[Willie Green]

Currently, Amtrak's Heartland Flyer travels 206 miles south from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth Texas,

From Wikipedia:

Several proposals for extending the route of the Heartland Flyer or providing additional service over all or parts of its route have been made over the years. Expansion planning revolves around portions of the former Lone Star route and the state-owned route from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The line to Kansas City would stop at Wichita's Union Station and follow the route of the Amtrak Southwest Chief north of Newton Kansas. Recent interest in Kansas and Oklahoma communities has been sparked by the proposal and many towns have released resolutions supporting the idea and requesting stations should the route ever be extended. Some of these cities include Wichita, which lost its train service with the discontinuance of the Amtrak Lone Star in 1979. Emporia was eliminated as an Amtrak stop in the mid nineties but may once again have a train station. Nearly a dozen other communities ranging in size from the tiny community of Strong City Kansas, pop. 570, to Wichita, with nearly 358,000 residents have passed these resolutions.

A study conducted by Amtrak in 2009 resulted in four proposed service extensions:

• Extend the current train north to Newton, Kansas, where passengers could connect with the Southwest Chief to both Chicago and Los Angeles, which stops in Newton in the middle of the night.
• Add a second day train from Fort Worth to Kansas City, which would offer twice daily service over much of the route but wouldn't connect with other trains.
• A variation of the first plan would extend the overnight train to Kansas City.

• A variation of the second plan would terminate the day train at Oklahoma City, rather than operating all the way to Texas.

According the August 2010 issue of Trains Magazine, which hosts this report, a combination of options one and two as noted above is not out of the question, either, allowing for day and night service, plus perhaps thru-car service to/from the Southwest Chief.

[ziravan]

Why? No one will ride it.

If there is a demand for such a rail, the private market will build it.

If there is not, and government builds it anyway, the result is a dislocation of market resources. It’s wasteful and destructive to the ends of freedom and liberty.

The free market brings the best combination of prices, quality, and rising economic liberty. Government interference is said market destroys all three.

No. OK does NOT need a passenger rail to Chicago. THAT is evident by the fact that such a rail does not exist. And NO. The gov’t has no right nor need to steal my money to bring such a market-inefficient concept into being.

[Charles Martel]

I suspect most Oklahomans would prefer not to waste money on a passenger rail link to that cesspool.

[NorthStarStateConservative]

As soon as they get a mag rail that can go nearly 600 MPH, they may have something. Until then, heavy rail is already doing what it’s doing well in the USA, which is connecting 2 large urban areas together.

[Nick Danger]

"...we need passenger train service from Oklahoma to Chicago."

We had passenger train service from Oklahome to Chicago. I know: I rode it when I was a kid. The Santa Fe had trains on that route every day.

They don't do that anymore. Customers informed them that the trains were no longer needed. The customers did that by stopping the practice of buying tickets for train rides.

There ya go.

[Mr. Blonde]

I would like to see one from Tulsa to OKC.

[gogeo]

Ah, when I saw rail, I knew it was you, Willie.

Of course, the article has a misleading headline.

It is only tangentially about rail service. It is primarily about those who want more free stuff.