Although the student-friendly departure time of the Carbondale-to-Chicago Amtrak train is safe for now, we should keep sighs of relief to ourselves until Amtrak can offer student customers more reassurance.

Used heavily by SIUC students, University of Illinois students, Eastern Illinois University students and visitors of all three schools, the Illini route always has been an important and trusted link to home on which Illinois students could depend. But for the last two years, SIUC and Carbondale city officials have lobbied to save the 4:05 p.m. departure time of Amtrak’s Illini route after Amtrak officials considered altering the departure time to 6 a.m. by July 1 of this year.

This would have meant that students from Chicago or other places on the Illini route would have had to skip all of their Friday classes to catch an early train. If students had decided to attend classes and leave Saturday morning instead, they would have had a minute amount of time to spend with friends and family. Both of these scenarios were unacceptable, and Friday’s press conference organized by Amtrak officials announced that the grassroots lobbying by SIUC and Carbondale officials had stymied Amtrak’s plans.

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However, according to Carbondale City Manager Jeff Doherty, Amtrak is maintaining its Illini route’s 4:05 p.m. departure time from Carbondale with the understanding that it would be revisited in the future. What does this mean? It means that in spite of our recent success, Amtrak is basically telling us that we are still in danger of losing the 4:05 p.m. departure time.

Amtrak officials have not penciled in any dates on the calendar to discuss changing the Illini route’s Carbondale departure time. Nor have they discussed what it would take for us to permanently keep the late afternoon departure time. Instead, they have announced an intense marketing ploy to increase ridership on the route.

But considering that 41 percent of Illini route riders are students and 49 percent of the route’s riders are under the age of 25, it is obvious that Illinois college students are Amtrak’s cash cows. Appeals for more college students and their friends to use the Illini route would work best if we knew the stability of the 4:05 p.m. departure time. Why should more of us elect to use a service that may stop catering to our needs?

Thanks to a lot of hard work, we all can look forward to planning a few more weekend getaways on Amtrak. But in the meantime, because Amtrak officials could again consider changing the departure time in the near future, we still have a cloud hanging over our heads.