Not to derail Amtrak coming to Boise, but I’m not completely on board | Opinion

If there’s any person in the entire state of Idaho who would like to see train service return, it’s Eriks Garsvo.

Garsvo, the director of the Owyhee County Historical Society Museum and Library in Murphy, has been a tour guide at the Boise Depot for the past 10 years, and is an avid train aficionado and expert.

“I’ve been interested in trains since I was a kid,” Garsvo told me in a phone interview. “You know, every boy is interested in either trains or fire trucks or something like that, and mine was trains.”

Between Eriks and his father, Aldis Garsvo, they have railroad signals from the 1920s up to the present, crossing signals and even a homemade rail rider, a go-kart-like vehicle that he rides on abandoned railroad tracks.

So, surely, he must be gung-ho — like many in the Treasure Valley — to have Amtrak service return to Boise, right?

Consider him skeptical.

“It could come back, but what’s the ridership going to be?” he said. “It’s going to spike when it comes in and all the hoo-ha, and then it’s going to drop. I think the interest will drop and then the ridership will slump. Some months there will be more, some months there may be no riders coming through.”

That’s what happened in 1997, when Amtrak killed the Pioneer Line after ridership dropped.

“As a company president of a railroad, I’d be like, if I can’t make $500 at every stop, screw it, I ain’t coming in, there’s no money, right?” Garsvo said. “And that’s kind of one of the reasons back in ’97 Amtrak said, ‘We’re done.’”

But an effort to bring Amtrak service back to Boise is underway, and an announcement is expected any day now on whether money will be made available to conduct a feasibility study of providing Amtrak service between Salt Lake City and Boise.

In September, several local leaders signed a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration asking for the Pioneer Line between Utah’s and Idaho’s capital cities to be restored.

Among those signing on were Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, Caldwell Mayor Jarom Wagoner, Idaho’s Republican Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson and Gov. Brad Little.

“I don’t know where these people are getting their ideas,” Garsvo said. “But it all sounds great — politician-wise: ‘Oh, they signed on to support Amtrak.’ ”

One program in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021 includes major funding to expand the nation’s passenger rail network, and part of it is intended to add services to routes that are less than 750 miles long or were formerly operated by Amtrak, according to previous Statesman reporting.

Logistics

Garsvo said that even if Amtrak were to return to Boise, the logistics would be tricky. He thinks it would make more sense to bypass Boise altogether and go straight to Nampa and Caldwell, just because of the configuration of the tracks and the fact that the tracks east of the Depot haven’t been used in two decades.

When he talks about it, he speaks quickly and talks about “block signals,” “dark territory” and train speed changes through the route. I can’t say that I understand it all, but I get the gist: It won’t be easy.

Plus, the Boise Depot hasn’t been used as a depot for more than 25 years, so providing parking and getting trains in and out would require some very heavy lifting.

Further complicating matters is the fact that Boise is pushing just for an extension from Salt Lake City, not a line all the way to Portland. That means uncoupling and turning trains around in Boise, which is not set up for that, adding to costs and difficulty.

Garsvo noted that if it takes four days to get across the country by train, compared with a few hours by plane, why would anyone waste precious vacation time traveling to get to their destination, unless the journey is the purpose. But how big of a market is that?

Back in the day, before air travel was so accessible and before the interstate highway system was built up, train travel made much more sense.

“We’re all looking at the train as what it was,” Garsvo said. “Look at it today and look at other modes of transportation we have today. Why would anyone — unless they’re retired and have all the time in the world or love trains — want to take Amtrak across the country?”

Rochester’s fast ferry

I share Garsvo’s healthy skepticism.

Back in the early 2000s, when I was an assistant metro editor at the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, New York, the city of Rochester spent millions of dollars to purchase a fast ferry to run between Rochester and Toronto.

Like the notion of Amtrak, the fast ferry conjured up a certain romantic image of an old-fashioned mode of travel, of passengers in fedoras sipping gin rickeys while looking wistfully out on the horizon of Lake Ontario from the promenade deck.

Launched in June 2004, the company ceased operations by September, saying costs were much higher than expected and they’d lost big money on the huge vessel, the fastest of its kind in the world, which could carry 774 passengers and 238 cars.

The city of Rochester stepped in the next year, bought the ferry out of bankruptcy for $32 million and resumed service to Toronto in June 2005.

By December, ridership was still low, the city chalked up another $10 million in losses, and service was again halted.

The city did recoup some of its losses by selling the ferry for $30 million, but that didn’t come close to the taxpayer dollars that were lost forever.

At the time, there was just too much hopefulness and optimism, and not enough skepticism about a mode of transportation that simply wasn’t going to be used enough.

Just like Amtrak, everyone was excited about a fast ferry.

People mover?

My wife has a business trip to Salt Lake City next week. She’s taking the early morning flight from Boise and will land in Salt Lake by 7 a.m., reporting to the office well before 8 a.m. She’ll be able to put in a full day’s work before taking the 5:20 p.m. flight home, and be home for dinner that same night.

If she were to take the train, there’s no way that would be possible.

“Amtrak is not going to be for commuting,” Garsvo said, contrary to suggestions that people would use it to get back and forth from Mountain Home or Pocatello. “It’s not going to be fast. It’s not going to be reliable. It’s going to be faster for you to drive to Salt Lake, unless the weather’s really bad.”

Still, Garsvo keeps an open mind, as do I, pending a feasibility study.

“It might be a pipe dream,” Garsvo said. “But never say never. Anything could happen. But we get this question a lot (at the Boise Depot), and I always end the conversation with, ‘Prove me wrong.’ ”