John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight
Rapid City Council members plan to tell the Federal Railroad Administration that their city should be connected to Sioux Falls and Minneapolis by passenger rail.
Mayor Jason Salamun read a resolution saying as much out loud at Monday’s city council meeting, after which the council voted unanimously to approve it.
“I can tell you I’ll be happy to sign this resolution,” Salamun said, according to a news release from the city.
A rail administration study identified a Rapid City route on its “proposed network of preferred routes,” a series of maps built through stakeholder meetings across the U.S.
South Dakota is the only state in the contiguous U.S. to have never had service through Amtrak, the nation’s taxpayer-subsidized passenger rail network. The proposed route through Rapid City, with a stop in Pierre, is one of two possible South Dakota options. The other is a line that would connect Sioux Falls with Kansas City.
Friday is the deadline for public comments on the proposal, which can be sent to contactus@fralongdistancestudy.org.
The Rapid City municipal government is the latest group to show its support for an east-west route: “… in the past three years, the Pennington County Commission, the Rapid City Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Grant County Economic Development Corporation, and the City of Sturgis, SD have expressed a strong support for long-distance passenger rail service through South Dakota,” the resolution reads.
The city’s resolution also notes that “little to no” public transportation is available in the area, that rail would make it easier to connect rural areas like the Pine Ridge Reservation to the rest of the state, and that rail “is 47 percent more energy efficient than traveling by car and 33 percent more energy efficient than domestic air travel.”
A route’s appearance on a study map is not a sure path to passenger rail. Materials from the study group meetings say cooperation and coordination with state and local stakeholders is key to decisions on any new or expanded routes. The South Dakota Department of Transportation would not make any officials with the agency available for an interview, but a spokesperson told South Dakota Searchlight via email late last year that the state has no plans to pursue passenger rail.
Cost and a perceived lack of community support are the state’s main objections. Laying or upgrading tracks can cost billions of dollars. North Carolina got a $1.9 billion grant in November for a passenger line less than 19 miles long. The 171-mile Central Valley segment in California could cost as much as $35 billion.
Sioux Falls and Rapid City are about 350 miles apart.
“SD is a state with low population densities, and there is insufficient demand for passenger rail services,” wrote Julie Stevenson of the Transportation Department. “Therefore, SD is hesitant to invest in a system that might not attract enough ridership to justify the costs.”
Rapid City’s support as South Dakota’s second-largest population center has yet to be matched by Sioux Falls, with a population more than double the size.
The Sioux Falls City Council has not discussed Amtrak during its public meetings. In a written statement sent Tuesday evening, however, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said he’s intrigued by the idea of passenger rail.
“A South Dakota rail line is certainly exciting to consider,” TenHaken wrote. “Funding a massive infrastructure project like this would be a heavy lift and I am not familiar with what demand would exist for this sort of investment. I look forward to monitoring the study progress to see if it develops further.”