Actually in the old Amtrak days when Amtrak was paying for the Chicago to Milwaukee trains I would agree. However today when you have Wisconsin-illinois jointly paying for almost 100% of Chicago-Milwaukee service and you have Illinois-Missouri paying for Chicago to St. Louis schedules. It’s going to be difficult to marry the train schedules between the two corridors where using one trainset makes sense and at the same time keep the states paying for the service happy that they are getting the best time slots for train scheduling.
Also Amtrak seems to be challenged in Chicago with cleaning a trainset when the turnaround time is short in Chicago.
Or the Airlines. Airlines can clean a cabin in 20-30 minutes and service the retention tanks. Even with 2 hours with a Superliner in San Antonio sometimes you still have trash left over and filled up retention tanks departing on the Northbound train…can’t believe that even happens. Poor Supervision.
Here’s something no one’s thought about: Extend the Gulf Coast Service to Miami.
That move alone would take it out of the PRIIA 750 mile requirement by making the route 1,033 miles long. A Tampa extension is doable but at 787 miles long, it’s barely outside of the area where the four states would have to fund the route.
I would actually prefer a rescheduled Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles. I think it should be timed around the connections in NOL (Crescent and City of New Orleans) than in San Antonio (Texas Eagle, besides that connection is poorly timed anyway). My proposal would be to leave NOL late at night after the Crescent and arrive in NOL early (would unfortunately would have to either arrive in NOL well before 7am for the Crescent connection unless they reschedule the Crescent to leave NOL later). If the SL left NOL at 11pm using the same schedule it would arrive in SAS around the 2pm hour and LAX around 8pm rather than before 6am, better times for both cities. To save the ability to go from Dallas/Austin to LA, I’d run through cars to meet up with the SL in SAS. I’d also like to extend the Heartland Flyer from Ft. Worth to Dallas and Houston to possibly connect in Houston to the SL east to NOL (and to cities along the Crescent route) as well as connect Dallas and Houston by rail service.
Your not going to see another Amtrak Dallas to Houston train again without a substantial up front payment payment to UP. SP was probably very happy to get that train off that particular route. I am sure UP does not want to see it come back. You might be able to persuade BNSF on a Houston to Ft. Worth routing though.