Is there any reason that amtrak could draw passengers up to DM&E terrotory… Perhaps people want to see “Bareback Mountain Country”
I do not think that it will make one bit of difference.
Bert
I’ not sure what your reference is to, but the view out the window would be mostly corn fields, cattle pastures,and vanishing little prairie towns.
The only way to mitigate the NIMBYs is to put them on a rocket to the sun…
…or possibly play the interstate comerce card.
It may help, but I rather doubt it. Amtrack would probably be required to exceed 100VC in reimbursments, and probablybe forced close to the “standard” 180VC. DME can’t afford that, which leaves three choices — US DOT subsidy, served communities subsidy and South Dakota and Minnisota state DOT’s subsidy. And then, you would have to fill the train with riders — and a caboose won’t work as a coach-dome-diner-lounge-sleeper.
Add my voice to the chorus.[:D] If Amtrak service here in the NYSSR is on the hot seat, how will it succeed in the praries, where the number of potential riders is very small indeed. Many people out there do not mind driving for a full day or have their own planes. Reliance on public transportation out there ended when Henry Ford rolled out his model T! [B)] How about when it was found out that a horse could be ridden by a man or woman willing to tame it, feed and water it.
Precisely why passenger service might work out there. Rather then spend 80.00 on gas you could pay 50.00 for a train ticket
Chaplainmonster: I take it you don’t exactly realize just how big, and reletively unpopulated out here is?
As much as I like passenger trains, I am thinking that it might be cheaper to pick up the Clinic and the City of Rochester and move them ten miles downstream.
All DM&E has to do is say “Sure, we’ll let Amtrak run a passenger service over our new line if they bother to show up on our property.” Then the ball is in Amtrak’s court, so to speak, yet DM&E can show the NIMBY’s that they are more than willing to host Amtrak should they want access.
Will that placate the NIMBY’s? I doubt it, but it couldn’t hurt.
Sure it could. The people are complaining about the noise of all the increased train traffic, then you are going to tell them that there will be two more running? I can here them now, “we didn’t like the idea of 30 coal trains a day rolling by, but now that you tell us it will be 30 coal trains AND two passenger trains, well, that will be okay.”
Bert