Daily rail service to Tulsa could be just six months away.

The Oklahoma Transportation Commission sold the Sooner Sub line, a railroad between Sapulpa and Midwest City, for $75 million to the Stillwater Central Railroad, LLC. The deal is expected to finalize in July and the railway could begin running as early as November 2014.

The planned line will have stops in Bristow, and Stroud, with the ends of the line at Midwest City and Sapulpa.

This train ride takes longer than driving the same distance at approximately 2 hours 50 minutes, however plans have been laid to eventually reduce the running time to less than two hours. The final implementation will have eight weekday roundtrips and five weekend roundtrips, but will begin with two daily and increase to six weekday and five weekend incrementally before reaching the final run.

Ticket prices are far from being set in stone, but Easter Flyer’s website lists expected average coach fare at $15 and first class at $39 with a $6 charge for the shuttle services. The Excursion prices in February ranged from $64 to $259. The prices will be affordable to their key demographic: students without licenses or vehicles, and seniors who, for whatever reason, prefer not to drive. However, first class tickets will always be available for upscale transportation.

The train stations will have dedicated shuttles on-site for taking commuters from the dropoff point to Bricktown, Downtown Tulsa, the airports and several additional locations surrounding each dropoff point.

“For passenger service we’re going to work very closely with the Iowa Pacific,” Said Richard Webb, Chief Executive officer of Stillwater Central. “The Iowa Pacific and our company put together the trial program in December of last year, which those sold out without any advertisement so we,re coordinating over the next 60 days and when we want to start. We are anticipating getting that started sometime this fall.”

This trial program route was tested back in February with 3 demonstration runs that sold out in 3 weeks, as people wanted to be a part of this historic event. Passenger trains have not run between Tulsa and OKC for more than 70 years.

“The demand for rail travel continues to grow and ticket sales crushed our revenue goal of 300 tickets,” said Angela Arias, vice president of marketing for Iowa Pacific Premier Rail Collection.
Daily passenger rail from MWC to Tulsa coming soon - Eastword News - Midwest City, OK