How soon can you catch a train from Billings to Bozeman?

Last year, nearly 98,500 people in Montana boarded or departed the Empire Builder, the train that rumbles across the Hi-Line as it connects Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. Passenger numbers have climbed from a COVID-era low of about 65,700, but remain well below the most recent high of 156,700 in 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation. 

Is that a sign that demand for passenger trains in Montana is dropping or that the trains are in the wrong places, far from major population centers? That depends on who you ask. But despite the current state of passenger train travel in Montana, there is a growing group that wants to see another route emerge. 

In November, a coalition of counties focused on building a southern route added its 20th member. Together they make up the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority, a rare form of government agency hoping to develop a new passenger line with twice-daily service through Billings, Bozeman and Missoula, three of the state’s largest cities that lie along Interstate 90. 

Montanans eyeing expensive plane tickets or worrying about the TSA’s new surcharge for air travelers without a REAL ID might be intrigued by the prospect of a route between the state’s major metropolitan areas.

Montana Free Press sifted through documents, attended transportation meetings and spoke to official (and self-appointed) Montana train experts to try to answer these questions. 

WHO IS PUSHING FOR THE SOUTHERN LINE AND WHAT’S THE VISION? 

The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority was incorporated in 2020 via an obscure Montana law. The agency is hoping for operational passenger service by the early to mid-2030s. 

“We put a person on the moon in the 1960s in less than 10 years. For God’s sake, we should be able to get a train running on existing infrastructure in less than that,” Dave Strohmaier, BSPRA’s president, said in a recent interview with Montana Free Press. 

BSPRA plans to run along an old route that Amtrak discontinued in 1979, called the North Coast Hiawatha. BSPRA is not currently planning to lay new sections of track in Montana, but instead intends to modify existing freight corridors to allow passenger trains to coexist. 

”What we would be picking up — by way of this expanded service in southern Montana — is connectivity to all of the major population centers in both the states of Montana and North Dakota, and layer in an additional handful of iconic national parks, like Yellowstone and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota,” Strohmaier said.

BSPRA doesn’t have many details about scheduling, stops, ticket prices or the specific types of trains that would carry passengers. But Strohmier hopes to offer twice-daily service at each stop and feels confident the route would run through three of Montana’s largest cities. (Strohmaier also serves as a Missoula County commissioner.)

WHO SUPPORTS AND OPPOSES THIS?

BSPRA’s ally in the state Legislature, Rep. Denise Baum, D-Billings, tried and failed to secure millions in funding for the early stages of route planning during the 2025 legislative session. U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, who delivered a virtual keynote at BSPRA’s annual conference in September, is sponsoring a bill in Congress that would eliminate the need for matching investments from local and state governments for large-scale railroad projects. (Though most of the funding would come from the federal government, the early planning phases require a local investment BSPRA is currently struggling to acquire.) The bill has not progressed since Sheehy introduced it in late September.

The most vocal opponents to a new passenger rail route, including 40-year veteran of the freight rail industry and passenger-rail enthusiast Mark Meyer, peppered BSPRA’s Facebook page with enough dissent to prompt the agency to turn off comments. 

“You have to tell people what the obstacles are, what’s going on. And Amtrak is in such sorry shape now, we really need to fix what we have, otherwise we’re going to lose it all,” Meyer told MTFP in a recent interview.

Meyer developed his most personal connection to railroads during the 13 years he traveled on Amtrak’s Empire Builder line between Seattle and Cut Bank, his hometown, to visit his mother while she was suffering from Alzheimer’s. 

“It was a lifeline,” Meyer said.

Meyer now publishes opinion pieces in publications across the West about the rail industry from his home in Portland, Oregon.

He decries money that might be spent on scoping, securing and setting up the new route for a number of reasons, including the lack of details about that route and operating schedule, that he considers “imperative to determine the utility of a service.”

WHAT WOULD THE SOUTHERN ROUTE COST?

About $4 billion for the entire new service between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest according to the Glendive Ranger-Review’s reporting on a 2024 estimate from the Federal Railroad Administration. That includes some overlap with existing passenger service areas. Here’s the breakdown:

• $1.1 billion for five train sets, including locomotives and passenger cars.
• $1.3 to $1.7 billion to build and maintain facilities, including stations, along the route.
• $930 million for track development and improvement. Though track already exists to carry freight through the proposed southern route, BSPRA anticipates the need for upgrades, like new signals and areas of double-track.
• $136 million for operation and maintenance.

That estimate doesn’t factor in current unknowns, like the exact necessary improvements on existing tracks that engineers would assess before breaking ground. 

BUT DOESN’T MONTANA ALREADY HAVE A PASSENGER RAIL ROUTE? HOW IS THAT WORKING OUT?

Astute! Amtrak’s Empire Builder, inaugurated in 1929, connects Chicago to the Pacific Northwest via a route that stops at 12 northern Montana towns between Libby and Wolf Point. This is the route Meyer used to visit his mother in Cut Bank. 

A trip between Chicago and Portland takes about 46 hours — about 11 of which are through Montana — via Superliner cars pulled by ALC-42 locomotives. For a full trip from end to end, a coach seat costs a few hundred dollars and a private room is between $650 and $1,000. 

The service is not doing particularly well. About two-thirds of the number of people ride the Empire Builder today compared to ridership in 2008. Though traveler numbers are up since a COVID-driven decline, they remain lower than before the pandemic. Railway Age, a train-focused trade publication, published a story in late September that revealed a host of problems facing Amtrak’s long-distance trains like the Empire Builder, including a combination of limited funding and archaic equipment that cause frequent delays. Meyer worries that a new line would face the same ridership challenges and equipment failures that plague the Empire Builder. 

“My biggest problem with the Big Sky Passenger Rail people is they’re a distraction because they’re going full-speed ahead, telling everybody, ‘Yeah, this is gonna happen in the 2030s.’ And they rarely mention the clear and present danger that affects the long-distance trains,” Meyer said.

Meyer thinks federal funds would be better spent on reinvigorating the ailing rail manufacturing industry. 

“If the stations, the track structure, the equipment and the mechanical facilities could drop out of the sky tomorrow and be in place, I’d be right on board with them. But being reality-based, I know that that’s not the case,” Meyer said. “And knowing that, you have to understand that I believe that the Empire Builder and all the other long-distance trains are going to be discontinued if we continue on the same path — we are not addressing this equipment problem.”

He believes Amtrak should reinforce its existing routes in dense areas and expand in populated areas, like the Midwest, instead of growing its already lagging long-distance rail in places like the Mountain West. 

“Let’s make sure that what we have right now is saveable before you have some pie-in-the-sky fantasy about additional trains,” Meyer said. 

But Strohmaier says the proposed southern Montana route wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Empire Builder due to the difference in geography between the two services.

“You look in North Dakota and Montana, the Empire Builder doesn’t pass through any major communities,” Strohmaier said. 

Strohmaier also believes the new route, much like the Empire Builder, could provide access to long-distance travel for rural Montana communities not in proximity to highways or airports. A 2025 study published by the Federal Railroad Administration about potentially adding passenger routes nationwide said the new routes, including the proposed line through southern Montana and North Dakota, could increase rural access to long-distance transportation from 30% to about 48%. 

SO WHO WILL GET WHAT THEY WANT? DAVE OR MARK?

Truth be told, no one really knows. Long-distance rail investment at this scale is unprecedented in the 21st century. And challenges, like rallying the rail manufacturing industry, remain for BSPRA even if it overcomes funding obstacles. 

Undeterred, BSPRA is on a slow and uncertain track toward a southern passenger route through Montana. The agency is currently finalizing the first part of the Federal Railroad Authority’s three-step process called the corridor identification program.

“The corridor identification program is the mechanism by which the Federal Railroad Administration moves projects from concept into design into being a shovel-ready project that can break ground,” Strohmaier said. 

The  Big Sky Passenger Rail received a $500,000 grant from the Federal Railroad Administration to complete the first step of the process in 2023. Using those funds, they estimated the second step, drafting a service development plan, would cost about $11 million. The federal government could cover most of that, but it requires either a $1.1 million local investment, like the one Baum failed to pass in the state Legislature, or the success of Sheehy’s bill in Congress, which would shift that project planning gap to federal funding.

The third step of the corridor identification program, which includes preliminary engineering and environmental reviews, costs an amount to be determined and would require a 20% local match. 

Despite the reality that it would be a decade until the new operating route through southern Montana would hypothetically begin service, Strohmaier continues to lobby at the local, state and federal levels to secure early rounds of funding for planning the line. 

 “I would not have spent the last five years of my life doing this unless I thought it was something that we could actually achieve,” Strohmaier said.  

This story was corrected Dec. 4, 2025, to update the age of the law Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority was formed under a law.

The story was corrected Dec. 5, 2025, to indicate the Big Sky Passenger Rail received a $500,000 grant in 2023.

The story was corrected on Dec. 6, 2025, to indicate the cost estimate for the proposed rail includes the route from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, not just the Montana section.