All aboard for daily train service

The neighborhood area around Palermo Palm Springs will be the place to be with the new 250,000-sqaure-foot College of the Desert west valley campus and business park coming, the expected "redevelopment boon" that the city expects to happen along with that project, and other improvements. One idea is passenger train service that would allow residents of Palm Springs to travel inland for work and other opportunities. The train station is up Indian Canyon Drive, with Palermo being one of the closest larger residential developments. The daily newspaper has reported: "A $400,000 study will be launched in January to explore the potential ridership and inevitable costs of creating a new passenger rail system between the Coachella Valley and Los Angeles. It is the first time in more than 20 years of discussion that the state has put up money to move the rail idea forward. The Caltrans study will help determine what equipment is needed, where stations would be located, and how much the plan would cost taxpayers and passengers, according to Cathedral City Councilman Greg Pettis, who also serves as the chairman of the Riverside County Transportation Commission. Similar state studies have taken about three months to complete. How to improve passenger train service in the desert has been debated locally since at least 1991. It generally focuses on two ideas: Amtrak's Sunset Limited service could be expanded from three days a week to seven. The route now carries passengers between Los Angeles and New Orleans, with a stop in Palm Springs. The state could create a new train service that would provide daily round-trips between Los Angeles and Indio. Eventually, such a route could be extended to Phoenix." Miss Penny Lane says: She can already pictures herself taking the train into L.A for a day of museum outings and other cultural activities, and a bit of shopping. She has the prefect hat for the occasion.