Back on track? Boise gets $500,000 grant to study a return of passenger rail
The federal government has awarded Boise more than half a million dollars to help plan for “restored intercity passenger rail service,” the city announced Wednesday.
Boise will use the money to “develop a comprehensive funding and financing strategy for future passenger rail opportunities,” according to the announcement, as well as “examine opportunities surrounding the historic Boise Depot and other station-area investments.”
The grant, which totals $503,125, comes from the Department of Transportation’s Innovative Financing and Asset Concessions Program, which helps municipalities across the United States study ways to fund transportation projects.
In a statement, Boise mayor Lauren McLean lauded the grant.
“Boiseans have made clear they want to bring passenger rail back to get around the Treasure Valley and across the West,” McLean said. “This grant helps bring us one step closer to doing just that.”
Efforts to bring passenger trains to Boise and Idaho’s Treasure Valley stretch back years and have been driven in large part by the region’s explosive population growth.
A 2025 study by the Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho, or Compass, found that the best transit option for the Treasure Valley — that which would move the largest amount of people around the fastest — would be a commuter rail service, and proposed a route running from Boise to Caldwell, through Nampa and Meridian.
The project’s price tag was projected to range from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion, with operating costs estimated at $7.5 million per mile, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.
While support for a commuter rail project in the Treasure Valley has persisted for years from local officials and transportation activists, the costs associated with building and maintaining an intercity transit system make it virtually impossible to pursue without state funding — and legislators have so far made little indication that they would foot a bill.
Still, Craig Raborn, the executive director of Compass, said in an emailed statement that the group is “thrilled” to see the federal grant come through.
“Given the lack of current funding options for any kind of passenger rail, the funding portion of the city’s study will be especially beneficial,” Raborn wrote.
Officials have also pushed the federal government for years to bring train service back to the Treasure Valley, after the region’s lone Amtrak line was shut down in 1997 amid federal budget cuts.
After Congress passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021, a collection of state and local leaders pressed Amtrak to restore service on its Pioneer Line, a passenger rail line that ran between Seattle and Chicago and included stops in Boise, Denver and Salt Lake City.
The Biden administration then announced millions of dollars in grants to study prospective Amtrak routes across the country in December 2023 — but left out any funding for a proposal to bring back passenger trains between Boise and Salt Lake City.
Though explanations for why Idaho’s rail proposal was left in the dust initially varied, a simpler reason soon emerged for the snub: Idaho had accidentally applied for the wrong grant in the first place.
Another chance at federal funding arrived more than a year later, however, when the Federal Railroad Administration included the western segment of the Pioneer Line running from Seattle to Denver in its review of proposed long-distance Amtrak routes which could add to the railroad company’s network.
The proposed route, which would bring Amtrak service to Boise and Pocatello, was labeled by the FRA as a “selected preferred route” in its January 2025 report to Congress — though for the agency to formally recommend the return of trains on the line would take years of further study.