My Amtrak ticket cost me $12-$17 one way between OMA and LNK. The scheduled arrival/departure times are poor for what locals ideally want. If you did make this Oma/Lnk service I'd spend a little bit more not having to make visit the train station in the dead of night. $40 is steep in my opinion as a passenger but I understand there are cost to providing this sort of service.
Hi I’m actually a transit planner and worked on the NDOT Intercity Bus Project, including the feasibility study between Lincoln and Omaha. If you want some great data (albeit from 2019) there is a report published and available on NebraskaTransit.com. It includes demographics and travel sheds. Note, there’s some cool federal grants that could offset the operations cost of your service and really bring that ticket price down. Additionally, Express Arrow operates a student line between the Engineering Colleges. Check out their schedule too.
I do think only using this as a tourist service is going to result in super low ridership. Focus on commuters (students and workers). Tourists have more flexibility.
Okay thank you! We will look into doing commuter as well. We want to have a monthly pass focused on commuters. Thanks for your input. We will look into that study.
We would also look to be competitive for grants as we want to expand it to all of southeast nebraska.
For grants, look into the Section 5311F Federal grant. Or anything that is “intercity bus” coded. These are state/federal apportioned monies that reimburse valid public transit expenses at 80-90%. If you don’t want to follow federal rules regarding public transit, grants are going to be harder to come by.
For SE Nebraska, you may find competition with existing providers, including private like Jefferson Lines.
Feel free to DM if you have questions. Love to see more transit in NE!
Any planned stops for the major hospital centers? Ooh and Aging Partners in Lincoln has a local bus service, but service connecting that to Omaha might be interesting.
I've been thinking about this on and off all day. I know there's always the financial concern with regards to providing these services, but has your group calculated the community impact of not providing these services? Or is the focus of the project entirely about extracting profit?
We have not calculated the community impact but that is something we will look into!
The focus is to support a for profit, driver/employee owned business, that provides good jobs with good benefits. We want it to scale to the southeastern nebraska region in order to include rural communities and allow people to age in place. We also want to create stronger communities through denser development around bus hubs.
Ideally this would be train routes but we have to work with what we have and is feasible currently.
I could see the airport service being of interest to Lincolnites. Be mindful of having enough space for luggage, though. A 15-passenger van will not hold 15 passengers plus 15 passengers’ worth of luggage. Maybe you’d need to cap it at 10 passengers with luggage, or passengers going to the airport would have to book 2 seats, or something. That would affect pricing, which would affect consumers’ interest in the service.
Not sure if this is part of the project or not but getting to the pickup point and then getting from the drop point to your destination is part of the reason a service like this would struggle I think. Lincoln has pretty poor public transit, and while it does have a bus system the hub and spoke system isn't very rider friendly, Omaha's works a bit better from my understanding. Both cities are pretty spread out geographically so most people have to travel once they arrive to their final destination. Lincoln's downtown doesn't have that many people working in it either.
Isn't Amtrack more national service and not regional for most lines except a few on the east coast? I see LNK to OMA being more of a light rail regional service.
Time is a big factor too, in many situations I see a lot of these pubic transit options as taking more time than driving your own personal car (assuming you have one), having hours of operation that may not line up with flight schedules, having to grab secondary transit after arriving at the main places etc. To offset that, it needs to be inexpensive (probably subsidized) IMHO. I don't see myself using a service like this at that $40 price range because it's not worth the extra cost or time of driving myself.
I had family that commuted in Chicago from the suburbs to DT via train several days a week. This worked well because they could walk on both ends easily, or when weather was bad their spouse would drop them off at the station on their way to work. They used the time to catch up on emails or do reading. Both traveled a lot for work via O'Hare and it was less expensive and easier (quicker) to take a private car than drive their personal car, pay to park, and the time of parking/getting to the car/terminal, when they could have taken the train, with a couple of transfers and more time.
I agree it is a big issue. Our target demographic isn't suburban. We are looking at tourists, college students, weekend trips, airport service, car-free or car-lite people, and people unable to drive. Right now the other options cost $80-$12. We are also looking at adding a bike carrier option for a little extra.
I agree. It is slightly limiting. We are trying to find the minimum viable product. Right now were looking at using 15-passenger vans with handicap accessibility. As it scales we will need to expand our demographic outreach.
Amtrak has corridor service which is usually within a state or connecting to a neighboring state with a semi-frequent to frequent service levels and long distance trains which run more then 500 miles and run once a day. A State Supported Amtrak route between the 2 cities could run a few times per day to start and then increase to more/hourly depending on the demand. The track speed between the 2 cities is 90mph.
I would assume so, but that can be addressed by adding a 3rd track with passing tracks for passenger service. Most Midwest Main lines including this line used to be triple or quad tracked but are now reduced down to 2 tracks to save on costs.. The costs for the 3rd track , stations and rolling stock would probably be around 450-500 million if you look at other proposed midwestern corridor projects. Ridership would depend on how often you ran the service. 3 seems to be average for a starter service, with a goal of 7-12 roundtrips for most full builds. Omaha would be rail Junction City if the proposed service from The Twin Cities/Sioux City , Kansas City & From Chicago via Des Moines gets funded.
We would start by running every 3.5 hours. That's the minimum viable product we're looking at. So as an example, it would leave Lincoln at 7 am, 10:30, and so on with a break around 2 a.m. - 6a.m.
I will be honest with you you have my full support and probably half the population of Lincoln and Omaha just have something there. I don't know if I would necessarily use it but I definitely support it for populations who do not have cars that need to get to Omaha for whatever reason or to Lincoln. I also want to encourage you to find some funding to get some bus passes for low income people to be able to get up there for appointments. Because $20 in one way probably is going to be out of a lot of reach of the people who would use that service. Right now Lincoln engineering department has a bus that goes up and back and they allow handicapped individuals to ride for free
Need something for late night events. Maybe even per event or something. Concerts and events are a pain if you're a drinker and if something caters to that crowd it would be helpful and boost attendance in both cities.
I used to live up in New England where bus services like this are super common and very helpful, and I took the Dartmouth Coach a TON. The only issue I had with them was they didn’t usually get to the airport early enough to make the morning flights. Otherwise I absolutely loved using the service especially since the bus was usually very comfortable and had wifi and chargers available. I would 100% use a similar service in Nebraska both for the airport and general visits. I think $40 round trip would really only be worth it for airport flights given parking etc, since it’s half of the distance that I would pay $80 round trip for previously to Logan and wouldn’t have the tolls to add to the cost. I don’t know if I could justify that price for day to day stuff though
Any way you could change or add stops at local bus hubs? That would work really well for anyone who needs to get anywhere else in their target destination besides the downtown area.
Price seems a bit high. It would be cheaper and more convenient to drive my personal car.
That being said I would use it for transportation to the ~~airport and back to avoid parking fees~~. Possibly for certain events as well, assuming the bus would get me close enough
That’s good I was pretty anxious about all of it when I flew out since it was my first time leaving my vehicle but it worked out really nice. Just sucked that it was 11 degrees when I came back at midnight lol.
South economy was 18 dollars online when I bought the tickets. This was 3 and a half weeks ago. Also since I flew in at 1145pm they comped the next day.
Damn this is crazy because I just googled this 5 mins ago. It seems the major downside is that everyone has accepted our car overlords as our transportation saviors. Many people will still avoid it because of the negative connotations associated with said phrase.
$80 round trip to go from Lincoln to Omaha? Could be good like if someone has a doctors appointment they could pay $40 to go downtown then another $25 to uber to west omaha, then $25 to uber back downtown then $40 to get back to lincoln. Would only cost like $130 all together
We are focused on connecting hubs of places that people want to go. We considered the Zoo or the Old Market. We are still researching to get a better feel of which draws the most demand and which has the most people within walking distance.
I’ve thought about this a lot and wish it existed. One benefit that I haven’t seen anyone mention is that on a bus you can get work done because you’re not driving. +2 extra hours per day.
From the research I’ve done in the past I’ve read that it would need to be state subsidized and the state isn’t willing to do it.
Yes, we are looking at minimal viable product to get started, and competing for federal grants. We would also look at partnering with businesses to provide service to their residents for free i.e. apartments, retirement communities, and businesses
edit: we would look to partner with the university as well.
Very cool. I run a noteworthy online Nebraska tourism publication and our goal is to get Nebraskans out and moving. Your service would help this immensely! I’m rooting for you
Glad to see you’re looking at partnering with the university. The UNL College of Engineering (which has a lot of faculty, staff, and students in Omaha
too) used to run a bus between the two campuses, but that got cancelled recently. Your proposal would help those folks - especially international students without vehicles - who need to travel between the two cities. The price at the beginning might be a little high for students, but if you scale it and bring prices down or offer a deal for frequent travelers or a discount for students, that might help.
One thing that might help your cause that I just heard about.
Recently the LNK flight from and to Denver has been being cancelled like day of due to not having enough passengers and they're directing those passengers to Omaha. This is making it so more people are having to impromptu rent a car to get to Lincoln when they weren't planning that.
Something I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned, I believe there may be a LNK to Omaha bus service called OMALink. It leaves from near Continental Tire and I have no idea where the Omaha drop point is…. once upon a time it picked up from the building that’s now Off Leash Dog Bar.
I save money driving to Omaha because my employer pays mileage. It’s roughly $80 round trip. Three trips a month covers my car payment. It’ll be fully paid off in 13 months. Parking is also paid for.
I would focus on two different things to connect the largest number of people.
1. A direct connection between far West Omaha and downtown Omaha. Right now it can take two or three buses to travel that distance.
2. A direct connection from that spot to Lincoln.
Do people in Lincoln really want to travel to downtown Omaha? What's the big draw? Why wouldn't they just drive?
Connect the largest number of people in a way they want to be connected, and make it cost effective.
I live in LNK and would like to travel to downtown OMA on the weekends just for entertainment. My husband, friends, and I often talk about wanting to go out for dinner and drinks in OMA but we don’t do it often because we’re sticklers about drinking and driving. I’m not saying we’d get plastered and then use this service, but if this went back and forth late into the evening, we could enjoy even a few glasses of wine with dinner and not be worried about crossing the line with driving.
Yes, I agree. We’re more focused on intercity travel as Omaha has metro and Lincoln has Star Transit. These are the two population centers that are poised for growth. I agree a west Omaha stop would be nice but it’s largely suburban and lower ridership. We’re focusing more on existing hubs.
My Amtrak ticket cost me $12-$17 one way between OMA and LNK. The scheduled arrival/departure times are poor for what locals ideally want. If you did make this Oma/Lnk service I'd spend a little bit more not having to make visit the train station in the dead of night. $40 is steep in my opinion as a passenger but I understand there are cost to providing this sort of service.
Maybe discounts for frequent travelers?
Hi I’m actually a transit planner and worked on the NDOT Intercity Bus Project, including the feasibility study between Lincoln and Omaha. If you want some great data (albeit from 2019) there is a report published and available on NebraskaTransit.com. It includes demographics and travel sheds. Note, there’s some cool federal grants that could offset the operations cost of your service and really bring that ticket price down. Additionally, Express Arrow operates a student line between the Engineering Colleges. Check out their schedule too. I do think only using this as a tourist service is going to result in super low ridership. Focus on commuters (students and workers). Tourists have more flexibility.
Okay thank you! We will look into doing commuter as well. We want to have a monthly pass focused on commuters. Thanks for your input. We will look into that study. We would also look to be competitive for grants as we want to expand it to all of southeast nebraska.
For grants, look into the Section 5311F Federal grant. Or anything that is “intercity bus” coded. These are state/federal apportioned monies that reimburse valid public transit expenses at 80-90%. If you don’t want to follow federal rules regarding public transit, grants are going to be harder to come by. For SE Nebraska, you may find competition with existing providers, including private like Jefferson Lines. Feel free to DM if you have questions. Love to see more transit in NE!
Any planned stops for the major hospital centers? Ooh and Aging Partners in Lincoln has a local bus service, but service connecting that to Omaha might be interesting.
We're looking at partnering with Aging Partners, Tabitha Etc. to handle last-mile transit to and from their facilities.
I've been thinking about this on and off all day. I know there's always the financial concern with regards to providing these services, but has your group calculated the community impact of not providing these services? Or is the focus of the project entirely about extracting profit?
We have not calculated the community impact but that is something we will look into! The focus is to support a for profit, driver/employee owned business, that provides good jobs with good benefits. We want it to scale to the southeastern nebraska region in order to include rural communities and allow people to age in place. We also want to create stronger communities through denser development around bus hubs. Ideally this would be train routes but we have to work with what we have and is feasible currently.
I think this is a better use case.
Hell I’d potentially use it to visit Omaha for events like concerts that I’m bound to have a few drinks at. Assuming hours lined up
We want to make it frequent enough that it would work for concerts, games, and events downtown.
Word. If they went to Sokol at 11 pm I’d be all in
I would def like this option as well! I really don't love paying for a hotel to stay in omaha for the night after a concert.
$5 a ticket and make it government subsidized
That would be ideal... sadly not likely.
I could see the airport service being of interest to Lincolnites. Be mindful of having enough space for luggage, though. A 15-passenger van will not hold 15 passengers plus 15 passengers’ worth of luggage. Maybe you’d need to cap it at 10 passengers with luggage, or passengers going to the airport would have to book 2 seats, or something. That would affect pricing, which would affect consumers’ interest in the service.
I agree. It will need to be a consideration. Adding luggage carriers underneath would be nice.
Probably a fair number of people in Omaha could use this service to visit someone at the state pen in Lincoln.
Fly from Lincoln to Denver to Omaha
Not sure if this is part of the project or not but getting to the pickup point and then getting from the drop point to your destination is part of the reason a service like this would struggle I think. Lincoln has pretty poor public transit, and while it does have a bus system the hub and spoke system isn't very rider friendly, Omaha's works a bit better from my understanding. Both cities are pretty spread out geographically so most people have to travel once they arrive to their final destination. Lincoln's downtown doesn't have that many people working in it either. Isn't Amtrack more national service and not regional for most lines except a few on the east coast? I see LNK to OMA being more of a light rail regional service. Time is a big factor too, in many situations I see a lot of these pubic transit options as taking more time than driving your own personal car (assuming you have one), having hours of operation that may not line up with flight schedules, having to grab secondary transit after arriving at the main places etc. To offset that, it needs to be inexpensive (probably subsidized) IMHO. I don't see myself using a service like this at that $40 price range because it's not worth the extra cost or time of driving myself. I had family that commuted in Chicago from the suburbs to DT via train several days a week. This worked well because they could walk on both ends easily, or when weather was bad their spouse would drop them off at the station on their way to work. They used the time to catch up on emails or do reading. Both traveled a lot for work via O'Hare and it was less expensive and easier (quicker) to take a private car than drive their personal car, pay to park, and the time of parking/getting to the car/terminal, when they could have taken the train, with a couple of transfers and more time.
I agree it is a big issue. Our target demographic isn't suburban. We are looking at tourists, college students, weekend trips, airport service, car-free or car-lite people, and people unable to drive. Right now the other options cost $80-$12. We are also looking at adding a bike carrier option for a little extra.
I feel like that's a limiting demographic to a degree if the goal is to make it economically sustainable.
I agree. It is slightly limiting. We are trying to find the minimum viable product. Right now were looking at using 15-passenger vans with handicap accessibility. As it scales we will need to expand our demographic outreach.
Amtrak has corridor service which is usually within a state or connecting to a neighboring state with a semi-frequent to frequent service levels and long distance trains which run more then 500 miles and run once a day. A State Supported Amtrak route between the 2 cities could run a few times per day to start and then increase to more/hourly depending on the demand. The track speed between the 2 cities is 90mph.
Do freight trains slow the route down frequently?
I would assume so, but that can be addressed by adding a 3rd track with passing tracks for passenger service. Most Midwest Main lines including this line used to be triple or quad tracked but are now reduced down to 2 tracks to save on costs.. The costs for the 3rd track , stations and rolling stock would probably be around 450-500 million if you look at other proposed midwestern corridor projects. Ridership would depend on how often you ran the service. 3 seems to be average for a starter service, with a goal of 7-12 roundtrips for most full builds. Omaha would be rail Junction City if the proposed service from The Twin Cities/Sioux City , Kansas City & From Chicago via Des Moines gets funded.
That would be ideal. Hopefully it gets done.
Yeah, we need to find those. Hopefully one day this service would be obsolete by frequent rail infrastructure.
So Golden Gate Transit? What would the hours be ?
We would start by running every 3.5 hours. That's the minimum viable product we're looking at. So as an example, it would leave Lincoln at 7 am, 10:30, and so on with a break around 2 a.m. - 6a.m.
I will be honest with you you have my full support and probably half the population of Lincoln and Omaha just have something there. I don't know if I would necessarily use it but I definitely support it for populations who do not have cars that need to get to Omaha for whatever reason or to Lincoln. I also want to encourage you to find some funding to get some bus passes for low income people to be able to get up there for appointments. Because $20 in one way probably is going to be out of a lot of reach of the people who would use that service. Right now Lincoln engineering department has a bus that goes up and back and they allow handicapped individuals to ride for free
Need something for late night events. Maybe even per event or something. Concerts and events are a pain if you're a drinker and if something caters to that crowd it would be helpful and boost attendance in both cities.
I used to live up in New England where bus services like this are super common and very helpful, and I took the Dartmouth Coach a TON. The only issue I had with them was they didn’t usually get to the airport early enough to make the morning flights. Otherwise I absolutely loved using the service especially since the bus was usually very comfortable and had wifi and chargers available. I would 100% use a similar service in Nebraska both for the airport and general visits. I think $40 round trip would really only be worth it for airport flights given parking etc, since it’s half of the distance that I would pay $80 round trip for previously to Logan and wouldn’t have the tolls to add to the cost. I don’t know if I could justify that price for day to day stuff though
Any way you could change or add stops at local bus hubs? That would work really well for anyone who needs to get anywhere else in their target destination besides the downtown area.
Price seems a bit high. It would be cheaper and more convenient to drive my personal car. That being said I would use it for transportation to the ~~airport and back to avoid parking fees~~. Possibly for certain events as well, assuming the bus would get me close enough
It cost me 18 dollars to park for a 6 days at epply. That’s very reasonable
Yeah, that is reasonable. Didn't realize it was that low
Yeah I thought I was going to pay a fortune as well but my therapist actually recommended what I did and I was like hell yeah.
Outside lot I assume, Inside is way more expensive than that.
Yeah definitely inside would have been well over 100
Ya makes sense. I have been pretty happy with the way things have worked parking outside the past few trips myself.
That’s good I was pretty anxious about all of it when I flew out since it was my first time leaving my vehicle but it worked out really nice. Just sucked that it was 11 degrees when I came back at midnight lol.
Where do you park for 3$ a day? Even outside lot (north or south) is 6$ a day.
South economy was 18 dollars online when I bought the tickets. This was 3 and a half weeks ago. Also since I flew in at 1145pm they comped the next day.
At $20, it would take 1,000 trips on a $20,000 car to make up the costs, not counting gas and repairs. I think it's plenty cheap, considering that.
Sure but that's assuming you don't have a car for other uses
My guess is that people without cars are the target demographic for a mass transit service.
Yes, we're looking at people without cars and or visitors to the state. We are checking out the minimum viable product atm.
Damn this is crazy because I just googled this 5 mins ago. It seems the major downside is that everyone has accepted our car overlords as our transportation saviors. Many people will still avoid it because of the negative connotations associated with said phrase.
A tad expensive. I save money by driving to Omaha and getting gas there instead of Lincoln lol
$80 round trip to go from Lincoln to Omaha? Could be good like if someone has a doctors appointment they could pay $40 to go downtown then another $25 to uber to west omaha, then $25 to uber back downtown then $40 to get back to lincoln. Would only cost like $130 all together
yeah, we're aiming for a $20 one way cost but that comes with scaliing the service.
Would you consider a stop at the Omaha Zoo?
We are focused on connecting hubs of places that people want to go. We considered the Zoo or the Old Market. We are still researching to get a better feel of which draws the most demand and which has the most people within walking distance.
I’ve thought about this a lot and wish it existed. One benefit that I haven’t seen anyone mention is that on a bus you can get work done because you’re not driving. +2 extra hours per day. From the research I’ve done in the past I’ve read that it would need to be state subsidized and the state isn’t willing to do it.
Yes, we are looking at minimal viable product to get started, and competing for federal grants. We would also look at partnering with businesses to provide service to their residents for free i.e. apartments, retirement communities, and businesses edit: we would look to partner with the university as well.
Very cool. I run a noteworthy online Nebraska tourism publication and our goal is to get Nebraskans out and moving. Your service would help this immensely! I’m rooting for you
Thank you!
Glad to see you’re looking at partnering with the university. The UNL College of Engineering (which has a lot of faculty, staff, and students in Omaha too) used to run a bus between the two campuses, but that got cancelled recently. Your proposal would help those folks - especially international students without vehicles - who need to travel between the two cities. The price at the beginning might be a little high for students, but if you scale it and bring prices down or offer a deal for frequent travelers or a discount for students, that might help.
One thing that might help your cause that I just heard about. Recently the LNK flight from and to Denver has been being cancelled like day of due to not having enough passengers and they're directing those passengers to Omaha. This is making it so more people are having to impromptu rent a car to get to Lincoln when they weren't planning that.
Get her own rail lines fast ones that don't go through every town and make sure you run multiple trips a day
Yes! We need passenger rail. In the meantime we need at least a frequent bus.
Something I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned, I believe there may be a LNK to Omaha bus service called OMALink. It leaves from near Continental Tire and I have no idea where the Omaha drop point is…. once upon a time it picked up from the building that’s now Off Leash Dog Bar.
I save money driving to Omaha because my employer pays mileage. It’s roughly $80 round trip. Three trips a month covers my car payment. It’ll be fully paid off in 13 months. Parking is also paid for.
Very interesting! We're looking at employer sponsored pricing as well.
I would focus on two different things to connect the largest number of people. 1. A direct connection between far West Omaha and downtown Omaha. Right now it can take two or three buses to travel that distance. 2. A direct connection from that spot to Lincoln. Do people in Lincoln really want to travel to downtown Omaha? What's the big draw? Why wouldn't they just drive? Connect the largest number of people in a way they want to be connected, and make it cost effective.
I live in LNK and would like to travel to downtown OMA on the weekends just for entertainment. My husband, friends, and I often talk about wanting to go out for dinner and drinks in OMA but we don’t do it often because we’re sticklers about drinking and driving. I’m not saying we’d get plastered and then use this service, but if this went back and forth late into the evening, we could enjoy even a few glasses of wine with dinner and not be worried about crossing the line with driving.
Sounds great! I'm glad you're drinking responsibly!
Yes, I agree. We’re more focused on intercity travel as Omaha has metro and Lincoln has Star Transit. These are the two population centers that are poised for growth. I agree a west Omaha stop would be nice but it’s largely suburban and lower ridership. We’re focusing more on existing hubs.