Amtrak officials say full service between St. Louis and Kansas City will be restored on Wednesday, nearly a month after being disrupted due to flood waters.
Flooding along the Missouri Riverhad forced more freight traffic onto tracks used by Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner. Spokesman Marc Magliari says the high waters have subsided.
“Floodwaters have been going down along the Missouri River, enough that Union Pacific has told us they won’t have to keep diverting additional traffic over the route we use," Magliari said.
When asked if there were indications that there might be a need to suspend track service again, he replied, "That will be up to nature and to how the river runs, but the fact of the matter is, it seems like the worst of this is behind us.”
Magliari says it’s too soon to tell how ridership numbers have been affected by the reduction in service.
“We won’t get the July ridership numbers until next month, but certainly we had fewer seats moving from place to place in the market," Magliari said.
Magliari adds that Amtrak has increased the size of the Missouri River Runner train and is using buses to help make up the difference during the service reduction.
