some negotiation with the freight railroads whose lines they share so that the passenger service gets some amount of priority instead of always having to be out of the way of the freight service. If it’s not convenient, people may try it, but they’re not going to go back and use it over and over again. If it’s convenient, they probably won’t care if it takes just a little bit longer than driving because it’ll be more comfortable and it’ll be part of the experience.”

Save/Visit Union Station has long advocated for returning Ogden’s Union Station to a state where it can serve as a transportation hub once again, and Jones sees this as a potential chance for that to happen.

“Union Station is the gateway to all of Ogden,” he said. “The only way (to have) rail passenger service be a core part of our environment is if both the FrontRunner and Amtrak use Union Station.”

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