Students at Iowa State University are being offered a chance to take a train and avoid planes and automobiles to get home for the holidays. Amtrak is offering a bus service to take students from the Ames campus to their station in Osceola. Amtrak spokesman, Marc Magliari, says it’s a test.
“This is an entrepreneurial experiment where we’re looking to see if we offered bus service on a more regular basis between Ames and Osceola how much more business it would attract,” Magliari explains.
I wonder how close to capacity the coach cars on the Zephyr are. It might make sense to add a coach for the Chicago-Denver or Chicago-Omaha portions of this run if this experiment attracts additional riders. Of course, I am assuming there are spare Superliner coaches somewhere in the system, and I don’t know that is the case.
For that matter, a similar service between Cedar Falls (Univ of Northern Iowa) Iowa City and Mt. Pleasant might make sense at least until the service to Moline starts.
Edited to add: This morning the eastbound Zephyr of the 8th is reported in Nebraska running 6 hours late. Although there is extreme cold in the upper plains, the time was lost back in Nevada and Utah. This bus service doesn’t make sense without better timekeeping.