Miami, Oxford Pledge Funds Toward a Train Station in the Community

BY MADELEINE LAPLANTE-DUBE

Miami University journalism student

OXFORD, OH -- It’s been a long journey full of reroutes and roadblocks, but the student and residential community of Oxford, Ohio is now closer to having a route to national transportation.

In a council meeting Tuesday, the City of Oxford agreed to partially fund a much-awaited Amtrak stop along Oxford’s cardinal line. Miami University sent its formal agreement to participate in the pledge the following day. Both institutions promised $350,000 toward the project, totaling a significant portion of the $1.2 million cost estimate.

This pledge is in part to prove to Amtrak that Oxford is lucrative enough to have a stop built in town.
David Creamer, Miami University’s Senior vice president for finance and business services and treasurer, says Miami already had the money available for the stop.

“Actually, we’ve been informally making this pledge since probably two years ago,” says Creamer. “And what we were doing at this time with the city is formalizing that so that Amtrak would continue to see our interest in a stop.”

The town has been trying to make Amtrak recognize its interest in a stop since 2008, when efforts to build a platform first began. But at the time, Amtrak decided it wasn’t economically feasible and that there wasn’t enough business.

After that, the notion of an Amtrak stop in Oxford became a dead issue for nearly six years. In November of 2014, however, an organization called All Aboard brought the issue back up at a Cincinnati conference, attempting to get the Oxford-Miami community to get a daily train running from Cincinnati to Chicago.
It got the wheels turning again, so to speak.

“Not that we were opposed to this Chicago to Cincinnati line,” says Alan Kyger, Oxford’s Economic Development Director. “But our thought was, ‘Well we [already] have a train coming through. Why don’t we first get it to stop?’”

Kyger and a transportation team formed in 2015 have spent the following years trying to convince Amtrak to help them do just that. And in May of 2015, Amtrak sent their letter of approval.

Before any rail negotiation with freighters and rail owners of CSX can happen on Amtrak’s part, however, Oxford needs to figure out “where the stop will be, who will own the stop, who will manage the stop, and who’s going to pay for its construction,” says Kyger.

Right now, Kyger and his team have their sights set on a location owned by the Talawanda School District just south of Chestnut Street, by SDS Pizza.

“The ball has been in our court because [Amtrak] said ‘Yes, but provide us the following.’ And what we are doing now is trying to ‘provide the following,’” says Kyger. “Once we do that then they will begin to do more work with working with CSX to get the actual permission for the stop to be built.”

With these new funds, there’s one more thing that they can check off their list.

Once Amtrak officially beings negotiations, Creamer estimates it will take anywhere from 12 to 24 months to finish the build. Kyger estimates anywhere from two to three additional years.

For Kyger, it’s worth the wait. Because to the Oxford community, this train has the potential to be more than just a few sets of metal wheels and a way to get from point A to point B.

“Once we get a stop here, and then services start to increase, it increases the potential use of the line, [and] it’s just one more reason to potentially live and work in Oxford, Ohio,” says Kyger.

With Miami University acting as the largest employer in Bulter County, it’s important to the City of Oxford to keep retention rates high in order to keep the community alive. But most professors and faculty don’t actually move to Oxford to work in Oxford. It’s Kyger’s hope that something like the Amtrak stop could change that.
“Whatever we can do to make the quality of life in Oxford that much better, we have that much greater opportunity when a new faculty member is hired in that they go ‘Oh, if I live in Oxford, I can hop on the train back to Chicago,” he says.

The current schedule of Cardinal line, which goes through Oxford, leaves Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons, goes through Oxford early the next morning (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) and continuing on to New York arriving there Wednesday, Friday and Sunday night. The train from New York to Chicago gets through Oxford on Monday, Thursday and Saturday early morning and arrives in Chicago around 10 a.m.

Amtrak has indicated to Kyger that they will begin the next steps on their side to keep the process moving forward. For now, Oxford’s whistle stop is no longer a pipe dream.