BY JILL NOLIN  @ Montgomery Advertizer

Montgomery officials believe it makes sense for passenger trains to return here, and the federal government is investing $200,000 to help them find out.

The White House announced Thursday that $200,000 of federal stimulus money will go toward conducting a feasibility study to see if passenger trains should operate between Montgomery, Birmingham, Mobile and other Alabama cities.

“Based on the amount of riders and the population that each area will have over time, we think it will actually be feasible to put the service back in place,” said Robert Smith, Montgomery senior transportation planner.

“This is the next generation of transportation right here — rail,” Smith added.

The $200,000 will require a 50 percent match from the players in Alabama, but a funding arrangement has not been made yet. The other $200,000 could be split three ways among Montgomery, Mobile and Birmingham, or it could be spilt six ways among those larger cities and three smaller cities along the route.

The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs was the winning applicant in the grant funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The grant was a small part of the $8 billion in grants that were awarded across the county to develop the nation’s first nationwide program of high-speed inter-city passenger rail service.

The federal stimulus grants will go toward everything from a feasibility study to planning actual implementation of the service. A feasibility study would examine whether ridership would be strong enough to support the line.

If the feasibility study affirms that a passenger rail service would work along the proposed route, which would go from Mobile to Birmingham, officials would be more likely to get a provider, such as Amtrak, to sign on. Amtrak already has shown an interest in bringing back what was known as the Gulf Breeze line.

The revived line would link Montgomery to a 21,100-mile web of Amtrak rails that run to more than 500 destinations in 46 states. Riders could start in Montgomery and make it to New York in less than 24 hours.

The line also would mean more riders coming to Montgomery, as well as all the other stops along the route.