NE: Grand Islanders show interest in expanding passenger rail service

State Sen. Margo Juarez of Omaha knows firsthand the benefits of passenger rail service.

During her 23 years with the Internal Revenue Service, she was stationed twice in Utah.

“I would take the light rail because I lived in Salt Lake at the time,” she said. “I would drive my car to a parking garage a few minutes from my condo, get on the light rail. The light rail took me downtown to the train. I took the train into Ogden, crossed the street and went into work.

“It was amazing,” Juarez said.

It’s not an experience she can repeat here in Nebraska since moving home after retirement.

Juarez, who completed her first legislative session earlier this year, hosted a passenger rail town hall meeting Tuesday night at the Grand Island Public Library. She’s working with ProRail Nebraska to gather public opinion at five such meetings as part of the LR203 interim study.

For passenger rail, Nebraska is served by Amtrak’s California Zephyr, which stops in Omaha, Lincoln, Hastings, Holdrege and McCook — in the middle of the night.

While there’s room for improvement, a question from the audience about bullet trains met with a quick answer.

“I don’t think we’re going to get to that point right now,” Juarez said. “I think it’s a fantastic idea. Don’t get me wrong.”

But it’s cost prohibitive, she said. Like any train, passenger rail in Nebraska will have to start where it’s at to get where it’s going.

If the town hall meetings represent the first stop on the line, the next will be a bill for a rail planning study. Juarez hopes to introduce one in the 2026 session.

“We’re going to introduce something,” she said. “We’ve got to put together our report and see where we think we stand, if we’ve got enough documentation, but that’s what the goal is.”

Bob Kuzelka of ProRail Nebraska, which is co-hosting the town halls with Juarez, said Nebraska hasn’t had such a study for 20 years.

“Once upon a time, this state was settled and developed with railroads,” Kuzelka said. Nebraska could be an economic center again, he said, with passenger rail.

“In Nebraska, if you want anything done with rail, you’re not going to go to the executive,” Kuzelka said. That’s why it’s important for the public to attend hearings and help get Juarez’s planned bill out of committee and onto the floor of the Legislature.

“We never get our bills even out of committee,” he said. “Right now, they think that’s an Omaha thing, a Lincoln thing, but it’s not.”

Passenger rail between Omaha and Lincoln is a big part of the picture, however. Juarez said one goal is “trying to get a train to go to a football game or a volleyball game.”

She’d also like to see Nebraska get back in the game of promoting rail service as a member of the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Compact. Current members are Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

Juarez attended a meeting of Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission, the organization created to carry out the compact’s goals, Sept. 10-12 in Kansas City, Missouri.

“That’s one of my goals of getting us to participate with them,” she said.

The compact once included Nebraska, said state Sen. Dan Quick of Grand Island, who attended Tuesday’s meeting.

Quick sponsored LB256 in the last session “to have us be part of the compact again.” Nebraska helped found the compact but left in 2018.

Quick doesn’t just promote passenger rail — he uses it.

“My wife and I have taken Amtrak to Chicago two different times,” he said. They’ve also ridden the train to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and used public transit in Washington and Boston.

“Grand Island is lacking in public transportation,” Quick said. He’d like to see the city have a bus route rather than the point-to-point system currently used.

Juarez said better passenger rail service in Nebraska would attract not only investment but also young people.

“When they look at where they want to work, they look at their transportation options,” she said.

In answer to a question about passenger rail that leads to cities with no public transit, Dan Bilka, president of All Aboard Northwest, said the nation needs an “interdependent, interconnected network.”

It requires better communication and cooperation between transit operators, he said.

Bilka showed a map of Amtrak routes. A large swath of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has no passenger rail service. Over that area were printed the words, “People live here.”

The Federal Railroad Administration’s Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study includes two proposed routes through Nebraska, he said, one of which would pass through Grand Island.

The study also includes a daytime California Zephyr through the state, Bilka said.

“If you’re interested, say you’re interested,” Bilka advised the approximately 30 people at the meeting.

Juarez encouraged them to take the LR203 survey at tinyurl.com/PaRail203.

“I really want to have passenger rail grow in the state,” she said. “This is really a far more complex project than I ever dreamed.”

But turnout at the meetings has been good, Juarez said.

“I now have firsthand knowledge with all of these town halls and the enthusiasm that everyone has, and so I sort of have some people evidence,” she said. “They continue to get more and more popular, so maybe the word is getting out.”

The final meeting will be in Omaha on Sept. 22.

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