Hoosier State fans hold out hope as Amtrak line cut from state budget plan

An advocate for Greater Lafayette’s long-standing efforts to save the Hoosier State said community leaders, who have been supplementing state payments to Amtrak to the tune of a combined $500,000 a year for the past five years, aren’t giving.

Arvid Olson, head of Greater Lafayette Commerce’s transportation committee, said local leaders along the 196-mile route already knew they would have a difficult time preserving state money for the Hoosier State when Gov. Eric Holcomb stripped the cash from his proposed budget in January.

“We’ve been working and we knew were going to have to keep working,” Olson said Tuesday, hours after the House Republican budget plan came out Tuesday morning with $34.6 billion in spending over the next two years, none of it set out for the Hoosier State.

“We’re doing it with eyes wide open on a product that’s nowhere near what we want it to be,” Olson said. “We’re not flailing. … We’re just making the case that the Hoosier State is an important economic development piece for our community. And if it goes away, it’s going to be very expensive, if not impossible, to get back.”