(Havre) – With Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority looking to reopen passenger rail for the Hiawatha Service route from Seattle, Washington to Chicago, Illinois. New Media Broadcasters sat down with David Strohmair the Chairman of the BSPRA to talk about when the idea to reopen the rail line came about.
“Well in the state of Montana in particular this idea has been percolating out there for about 44 years since we lost passenger rial service back in 1979 as far as this most recent effort which is bearing this came about 4 or 5 years ago when a number of us who have been advocates for standard passenger rial service through southern Montana realized that what we had been doing for many decades just has not been working and what we discovered was that there was a law in the books here in the state of Montana that allows counties to come together and establish regional rial authorities and that is exactly what we did and our focus in the enhancement of passenger rail in the state of Montana and that includes not just looking at this east/west route but it also looks at the possibility of future connections north / south.”
