Officials with the Utah Transit Authority are confident that they and several partnering agencies will be seeing a federal grant studying reestablishment and expansion of passenger rail service routes in the region approved in the near future.

Last week, UTA hosted a discussion with representatives of Amtrak, HNTB and WSP and other interested parties to discuss developments in intercity rail travel. This comes as several agencies in Idaho, Utah and Nevada have applied for money through the Intercity Corridor Grant Program to study restoration of passenger rail service in corridors between Boise and Salt Lake City (the Pioneer Corridor Restoration Project) and Salt Lake City and Las Vegas (Desert Wind Corridor).

UTA Executive Director Jay Fox told the Standard-Examiner that its support is twofold.

“We support any passenger rail initiatives,” he said. “For a good portion of the Wasatch Front, Amtrak trains would run on our shared corridor with the Union Pacific. … Any additional passenger rail traffic on our network or intercity would be great because it provides more connectivity to us as well as connectivity out from us to other cities.”

He said the information-gathering session was a fruitful one.

“I think all of the parties that applied to the grant are looking forward to that planning process to see what it reveals about ridership, about feasibility as a whole, the cost, competitiveness with other modes of travel and everything we would imagine would be in a large planning study like that,” he said. “Takeaway No. 2 was getting good information about the intercity program.”

Announcement of grant recipients had been originally anticipated for September but ultimately was pushed back later in the year.

“I would love to have that governmental crystal ball,” Fox said. “All interested parties are hoping for either later this month or in December.”

This wouldn’t be the first time restoration of service has been discussed along these corridors.

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 included a provision to study the feasibility of restoring the Pioneer.

Fox said there are key differences this time around.

“You have studies that are sponsored by partners — IDOT (Idaho Department of Transportation) and UDOT (Utah Department of Transportation) would study for Salt Lake to Boise and UDOT and NDOT (Nevada Department of Transportation) would obviously study Salt Lake to Nevada — so instead of having states looking at their particular rail plans, you have partnerships of states looking at the feasibility of passenger service between their respective communities,” he said. “No. 2 is the federal commitment to the expansion of intercity passenger rail. I think we’re moving away from a model where interested states approach Amtrak and work through a process to try and get themselves on the map to the Federal Railroad Administration soliciting communities all across the country to see which corridors should be included in the future of intercity passenger rail.”

He said the coalition of partners are confident they’ll be able to get the corridor grants.

“I think everybody’s optimistic about getting the grants for these two particular corridors,” he said.

Fox said, if approved, he believes the studies would take roughly a year to produce a plan.

Though Ogden has not explicitly been announced as a potential beneficiary of expanded rail service, it was a stop on Amtrak’s Pioneer service that was discontinued in 1997.

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