Oklahoma’s Heartland Flyer Tourism Train is Ending Service

If you have my luck, you already know how it goes. You see something interesting, be it an experience, restaurant, or destination, and you've told yourself for years, "I'm gonna go see/do/experience that one day." I've said that about Oklahoma's Heartland Flyer Amtrak train for at least twenty years, and my time is running out.

Like all of Amtrak, because it's a government entity, it's heavily subsidized by the state and federal governments. Ticket sales and travelers can't cover the full cost of operation across the country. Without funding, an Amtrak line has no choice but to shut down.

Texas has picked this fight. 

Texas lawmakers are drawing a hard line in the sand. They are refusing to allocate funding to their portion of the Heartland Flyer rail. It's a cost of $7million that should fund the track operations through 2027.

Oklahoma is paying its portion of the rail. Mainly because it's quite a popular "thing" to do in the Sooner State. Hop on the train in the morning outside of Bricktown, spend a few hours in Fort Worth, and end up back where you started late in the day.

How long do we have until it's gone? 

There's some uncertainty with the timeline. Service could stop by the end of June, but there is an effort to keep the train rolling until the end of the fiscal year, late September.

Beyond October 1st, the Heartland Flyer is expected to no longer operate. But a handful of Texas officials, mainly local politicians in counties the rail runs through, are trying to put people at ease about this debacle. They say they're trying to work out the long-term funding locally, side-stepping the Texas legislature altogether.

Alternatively, Oklahoma's Department of Transportation is signaling less hope in a big save. They are convinced, after lengthy talks with the Texans, that service will end on September 30th.

If you've wanted to ride the rails, now is the time. 

OKDOT is advising anyone who wants to experience travel by rail that they had better make plans, as there's no indication the Heartland Flyer will be around after September 30th, 2025.

All the same, a big influx of passengers could provide the cash the railway needs to continue operation beyond September, but with current ticket prices, it may not be possible.

In 2024, the Heartland Flyer carried 81,000 passengers, but that only equates to roughly $2.2million in ticket sales. Well below what is needed.

Is the expansion plan dead? 

The news of this is catching more than a few people completely off guard. For the last nearly ten years, Amtrak officials, Oklahoma, and Kansas have been hyping up an extension of the rail through Wichita up to Newton, Kansas. If the rail collapses under Texas's refusal to fund its portion, these plans will likely go down with the ship.

Of course, the extension into Kansas would need more than $300million to make that happen anyway. It's the main reason it hasn't happened yet since the idea was proposed in 2018.

It's not over yet. 

Nobody is ready to stick a fork in the Flyer just yet, there's still a little hope at the end of the tunnel. Texas lawmakers are likely using this as a pressure point for something else. But if you don't want to risk never riding the rails to Texas, you can check out booking information for your Heartland Flyer last-call round trip here.